Language Program Direction: Theory and Practice combines helpful, practical, everyday advice with research and theory to offer a rich, contemporary resource for Language Program Directors or anyone involved in administering a language program.

Intended for current and future foreign language teaching professionals, volumes in the Theory and Practice in Second Language Classroom Instruction series examine issues in teaching and learning in language classrooms. The topics selected and the discussions of them draw in principled ways on theory and practice in a range of fields, including second language acquisition, foreign language education, educational policy, language policy, linguistics, and other areas of applied linguistics.  

Gillian Lord received a B.S. from Vanderbilt University, an M.A. in Hispanic Literatures from the University of Virginia, and a Ph.D. in Hispanic Linguistics from the Pennsylvania State University. She joined the faculty of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese Studies (formerly the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures) at the University of Florida in 2001, where she directs the Lower Division Spanish Program and serves as Chair of the department. In her time at the University of Florida Professor Lord has won the Teacher of the Year Award, the Service Learning Faculty of the Year Award, and the Doctoral Dissertation Advisor/Mentoring Award. Professor Lord’s research focuses on language teaching and learning in both the classroom and immersion settings, focusing primarily on the acquisition of foreign language sound systems. She also works in pedagogy and teacher training with an emphasis on the role of technology in language acquisition and education. She has published articles in journals such as Foreign Language Annals, Hispania, CALICO and System, among others, and co-edited a volume with Lara Lomicka on web 2.0 tools in language teaching (2009, CALICO). Professor Lord currently serves on the Executive Committee of the Computer Assisted Language Instruction Consortium (CALICO), as Spanish Head of the American Association of University Supervisors and Coordinators (AAUSC) and as a member of the CLEP Spanish (ETS, College Board) Test Development Committee.

Chapter 1: Introduction