Consider using the target language as much as possible, if not exclusively, during class time. Students have such limited contact with the language that maximizing every opportunity to provide input and foster interaction is crucial. A natural tendency is to switch back to English to take care of classroom and course management, but resisting this instinct will lead to authentic opportunities for communication. Students will attend to the message in the input and interact in order to indicate what they have not understood in the target language, especially when teachers talk about what will be on the next exam!

Encourage students to work collaboratively in groups for a period of time during each class meeting to provide opportunities for interaction. When one instructor attempts to interact with each individual student, no matter how engaging the instructor and active the participation, the occasion for target language use by students will be necessarily limited. In contrast, when students are accustomed to communicating and working collaboratively with each other, the opportunities for negotiating meaning increase significantly.

Make use of the wide variety of resources available at KU. The Blackboard course management system provides a suite of tools that can be exploited by the foreign language teacher, such as Wikis for collaborative writing and group projects, blogs for journal writing, and Wimba (a tool for synchronous and/or asynchronous verbal communication) for oral interaction outside of class or creating listening comprehension assignments or oral testing from personal computers. The Ermal Garinger Academic Resource Center, an invaluable resource for foreign language teachers, has a knowledgeable and accessible staff that is always willing to collaborate on projects to foster cultural learning and help teachers with using technology in the classroom. Other resources on campus, such as the International Student Association, work collaboratively with foreign language teachers to facilitate interaction with native speakers at KU.