####### INTERNATIONAL RESEARCH AND STUDIES PROGRAM

**(84.017A)**

![](media/image1.wmf){width="1.2805555555555554in" height="1.1875in"}

**Fiscal Year 2004 New Grants**

**Summary and Abstracts**

### INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION PROGRAMS SERVICE 

+-----------------------+-------------+---+------+------+------+------+
| Grant Number          |             |   | ##   |      |      |      |
|                       |             |   | #### |      |      |      |
|                       |             |   | ###  |      |      |      |
|                       |             |   | Gran |      |      |      |
|                       |             |   | t To |      |      |      |
|                       |             |   | tals |      |      |      |
+-----------------------+-------------+---+------+------+------+------+
| and Applicant         | Project     | # | FY   | FY   | FY   | T    |
| Information           | Title       |   | 04   | 05   | 06   | OTAL |
|                       |             | T |      |      |      |      |
|                       |             | y |      |      |      |      |
|                       |             | p |      |      |      |      |
|                       |             | e |      |      |      |      |
+-----------------------+-------------+---+------+------+------+------+
| P017A040004           | Materials   | I | \    | \    | \    | \    |
|                       | on East     | M | $126 | $165 | $163 | $456 |
| University of Hawaii  | Asia for    |   | ,834 | ,755 | ,732 | ,321 |
|                       | High        |   |      |      |      |      |
| 2530 Dole Street      | School:     |   |      |      |      |      |
|                       | China,      |   |      |      |      |      |
| Sakamaki D-200        | Japan and   |   |      |      |      |      |
|                       | Korea       |   |      |      |      |      |
| Honolulu, HI          | (K-12)      |   |      |      |      |      |
| 96822-2463            |             |   |      |      |      |      |
|                       |             |   |      |      |      |      |
| Linda K. Menton       |             |   |      |      |      |      |
+-----------------------+-------------+---+------+------+------+------+
| P017A040008           | Student     | I | \    | \    |      | \    |
|                       | Oral        | M | $131 | $127 |      | $259 |
| Center for Applied    | Proficiency |   | ,185 | ,931 |      | ,116 |
| Linguistics           | Assessment  |   |      |      |      |      |
|                       | (K-12)      |   |      |      |      |      |
| 4646 40th Street,     |             |   |      |      |      |      |
| N.W., 2nd Floor       |             |   |      |      |      |      |
|                       |             |   |      |      |      |      |
| Washington, DC        |             |   |      |      |      |      |
| 20016-1859            |             |   |      |      |      |      |
|                       |             |   |      |      |      |      |
| Lynn Thompson         |             |   |      |      |      |      |
+-----------------------+-------------+---+------+------+------+------+
| P017A040045           | The Aymara  | I | \    | \    | \    | \    |
|                       | Language    | M | $174 | $170 | $123 | $468 |
| University of Florida | E-learning  |   | ,898 | ,243 | ,241 | ,382 |
|                       | Project     |   |      |      |      |      |
| Research and Graduate |             |   |      |      |      |      |
| Programs              |             |   |      |      |      |      |
|                       |             |   |      |      |      |      |
| P.O. Box 115500, 219  |             |   |      |      |      |      |
| Grinter Hall          |             |   |      |      |      |      |
|                       |             |   |      |      |      |      |
| Gainesville, FL       |             |   |      |      |      |      |
| 32611- 5500           |             |   |      |      |      |      |
|                       |             |   |      |      |      |      |
| Elizabeth Lowe McCoy  |             |   |      |      |      |      |
+-----------------------+-------------+---+------+------+------+------+
| P017A040046           | Histories   | I | \    | \$92 | \$19 | \    |
|                       | of Central  | M | $111 | ,984 | ,296 | $224 |
| Social Science        | Asia:       |   | ,901 |      |      | ,181 |
| Research Council      | On-line     |   |      |      |      |      |
|                       | Teaching    |   |      |      |      |      |
| 810 7th Avenue, 31    | Resource    |   |      |      |      |      |
| Floor                 | Tool (TRT)  |   |      |      |      |      |
|                       |             |   |      |      |      |      |
| New York, NY 10019    |             |   |      |      |      |      |
|                       |             |   |      |      |      |      |
| Craig J. Calhoun      |             |   |      |      |      |      |
+-----------------------+-------------+---+------+------+------+------+
| P017A040050           | The         | I | \    | \    | \    | \    |
|                       | Uzbek       | M | $123 | $116 | $109 | $349 |
| Indiana University    | -English/En |   | ,092 | ,798 | ,278 | ,168 |
|                       | glish-Uzbek |   |      |      |      |      |
| P.O. Box 1847         | Dictionary  |   |      |      |      |      |
|                       |             |   |      |      |      |      |
| Bloomington, IN       |             |   |      |      |      |      |
| 47402-1847            |             |   |      |      |      |      |
|                       |             |   |      |      |      |      |
| John A. Erickson      |             |   |      |      |      |      |
+-----------------------+-------------+---+------+------+------+------+
| P017A040075           | An          | R | \$86 | \$83 | \$48 | \    |
|                       | evaluation  | E | ,622 | ,802 | ,463 | $218 |
| Social Science        | of Title VI |   |      |      |      | ,887 |
| Research Council      | Middle East |   |      |      |      |      |
|                       | Studies     |   |      |      |      |      |
| 810 7th Avenue, 31    | Centers     |   |      |      |      |      |
| Floor                 |             |   |      |      |      |      |
|                       |             |   |      |      |      |      |
| New York, NY 10019    |             |   |      |      |      |      |
|                       |             |   |      |      |      |      |
| Craig Calhoun         |             |   |      |      |      |      |
+-----------------------+-------------+---+------+------+------+------+
| P017A040087           | The         | R | \    | \    | \    | \    |
|                       | Glastonbury | E | $152 | $160 | $160 | $472 |
| Glastonbury Public    | Assessment  |   | ,259 | ,215 | ,464 | ,938 |
| Schools               | Initiative  |   |      |      |      |      |
|                       | (K-12)      |   |      |      |      |      |
| 232 Williams Street   |             |   |      |      |      |      |
|                       |             |   |      |      |      |      |
| P.O. Box 191          |             |   |      |      |      |      |
|                       |             |   |      |      |      |      |
| Glastonbury, CT       |             |   |      |      |      |      |
| 01057-0191            |             |   |      |      |      |      |
|                       |             |   |      |      |      |      |
| Christine L. Brown    |             |   |      |      |      |      |
+-----------------------+-------------+---+------+------+------+------+
| P017A040090           | On-line     | I | \    | \    | \    | \    |
|                       | Diagnostic  | M | $267 | $293 | $295 | $855 |
| San Diego State       | Tests and   |   | ,228 | ,203 | ,498 | ,929 |
| University            | Course      |   |      |      |      |      |
|                       | Materials   |   |      |      |      |      |
| 5250 Campanille Drive | for         |   |      |      |      |      |
|                       | Dialects of |   |      |      |      |      |
| San Diego, CA         | Arabic,     |   |      |      |      |      |
| 92183-1931            | Chinese and |   |      |      |      |      |
|                       | Persian     |   |      |      |      |      |
| Roberts A. Clive      |             |   |      |      |      |      |
+-----------------------+-------------+---+------+------+------+------+

##  P017A040004

## University Hawaii 

2530 Dole St.

Honolulu, HI 96822-1847

# ABSTRACT

This proposal requests funds for three years to help defray costs for
the design, development, and evaluation of a thematically organized text
for secondary students about East Asia. The curriculum package we are
proposing will consist of a student book, a teacher's manual, and a
compact disc with supplementary materials such as short stories,
literary excerpts, poems, maps, art works and photos.

We believe these instructional materials will help students better
understand the historical connections among the countries and cultures
of East Asia, specifically the countries of China (including Hong Kong);
Taiwan; Japan; and North and South Korea, more properly called the
Republic of Korea and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea
respectively.

We are requesting \$490,463 for this project over three years. Funds
totaling \$343,641 are requested to defray the salaries and fringe
benefits of two FTE area specialists or curriculum developers; an
evaluator in each of the three years, and a graduate assistant evaluator
at .25 FTE in years two and three; and a photo researcher or copyright
researcher at .25 in years two and three. We are requesting a total of
\$12,000 for payment of copyright fees in years two and three; \$1,000
for reference materials; and \$1,200 to pay a small honorarium to our
scholarly readers.

Our organization, the Curriculum Research & Development Group, has an
enviable track record in its efforts to create historically accurate and
pedagogically sound curriculum materials on the history and cultures of
Asia. Our two publications, *China:* *Understanding Its Past,* and *The
Rise of Modern Japan* both won national awards, from the American
Historical Association and the Association for Asian Studies
respectively. We believe these books, in a series of four, dealing with
China, Japan, East Asia, and Southeast Asia, will significantly affect
how world history, Asian history, and area studies are taught in
American schools.

P017A040008

Center for Applied Linguistics

646 40th St. N.W.

#### Washington, DC 20016

# 

The number of foreign language programs in elementary and middle schools
in the United States has increased substantially in the last two
decades. As a result, a growing number of teachers need tools for
evaluating students' foreign language oral proficiency, and training in
the use of those tools. To meet this need, in 1991, the Center for
Applied Linguistics (CAL) developed the Student Oral Proficiency
Assessment (SOPA). SOPA is now the most widely used speaking and
listening test for children studying foreign languages in the United
States. CAL staff has conducted SOPA familiarization workshops regularly
over the past 10 years, but can no longer meet the demand for these
workshops with the limited SOPA-trained personnel available.

In response, CAL proposes a two-year project to develop and deliver a
Web-based SOPA course that will allow larger numbers of K--8 foreign
language educators to access the training, thus complementing other such
courses that are geared towards secondary and postsecondary educators.
The Web-based SOPA course will be developed in conjunction with Iowa
State University (ISU) and will provide familiarization with SOPA
interviewing and rating procedures. Participants will learn how to
assess students' oral language proficiency and listening compre-hension
skills based on nationally recognized rubrics that were developed by the
American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL). At the
end of the two-year project, CAL and ISU will have developed and
implemented a two-part Web-based training course:

-   The first part, in English, will be designed for teachers of all
    languages, and is to be used for general familiarization with the
    principles and methods of SOPA assessment,

-   The second part, with sample practice interviews in English, French,
    German, Japanese, and Spanish to further clarify the rating process,
    will address the needs of teachers of those languages and will
    provide a template for development of similar training in other
    languages.

    The proposed project will result in several outcomes:

-   SOPA training will be available to a greater number of teachers than
    is possible with live workshops;

-   K-8 teachers will have improved ability to assess students' oral
    proficiency;

-   Foreign language instruction will be enhanced by an understanding of
    the assessment of speaking fluency and listening comprehension; and

-   Teachers who have completed live SOPA training will have
    opportunities to refine their assessment skills through this course.

The SOPA training course, designed for teachers in all types of K--8
foreign language programs, will be field-tested with pre-service
teachers at ISU and in-service teachers at selected sites. Project staff
and field-test teachers will collaborate to ensure that the model meets
high standards of professional development.

Although Web-based training on oral proficiency assessment is already
being developed for high school teachers and college professors, it is
not currently available for K--8 teachers. Due to scarce resources in
many districts, live assessment training is often unavailable. Using the
Internet to provide this training course will strengthen our national
foreign language resources for elementary and middle school program.

P017A040045

University of Florida

P.O. Box 115500

Gainesville, FL 32611-5500

Aymara is the indigenous language spoken by some 3 million people in the
Andes of Bolivia, Peru and Chile. In the United States today, the Aymara
language is taught regularly only at the University of Chicago and
sporadically at just two or three other institutions. The general
purpose of the proposed project is to develop a high-quality
instructional program for this least-commonly-taught language that is
tailored to the needs of different audiences and easily accessed by
users worldwide.

The specific objectives are to: (1) develop and deliver an online,
self-guided Aymara language learning program that can be accessed free
of charge via the World Wide Web; (2) develop a self-contained learning
module and dissemination tool in CD-Rom format to introduce Aymara
language and culture in university-level classes in anthropology,
linguistics and related fields; and (3) develop an object database
capable of tailoring the content of the learning program to audiences
with different interests and to individuals with varying degrees of
language competency.

The Web-based instructional package represents the equivalent of a
four-semester, university level language-learning track. Users will have
free access via the Web to accompanying cultural notes, language
exercises, and self-administered tests. The unique tri-lingual feature
of the learning module and object database will allow the materials to
be delivered in Aymara, English, and Spanish, thereby permitting direct
access by users with no English proficiency.

The self-administered Web-based program, the CD-Rom and database will be
derived from the products of forty years of linguistic teaching and
research by Dr. M. J. Hardman, the world's foremost Aymara linguist, and
her colleagues and students. The project builds on a previous Title VI
program at the University of Florida from 1969-1990 that funded the
development of classroom-based Aymara teaching materials. The proposed
project updates the existing materials and converts them to a
contemporary, electronic-delivery format to achieve maximum flexibility
and accessibility.

The target audience for the program will be graduate students and
faculty members whose research projects in the Andes require knowledge
of Aymara, professional linguists interested in Andean languages,
university students of linguistics and indigenous languages of the Andes
region, as well as practitioners in the public and private sector in
need of varying levels of Aymara competency.

Social Science Research Council

810 7th Ave., 31 Floor

New York, NY 10019

Central Asia is home to five successor states of the former Soviet
Union, and it is currently, as it has been historically, a central focus
of geopolitics. In spite of the urgent need for learning and expertise
on the region, only a handful of scholars and teachers possess an
intimate knowledge of Central Asia, and only rarely does the university
curriculum allow them to share their expertise with students. The
creation of three teaching supplements on Central Asia, through the
teaching resource tool (TRT): Histories of Central Asia project,
addresses the current needs of higher education in the United States.
The project will provide university teachers with essential materials
that may easily be added to their existing lesson plans and course
syllabi. Complimentary historiographic and bibliographic tools will
allow teachers to further tailor materials to their existing courses,
while also providing students with a basis from which to expand their
own knowledge of the region through research and additional readings.
The ease of electronic access will allow the TRT to reach a large
audience and begin to affect change swiftly.

In the long-term, the introduction of course materials on Central Asia
into existing lectures and discussions will foster knowledge of and
growing interest in Central Asia among today's students and young
scholars. The design of the course supplements is specifically tailored
to account for the limitations inherent in university-wide curricula.
While it may remain difficult to offer annual courses on Central Asia
and the many related themes that arise from a study of the region, it is
possible to offer students an introduction to the region within the
existing academic structures and to provide students and teachers alike
with the tools with which to pursue greater study of Central Asia on
their own. This, in turn, will significantly benefit the American
educational system and improve area studies programs in an efficient,
manageable way.

Not only will TRT provide a needed pedagogical tool for university
teachers, but the intellectual foundation of that tool will prove
significant as well. Most bibliographies, historiographies and histories
of Central Asia provide only one version of the region, some in greater
breadth, others in greater detail. This project will rely upon research
and expertise from both Russian/Eurasian and Middle Eastern area studies
experts as well as scholars who focus specifically on Central Eurasia
and/or related project themes. Sources in all relevant languages,
whether Russian, Arabic, Kazakh, Uzbek, German or English, will be
referenced, and the most relevant sources will be included in the
bibliographic materials.

# 

Indiana University

P.O. Box 1847

Bloomington, IN 47402

This proposal seeks support for a three-year project to produce a
comprehensive Uzbek-English/English-Uzbek dictionary that will enable
English-speaking students to reach advanced levels of proficiency in
Uzbek much faster than is currently possible with the dictionaries now
available.

The recent war against terrorism in Afghanistan has highlighted the
importance of Uzbekistan as a reliable, politically stable ally and
especially the important place that the Uzbek language now holds for the
interests of national security and the maintenance of regional stability
in Central Asia, where the United States has maintained a growing
political and military presence over the past two and a half years. With
a total of about 24.5 million Uzbek speakers, including roughly 20
million in Uzbekistan proper and 4.5 million in the surrounding
countries of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmen­istan, and
Afghanistan, the need for numerous American experts proficient in the
Uzbek language has increased dramatically, while adequate dictionaries
urgently needed to train such experts have remained unavailable. This
project aims to remedy this situation with the develop­ment of a new
comprehensive Uzbek-English/English-Uzbek dictionary that can be used to
train members of the United States foreign service and military, as well
as members of non-government organi­zations, aid workers, and
business­men, who work throughout this important region, enabling them to
reach advanced levels of proficiency in Uzbek much faster than is
currently possible with the resources now available. The dictionary will
also help to train Uzbeks to become proficient in English, thus serving
to promote mutual understanding between Uzbeks and Americans.

The dictionary proposed in this project will contain at least 40,000
headwords in each of its Uzbek-English and English-Uzbek parts, making
it the most comprehensive and useful Uzbek dictionary designed for
English speakers to date. It will be based on a preliminary
Uzbek-English dictionary of similar size, compiled primarily from
Uzbek-Russian and Uzbek-Uzbek dictionaries published in the former
Soviet Union, and used by students at the U.S. government's Medina Joint
Language Center in San Antonio, Texas. The latter dictionary will be
updated and expanded by a team of American and Uzbek linguists,
lexicographers, and language instructors to include new lexicon and
expressions that have come into existence since the late 1980s, as well
as helpful information on gram­matical usage, additional illustrative
ex­amples, and photographs of cultural objects that are difficult to
explain in English translation. The dictionaries produced in this
project will be compiled with an NSF-funded multimedia database system,
called the "Indiana Dictionary Database," whose custom-design in
Microsoft Visual FoxPro will allow for easy, cost-effective conversion
between Uzbek-English and English-Uzbek dictionary formats.

Finally, because of the urgent need for new Uzbek dictionaries at this
time, the two dictionaries produced by this project will be made
available as needed for immediate use in the classrooms of Uzbek
language programs throughout the United States, and especially in the
three course levels of Uzbek taught at Indiana University and in those
courses offered at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where they will
be extensively pretested for possible revisions before eventual
publication in both book and searchable CD-ROM format.

Social Science Research Council (SSRC)

810 7th Ave., 31 Floor

New York, NY 10019

This project has three main objectives:

-   To evaluate the current performance of Middle East Studies Centers
    in comparison with other area studies centers in terms of meeting
    national needs for intercultural competence and international
    education by using data available from the Evaluation of Exchange,
    Language, International, and Area Studies (EELIAS), the Middle East
    Studies Association (MESA) database and pilot surveys conducted by
    the SSRC in 2001-02 and 2002-03.

-   To evaluate the performance of Middle East Studies Centers in terms
    of one of the central purposes of area studies programs, namely
    achieving balance in disciplinary representation on U.S. campuses
    and enabling the interdisciplinary production of knowledge on the
    Middle East. The focus on the project will be on the strength of the
    crucial social science disciplines of economics, political science
    and sociology in Middle East studies.

-   To produce analytical essays, educational policy briefs and project
    reports and to disseminate them by print and Web-based media to aid
    a variety of actors and agencies in programmatic planning in the
    area of Middle East studies.

The project will be guided by a steering committee of three prominent
social scientists. SSRC staff and a project consultant will conduct
secondary analysis of available data and gather new quantitative and
qualitative primary data. Analysis, report preparation and Web-based
dissemination will involve all participants as well as outside
evaluators.

The project will evaluate the role that Title VI centers play, and
potentially could enhance, in meeting the demands placed on the field of
Middle East Studies in the United States. The project starts from a
premise that these centers currently face two important challenges: (1)
the academic challenge to area studies emerging out of the Post-Cold War
context with its emphasis on globalization and de-emphasis of local and
linguistic knowledge, and (2) the public challenge arising in the
aftermath of 9/11 and the war on terror which has increased the workload
of these centers in terms of student demand and public outreach as well
as created a sense of heightened responsibility and accountability. The
project will evaluate how these dynamics have affected the international
capacity of the centers in terms of their networks and access to
overseas resources, and hence their ability to provide in-depth training
leading to intercultural competence. Secondly, the project will assess
how the centers are dealing with, and countering, the declining presence
of the crucial social science disciplines of economics, political
science and sociology in the field of Middle East studies.

In light of these shifting contexts, the call by the Department of
Education for proposals to conduct evaluations of Title VI programs is
particularly important and timely regarding the centers, which
specialize in the Middle East region. The Social Science Research
Council is particularly well placed to conduct this study since it is an
inter-university institution with strong links to academic communities,
previous experience in conducting evaluations; yet is not a beneficiary
or potential beneficiary of the funding programs under evaluation.

P017A040090

San Diego State University

5250 Campanille Dr.

San Diego, CA 92183-1931

We propose to create, and publish online materials (diagnostic language
tests and authentic texts and media) for Modern Standard Arabic (MSA)
Arabic, Arabic (Iraqi and Egyptian Dialects), Intermediate and Advanced
Persian, and Advanced Chinese courses. This proposal builds on an
existing funded project to create diagnostic speaking tests, to be
administered online from any networked computer, and on the Digital
Media Archive developed at the National Language Acquisition Research
Center (LARC). The structures for both the test and the media archive
are in place, as a result of a previous funded project, in collaboration
with a consortium of five institutions (the American Council on the
Teaching of Foreign Languages, Brigham Young University, the Center for
Applied Linguistics, the Defense Language Institute, and San Diego State
University).

In this proposal, we will populate the test and media databases with
online digital materials, particularly designed to supplement
interactive, in situ, and eventually, online courses for advanced
language learners, including translation and interpreting. In so doing,
we will add content-rich diagnostic and sustainment and enhancement
materials available online for use across the nation in several critical
languages, at levels that are needed but rarely found elsewhere. Within
the United States, only two institutions of higher education are working
with Iraqi dialect, and materials are not readily available,
particularly in higher education institutions teaching at the high
levels of Arabic and Persian. A slightly different situation exists for
Chinese.  Although Chinese materials have populated the Internet, there
is a lack of systematic course materials at very high proficiency levels
nationwide. Very few online materials exist for translating and
interpreting.

Teams of test item writers and materials developers will produce
materials in each language, focusing on Arabic (Iraqi and Egyptian
dialect), Modern Standard Arabic, and Persian/Farsi, and
Chinese/Mandarin, as well as interpreting skills.

The combination of diagnostic and teaching materials will greatly assist
others in the nation attempting to teach or learn these critical
languages at these high levels of proficiency. Materials will be field
tested by Title VI Centers, to assist us in producing online resources
in languages critically important to the constellation of intelligence,
military, medical, and political issues which confront the nation today.