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Department of
French and Italian

Virginia Scott

Professor of French, Emerita

Virginia Scott joined the Department of French and Italian in 1988. During her career at Vanderbilt University, she served as supervisor of the Teaching Assistants, Director of Undergraduate Studies in French, Coordinator of the French language program, and Department Chair. In addition, Scott was the founding Academic Director of the Vanderbilt Center for Second Language Studies. Her interest in second language acquisition and foreign language teaching informed her scholarly interests, in particular, the ways literary texts promote second language development and her work on the National Standards for Foreign Language Learning in the 21st Century. Scott was awarded several prizes for excellence in undergraduate teaching; in 2010 she received the Thomas Jefferson Award for distinguished service to the university. She also was named Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Palmes Académiques in 2004 by the French Minister of Education. Her most recent work explored dynamic models of multilingualism. She retired in 2019.

Specializations

Second language acquisition; foreign language teaching; French linguistics; multilingualism


Representative Publications

  • Rethinking Foreign Language Writing. (Heinle 1996)
  • Double Talk: Deconstructing Monolingualism in Classroom Second Language Learning. (Prentice
    Hall 2010)
  • SLA and the Literature Classroom: Fostering Dialogues. V. Scott and H. Tucker (Eds.). AAUSC
    Issues in Language Program Direction. (Heinle 2001)
  • Principles and Practices of the Standards in College Foreign Language Education. V. Scott (Ed.).
    AAUSC Issues in Language Program Direction. (Heinle 2009)
  • “Literature, the Interpretive Mode, and Novice Learners.” (2007). The Modern Language Journal
    91, 3-14.
  • “Digital Tasks for Advanced Learners: The Case of the Princesse de Clèves.” (2017). The French
    Review 90, 186-200.
  • “Multi-competence and Language Teaching.” (2016). In V. Cook and L. Wei (Eds.), The Cambridge
    Handbook of Linguistic Multi-competence. UK: Cambridge UP.
  • “From Consoles and Cubicles to Coding and Collaboration.” (2017). In F. Kronenberg (Ed.), From
    Language Lab to Language Center and Beyond: The Past, Present, and Future of Language
    Center Design. Mobile, AL: International Association for Language Learning Technology.