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Foreign Language Teacher Education Program

New York State Certification can be obtained at both the undergraduate and graduate levels in French, Italian, and Spanish. Eligibility requirements for the teacher preparation program include acceptance into both a major and the teacher education program. Prospective candidates must first review their transcripts and plan of study with their major advisor to ensure minimum qualifications for acceptance into the major. Once they have obtained the major advisor's approval signature on the teacher education declaration form (available from departmental offices and the Registrar), they must contact the Foreign Language Teacher Education Program advisor to obtain information on applying to the program and to discuss the course of study. Prior to student teaching, students must participate in an official ACTFL Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI) and receive a minimum spoken proficiency rating of Advanced-Low as defined in the ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines-Speaking (1999).

Students must contact Language Testing International (LTI) and arrange for either a face-to-face OPI or a phone interview. The mailing address for LTI is as follows: LTI: Language Testing International, 3 Barker Avenue, Suite 300, White Plains, NY 10601. Office and testing hours are Monday through Friday from 8:00 a.m. - 7:00 p.m. EST. Additional contact information is as follows: email: info@languagetesting.com; fax: 914-963-7113. To arrange for testing, please email: admin@languagetesting.com. Special testing is available by special arrangement. 

The mission of the program is to provide high-quality pre-service education and radically improve foreign language teaching for New York's racially, culturally, and linguistically diverse learners. It offers a rigorous, student-centered teacher certification program that is designed to prepare creative, reflective educators who are dedicated   to the success of all learners. The content, format and process of the program are based on a vision of teachers of foreign languages as thoughtful and informed practitioners; an educational philosophy based upon experiential learning that recognizes and values the different ways people participate in and contribute to classroom learning communities; and the development of competency areas that lie at the heart of competent and effective language teaching: language and culture, learners and learning, teachers and teaching, self and other, educational institutions, communities and professional life.

A program is also available to students who wish to complete their Bachelor's degree and Master of Arts in Teaching degree within five years. Details about the five-year accelerated BA/MAT in French, Italian, or Spanish can be obtained by consulting the foreign language teacher education advisor. These programs require students to have a minimum GPA of 3.0 overall.

The program is an integral part of the  Department of Languages and Cultural Studies and serves students in that department, in the Department of Asian and Asian American Studies, and in the Department of Hispanic Languages and Literature. The Foreign Language Teacher Preparation Program coordinates the preparation of undergraduate and graduate students to become teachers of French, German, Italian, Russian and Spanish at the middle and secondary school levels. It also coordinates the preparation of undergraduate students to become teachers of Chinese, Japanese and Korean at the same levels. Students in this program take content courses in the language, literatures, and cultures of their field as well as pedagogy courses tailored to the preparation of future Foreign language teachers. Practical experience is gained through observations in schools around the region and through a semester of   mentored student teaching at the middle and high school levels.

Our program prides itself on providing students with the opportunity to gain a thorough knowledge of the language(s), literatures, and cultures which they are preparing to teach. Possibilities for study abroad are plentiful at Stony Brook, as are opportunities   to take language courses taught by experts in their fields. Because of the diverse student body at Stony Brook, students are also afforded the chance to interact with native speakers of the languages they are studying, both in their classes and elsewhere on campus, thus enhancing their own linguistic skills and cultural knowledge. In addition, the Foreign Language Teacher Preparation Program maintains close ties with the Language Learning and Research Center, a state-of-the-art multimedia learning center, which helps students meet the challenge of integrating technology with the teaching of Foreign languages. Students may choose to take a course in media for Foreign language teaching offered in the LLRC as well.

A further mission of the Foreign Language Teacher Preparation Program is to provide on-going training for practitioners in the field. By offering workshops, seminars and courses for Foreign language teachers, this program aims to strengthen our ties to the professional community and to meet the needs of all of our students, past, present, and future.


 

Contact Information

Sarah Jourdain, Ph.D.
Director, Foreign Languages Teacher Education Program Stony Brook University
Humanities 1055
Stony Brook, NY 11794-5359 Phone: (631) 632-7440
Fax: (631) 632-9612
Email: Sarah.Jourdain@stonybrook.edu 

Chinese, Japanese and Korean: Undergraduate
Jiwon Hwang, PhD
Email: Jiwon.Hwang@stonybrook.edu

French: Undergraduate and Graduate 
Franck Dalmas, PhD
Email: Franck.Dalmas@stonybrook.edu  

Italian: Undergraduate and Graduate
Irene Marchegiani, PhD 
Email: Irene.Marchegiani@stonybrook.edu  

Spanish: Undergraduate
Joseph Pierce, PhD 
Email: Joseph.Pierce@stonybrook.edu  

Spanish: Graduate 
Aurélie Vialette, PhD
Email: Aurelie.Vialette@stonybrook.edu

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