Language and Culture Learning Archives

Articles & Essays Faith and Teaching Featured Language and Culture Learning Voices from the Past

Lost in translation? Accessing past Christian educational reflection

This essay was published as the editorial for the International Journal of Christianity & Education 28:2, July 2024. Scholarly discussion of the relationship between Christianity and education is, of course, far from being a recent endeavor. The study of how faith is implicated in education…

David I. SmithDecember 5, 2024

Articles & Essays Featured Language and Culture Learning Resources Voices from the Past

Teaching for the Real World

“Our textbooks today are much more focused on practical things.” The student’s comment, offered in a class on world language pedagogy as we discussed historical examples of language textbooks, stood out as requiring more response than I quite knew how to pack into the moment.…

David I. SmithNovember 1, 2024

Vintage old wooden rustic ox yoke decoration in Austria

Articles & Essays Faith and Teaching Language and Culture Learning Teaching Literature

A Teacher’s Burdens (And Who Shoulders Them)

This post originally appeared on the Christian Scholar’s Review blog, and is reproduced with permission. I’ve been thinking about burdens again. Often my own, I must confess, but also the kind that I place on others’ shoulders. The question about whether I lift a finger…

David I. SmithMay 31, 2023

Book Reviews Faith and Teaching Language and Culture Learning

The Challenges of Writing about Teaching

This post originally appeared on the Christian Scholar’s Review blog, and is reproduced with permission. This piece is a slightly adapted version of a recent editorial written for the International Journal of Christianity and Education. In the preface to his recent book Transforming Fire: Imagining…

David I. SmithMay 31, 2023

Articles & Essays Faith and Teaching Featured Language and Culture Learning Reflection on Scripture

Hearing, Speaking, Learning.

This post originally appeared on the Christian Scholar's Review blog, and is reproduced with permission. Some years ago, I was sitting in my campus office minding my own business when the phone rang. It turned out to be Matt, a student who had been in…

David I. SmithApril 1, 2022

Articles & Essays Language and Culture Learning

Some Doubts about “Incarnation”

This piece was written at a time when there was a marked trend in popular evangelical writing about cultural difference to talk about the desirability of being "incarnational". Since then there has been some retreat from that language (including in a later edition of the…

David I. SmithApril 1, 2019

Faith and Teaching Language and Culture Learning Talks, Lectures, Interviews

Wheaton Gration Lecture 2016

The John A. Gration Lecture Series honors Dr. Gration, professor emeritus and founding chair of the Intercultural Studies graduate programs at Wheaton College Graduate School.

David I. SmithSeptember 29, 2016

Articles & Essays Featured Language and Culture Learning

Shouting at your Neighbor: Why we Bother with Other People’s Languages.

This essay was published in 2012 in the book Practically Human: College Professors Speak from the Heart of Humanities Education edited by Gary Schmidt & Matthew Walhout (Grand Rapids: Calvin College Press, 2012, 133-145). It asks why we invest time and resources in learning other…

David I. SmithSeptember 20, 2012

Language and Culture Learning Scholarship

Hospitality, Language Pedagogy, and Communities of Practice

This paper was published in Journal of Christianity and Foreign Languages (now Journal of Christianity and World Languages) 12, 2011, p.29-44. It takes its starting point from some abiguities in my 2000 book with Barbara Carvill, The Gift of the Stranger, and goes on to…

David I. SmithApril 1, 2011

Articles & Essays Faith and Teaching Featured Language and Culture Learning

Christian Faith and Language Pedagogy

I came across a short piece that I wrote as a journal editorial a little over a decade ago. I think several of its themes are still pertinent. It was published as the editorial of the Journal of Christianity and Foreign Languages, since renamed the…

David I. SmithApril 10, 2008

Language and Culture Learning