StudioCLA
cultural communication through multilingual stories
About StudioCLA
StudioCLA is a global organization of university faculty, students, and community volunteers dedicated to the research and development of new pathways for second language literacy development. Our current goal is to develop an anthology of six bilingual English and Japanese short stories for promoting discussion of cultures in the Asia Pacific region. The stories are provided as an open educational resource to promote the free translation of Extensive Reading (ER) resources in languages where ER materials are not readily available.
Young Adult Multicultural Stories
These stories were 100% written and illustrated by humans (APU students)! Originally Multicultural Week Grand Shows, they were graded to the intermediate to upper-intermediate levels in both English and Japanese. These stories come from Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, China, and Japan.
YAJ Stories are teaching packets that include a case narrative, mock trial role sheets, and sentencing guidelines. The case narrative can be used for literature circle (LC) discussions as well. It is recommended that students do a standard LC discussion first, and then move to doing the mock trial (MT) with the MT role system.
Events
In partnership with the Center for Language Education and the APU Self-Access Learning Center (SALC), we hold bilingual English/Japanese book club events where participants will get to read and discuss a short story that is based on a previous Multicultural Week Grand Show. We hope that this will provide an opportunity for exchange between domestic and international students to casually practice their language skills and make new friends.
Research
The StudioCLA organization is the foundation for language material and leadership that simultaneously supports research related to multilingual literacy development. Currently, the Principal Investigator (PI) at StudioCLA is Paul Sevigny, PhD. Conference presentations and research paper links are provided here.