Quechua Language Instruction And Assessment Across The Americas Challenges And Solutions

Quechua with nearly ten million speakers living primarily across the Andes stands as the most widely spoken Indigenous language of the Americas today. Yet this less commonly taught language (LCTL) continues to face significant challenges. This work illuminates and interrogates current barriers to Quechua language instruction and assessment within the United States Ecuador Bolivia and Peru. Collectively the contributions to this volume offer a way forward with suggestions and solutions aimed at building the capacity of Quechua language stakeholders. The volume describes barriers to effective Quechua language instruction and assessment such as the problematic implementation of Intercultural Bilingual Education (IBE) in Peru and Ecuador ineffective Quechua language learning materials and inadequate Quechua language assessment instruments. To address these challenges this work offers three primary solutions: expanding the target audience for Quechua language instruction and language learning materials creating communicative language learning materials that reflect culturally appropriate real-life situations and include nativized grammatical descriptions and making necessary modifications to language proficiency assessment instruments. As such it provides a blueprint for pushing Quechua language instruction and assessment beyond its current status and into a future in which instructors and students are offered high-quality culturally grounded classroom experiences. These solutions may also apply to other LCTLs and in particular to other Indigenous languages of the Americas and beyond. This timely volume which responds to UNESCO's Global Call for Action in declaring 2022-2032 as the International Decade of Indigenous Languages is essential reading for scholars faculty and students with interests in Indigenous languages language acquisition (L1/L2) language pedagogy language policy sociolinguistics linguistic anthropology and decolonizing approaches to education. |Quechua Language Instruction and Assessment Across the Americas Challenges and Solutions