Books & Book Chapters

The current chapter seeks to contribute to the conversation by presenting the findings of three surveys of students’ motivation and attitudes toward world languages. Specifically, survey one details students’ motivations to take a world language. Survey two presents students’ attitudes toward their world language courses. Survey three captures STEM majors’ attitudes toward world language courses. Through understanding the world language experience from these perspectives, the findings of this study help guide curriculum leaders in their future decision-making as it relates to program offerings and the future possibilities of world language programs going forward.

Citation: Parker, J.L. & Smith, Y.C. (2023). Curriculum Leadership in Undergraduate World Language Programs. In K. Stein-Smith (Ed). The Importance of Learning a Second Language: Essays on Re-envisioning Foreign Language Education. Edwin Mellen Press

Conversations on race in America are hard. Regardless of background, environment, and beliefs, toward race, racism, prejudice based on race, implicit bias, systemic racism, and social injustice these conversations carry what I find to be a burden of defining. This burden includes the duty of defining one’s position on race, defining one’s boundaries on what is acceptable to say about race, and defining what constitutes a racist from an individual who has unique experiences. In this chapter, I seek to expand the conversation into foreign languages. Specifically, I take a unique approach by focusing on my experience in relation to learning French as an African American male second language learner living in Louisiana.

Citation: Parker, J.L. (2022). Speaking from the Margins of the Margin: An African American Perspective on Learning French in Louisiana. In Stein-Smith, K. & F. Jaumont (Eds). French All Around Us: French Language and Francophone Culture in the United States. TBR Books.

Frank, E., Huebener, E., Acosta Cuellar, H., Feldman, Y., Matus, I., Parker, J.L., Delgado, C., and Farudi, G. (2022). Libro Libro: An Introduction to Spanish I. Pressbooks. 

Frank, E., Huebener, E., Acosta Cuellar, H., Delgado, C., Farudi, G., Feldman, Y., Matus, I., Parker, J.L. (2022). Libro Libro: An Introduction to Spanish I and II. Pressbooks.