***FY 2002 -- 2005***

***Grantee Profiles***

**[Language Resource Centers]{.smallcaps}**

CFDA No. 84.229A

![](media/image1.wmf){width="2.9569444444444444in"
height="2.9569444444444444in"}

LRC Program Contact:

####### Ed McDermott

International Education Programs Service

U.S. Department of Education

Washington, DC 20202

Phone: (202) 502-7636

Fax: (202) 502-7859

E-mail: <ed.mcdermott@ed.gov>

**LANGUAGE RESOURCE CENTER (84.229)**

**FY 2002-2005 GRANTEE PROFILES**

[Center for Advanced Language Proficiency Education and Research
(CALPER) 1](#__RefHeading___Toc94767007)

[Center for Applied Second Language Studies (CASLS)
8](#__RefHeading___Toc94767008)

[Center for Language Education and Research (CLEAR)
11](#__RefHeading___Toc94767009)

[Center for the Languages of the Central Asia Region (CELCAR)
15](#__RefHeading___Toc94767010)

[Language Acquisition Resource Center (LARC)
17](#__RefHeading___Toc94767011)

[National African Language Resource Center (NALRC)
20](#__RefHeading___Toc94767012)

[The National Capital Language Resource Center (NCLRC)
22](#__RefHeading___Toc94767013)

[National East Asian Languages Resource Center (NEALRC)
25](#__RefHeading___Toc94767014)

[National Foreign Language Resource Center (NFLRC)
29](#__RefHeading___Toc94767015)

[National Middle East Language Resource Center (NMELRC)
36](#__RefHeading___Toc94767016)

[Slavic and East European Language Resource Center (SEELRC)
38](#__RefHeading___Toc94767017)

[South Asia Language Resource Center (SALRC)
41](#__RefHeading___Toc94767018)

[]{#__RefHeading___Toc94767007 .anchor}Center for Advanced Language
Proficiency Education and Research (CALPER)

The Pennsylvania State University\
5 Sparks Building\
University Park, PA 16802-5203\
Phone: 814-863-1212

Fax: 814-865-1316

Email: <calper@psu.edu>

<http://calper.la.psu.edu/>

[Focus:]{.underline} Develop materials and practices and afford
professional development opportunities that promote and strengthen
advanced levels of foreign language proficiency

[Key Academic staff]{.underline}: \[in alphabetical order\]

**Gabriela Appel** L2 vocabulary and reading; corpus linguistics; FL
methodology; SLA

**Karen E. Johnson** teacher cognition; classroom discourse; FL
methodology

**Celeste Kinginger** study abroad; telecollaboration; FL methodology;
SLA

**James P. Lantolf** sociocultural theory; dynamic assessment; concept
learning; SLA

**Michael McCarthy** corpus linguistics; discourse analysis; L2
vocabulary

**Junko Mori** grammar and social interaction; discourse analysis; SLA

**Aneta Pavlenko** bilingualism; concept learning; language and gender;
SLA

**J. Scott Payne** technologies and FL education; psycholinguistics

**Elana Shohamy** language testing and assessment; language policy; SLA

**Susan Strauss** grammar and social interaction; discourse analysis; L2
writing

**Steven Thorne** technologies and FL education; sociocultural theory;
SLA

[Major Research / Curricular Projects in Progress]{.underline}:

**(1) Learner Corpora**

*[Goals:]{.underline}* Based on the growing influence of using computers
to analyze language data, this project is concerned with the
construction of language corpora of advanced learners. Its goal is to
develop (and modify existing) analytic tools (developed by corpus
linguistics) and use them in the service of profiling advanced language
learning over time. In addition, this project will develop an online
corpus tutorial and a web-based Corpus resource bank.

*[Data Sources]{.underline}:* (a) systematic collection of written and
spoken learner data in a variety of languages; (b) published research

*[Desired Impact]{.underline}:* Professional Development; Learner
Language Database for FL Educators and SLA Researchers

**(2) Assessment**

*[Goal:]{.underline}* This project views assessment of the advanced
learner from multiple perspectives in terms of assessment methods and
language modalities as well as criteria for judging language quality.
Specifically, it incorporates performance and content-based assessments
for diverse language functions, settings and groups. Prototypes of such
model tasks will be presented online to be used for classroom and
external assessment purposes.

*[Data Sources:]{.underline}* (a) National survey on "Practices of
Assessing Advanced Language Proficiency" (to be conducted); (b) teacher
contributed and CALPER generated model performance tasks.

*[Desired Impact:]{.underline}* Professional Development; Assessment
Materials Bank

**(3) Teaching Chinese with Authentic Materials**

*[Goals:]{.underline}* Developing a practical guide to selected features
of natural spoken Mandarin Chinese, which will provide activities to
teach discourse and interactive aspects of the spoken language.

*[Data Sources:]{.underline}* CALPER collected native-speaker and
advanced learner corpus of natural spoken Mandarin Chinese from a
variety of situations (prepared talks; interview; conversations etc.);
data are video-recorded and transcribed.

*[Desired Impact:]{.underline}* Student Workbook and Teacher Handbook
for Discourse-focused Materials

**(4) Learning through Listening in Advanced Japanese**

[Goals:]{.underline} Developing materials that enhance listening
comprehension of advanced learners in theme-based instruction. Designed
to help learners understand contents and linguistic features of the
spoken language.

*[Data Sources:]{.underline}* CALPER collected native-speaker and
advanced learner natural spoken Japanese from a variety of situations
(interviews; discussions; conversations); data are video-recorded and
transcribed.

*[Desired Impact:]{.underline}* Web-based Materials Bank with Teacher
Handbook

**(5) A Discourse-Pragmatic Approach to Advanced Korean**

*[Goals]{.underline}*: Developing materials, including a
discourse-pragmatic reference grammar, based on spoken and written
Korean. Features treated are: multiple ways of expressing "when" and
"because," speech level alternations, cognitive change of state tokens,
isolated tokens of the auxiliary verb system, and tense and aspect.

*[Data Sources]{.underline}:* CALPER collected native speaker corpus of
natural spoken Korean from narratives and conversations, in addition to
Korean television scripts; data are video- and tape-recorded and
transcribed.

*[Desired Impact]{.underline}:* Student and Teacher Workbook for
Discourse-focused Materials

**(6) Narrative and Conceptual Proficiency in Advanced Russian**

*[Goals]{.underline}:* Developing materials for advanced learners
focusing on conceptual fluency and narrative competence, based on
comparative analyses of spoken language data from narratives and
interviews.

*[Data Sources]{.underline}:* CALPER collected native-speaker and
advanced learner data of natural spoken Russian from narratives and
interview situations; data are tape-recorded and transcribed.

*[Desired Impact]{.underline}:* Student and Teacher Workbook for
Discourse-focused Materials

**(7) Project Work in Foreign Language Education**

*[Goals]{.underline}:* Curricular initiative connecting content and
language instruction and understanding situated written language use and
pedagogies. Developing a Web-based tutorial to guide implementation of
project work in intermediate-advanced language courses. An accompanying
handbook will explain and demonstrate how project work can be planned,
carried out and assessed and showcase teachers' narratives of their
experiences with project work.

*[Methodology]{.underline}:* (a) Teacher Narratives. CALPER is
conducting interviews with experienced teachers and collects
teacher-submitted project descriptions; (b) teaching projects and
professional development publications; and (c) CALPER developed project
materials in FL.

*[Desired Impact]{.underline}:* Professional development

**(8) Study Abroad**

*[Goals]{.underline}:* Enhance understanding of study abroad experience
in terms of language development and its relationship to the
interactional affordances made available by the host community.
Constructing a set of guidelines for incorporating language awareness,
and understanding of language learning in social context, into language
courses, orientation seminars, and debriefing workshops that connect to
the study abroad experience.

*[Data Sources]{.underline}:* Qualitative and quantitative investigation
of learners as they study abroad (interviews, journals and formal
proficiency tests).

*[Desired Impact]{.underline}:* Language programs and international
offices at universities

**(9) Technologies**

*[Goals]{.underline}:* The materials and workshops developed concern the
implementation of technologies for communication and creative expression
in support of the development of advanced FL proficiency. They outline
activities that utilize Internet communication and multimedia production
tools to encourage linguistic, cultural, pragmatic, interpersonal, and
self-reflective communicative activity.

*[Data Sources]{.underline}:* Language data from learners using
technologies; published research.

*[Desired Impact]{.underline}:* Professional development

**(10) Concept-Based Grammar Teaching (CBGT)**

*[Goals:]{.underline}* To promote a conceptually based pedagogy for
teaching advanced grammar. It advocates that explicit knowledge of
grammar is essential to classroom language learning but that this
knowledge must be based on a coherent and systematic understanding of
the "meaning" that underlies grammar rather than on a "rules-of-thumb"
approach that provides learners with vague guidelines for using L2
grammatical features. It will produce a teaching guide for implementing
concept-based foreign language teaching.

*[Methodology]{.underline}:* Teachers guide for implementing CBGT in the
classroom setting is under development. It will include a conceptual
discussion of CBGT as well as data from a study, which used the approach
to teach advanced Spanish grammar.

*[Desired Impact]{.underline}:* Professional development

**(11) Dynamic Assessment of L2 Development**

*[Goals]{.underline}:* Developing a teaching guide for implementing
dynamic assessment procedures in foreign language programs. Dynamic
Assessment (DA) is based on Vygotsky's notion of the *Zone of Proximal
Development* and as such proposes that effective assessment must promote
learner development.

*[Methodology]{.underline}:* Teachers guide for implementing DA in the
classroom setting. It will focus on both formal testing as well as
formative assessment practices and will include data from a study on the
implementation of DA in an advanced level French class.

*[Desired Impact]{.underline}:* Professional development

**Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition (CARLA)**

University of Minnesota

619 Heller Hall\
271 -- 19th Avenue South\
Minneapolis, Minnesota 55455

Telephone: 612-626-8600\
Fax: 612-624-7514\
Email: [carla@umn.edu](mailto:carla@tc.umn.edu)

[**http://www.carla.umn.edu/**](http://www.carla.umn.edu/)

The Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition (CARLA) houses
one of fourteen National Language Resource Centers in the country thats
role is to improve the nation\'s capacity to teach and learn foreign
languages effectively. Launched in 1993 with funding from the U.S.
Department of Education, CARLA supports a number of coordinated programs
of training, development, and dissemination of information related to
second language learning, teaching, and assessment.

CARLA\'s action initiatives during the past eleven years have focused
on: *articulation of language instruction; content-based language
teaching through technology; culture and language learning; less
commonly taught languages (LCTLs); immersion research and education;
second language assessment; strategies for maximizing study abroad;
styles-and strategies-based instruction; and technology and second
language learning*.

CARLA's current LRC-funded initiatives are listed below.

+---------------------------+-------------------------------------------+
| **Key academic staff and  | **Research Interests\***                  |
| role within CARLA**       |                                           |
+---------------------------+-------------------------------------------+
| Asst. Prof. Martha        | Noticing and second language acquisition  |
| Bigelow                   | and the impact of literacy on second      |
|                           | language acquisition                      |
| *Language Teacher         |                                           |
| Education Conference      |                                           |
| Chair*                    |                                           |
+---------------------------+-------------------------------------------+
| Professor Andrew D. Cohen | Bilingual and immersion education,        |
|                           | language assessment, applied linguistic   |
| ## LRC Director           | research methods, speech acts and         |
| and Coordinator of the Pr | pragmatics, language learning strategies  |
| agmatics Research Project |                                           |
+---------------------------+-------------------------------------------+
| Dr. Tara Fortune          | Immersion education, content-based        |
|                           | language instruction, and teacher         |
| ## Coordina               | development                               |
| tor of Immersion Projects |                                           |
+---------------------------+-------------------------------------------+
| Dr. Deniz Gökçora         | Assessment, culture and language          |
|                           | instruction, second language pedagogy     |
| ## Coordinat              |                                           |
| or of Assessment Projects |                                           |
+---------------------------+-------------------------------------------+
| Dr. Louis Janus           | LCTL material development, electronic     |
|                           | dictionary development, technology and    |
| *Coordinator of the Less  | language instruction                      |
| Commonly Taught Languages |                                           |
| Project*                  |                                           |
+---------------------------+-------------------------------------------+
| Professor Elaine Tarone   | Impact of social context on learner       |
|                           | language, learners\' interactions in      |
| ## CARLA Director         | immersion classrooms, impact of literacy  |
|                           | on second language acquisition, genre     |
|                           | analysis.                                 |
+---------------------------+-------------------------------------------+
| Assoc. Prof. Diane J.     | Immersion education, content-based        |
| Tedick                    | language instruction, and teacher         |
|                           | development                               |
| *Coordinator of the       |                                           |
| CoBaLTT Project and       |                                           |
| Faculty Coordinator of    |                                           |
| Immersion Projects*       |                                           |
+---------------------------+-------------------------------------------+

\*Includes research interests within CARLA and beyond.

**Current LRC-funded Initiatives *(2002-2006)***

**Content-Based Language Teaching Through Technology (CoBaLTT)**

The goal of the CoBaLTT initiative is to create a professional
development program and a Web‑based resource center for language
teachers that provide instruction and practical tools for incorporating
content‑based language instruction into the classroom using technology.

Since it began in 1999, CoBaLTT has provided instruction to over 120
teachers in an intensive professional development program that helped
language teachers create content-based lessons and units using
technology to enhance students' language proficiency and content
or cultural knowledge. The project involved five separate cohorts, each
of which worked together over a full year under the direction of project
leader Diane Tedick and Marlene Johnshoy, coordinator of the technology
side of the program. Last summer for the first time CoBaLTT was offered
to a national audience as part of the CARLA summer institute program and
this coming summer a special institute for language teacher educators
will be offered June 6--9, 2005 in connection with the Language Teacher
Education conference. The specific topics of the program include the
principles of content-based instruction, curriculum development for CBI,
CBI teaching strategies, technology to support CBI, national foreign
language standards, and performance-based assessment. A series of
interactive, instructional modules developed alongside the face-to-face
component of the program are currently being finalized and refined so
they can be used as stand-alone modules for anytime, anywhere teacher
development.

In addition to the online instructional modules, the CoBaLTT Web
Resource Center houses all the content-based lesson plans and units
developed by project participants in a variety of languages and levels
that teachers can download and use in their own language classrooms. The
site also offers graphic organizer templates, technology tutorials and
ideas, rubrics and checklists, and more helpful tools for use in
classroom teaching.

**Second Language Assessment Project**

The goal of the Second Language Assessment Project is to expand on the
current test development resources available through CARLA's Virtual
Assessment Center to meet a growing need for a wide range of assessment
resources for language teachers for use in the classroom.

Expansion of the Virtual Assessment has focused on the 1) creation of a
Web-based database of language assessment development models that
teachers can use as templates to develop proficiency or
performance-based assessments for classroom use, and the 2) development
of the Virtual Item Bank with samples and practical items to serve as
models and resources for teachers as they develop their own classroom
assessments using the templates. The samples are in English so that all
language teachers will be able to use them and strategically placed
samples for less commonly taught languages are also included.

Additionally, the CARLA Assessment Team has created and implemented
summer institutes specifically for teachers of less commonly taught
languages to learn how to develop proficiency oriented items using the
resources of the Virtual Assessment Center and the Virtual Assessment
Bank and continue to provide an annual summer institute available to all
language teachers on developing assessments for the second language
classroom. During this cycle, 218 language teachers from around the
country have participated in these professional development
opportunities.

**Less Commonly Taught Languages Project**

The overarching goals of the Less Commonly Taught Languages Project are
to help advance the teaching and learning of LCTLs by 1) encouraging
people to study LCTLs, 2) assisting LCTL teachers in developing
high-quality teaching material, and 3) helping LCTL teachers cooperate
and communicate.

To meet these goals the LCTL project has focused on several initiatives.
The development of much needed materials has been fostered through the
highly successful mini-grant program that results in the submission of
high-quality sharable material for less commonly taught languages. In
addition, Coordinator Louis Janus and Bill Johnston of Indiana
University have collaborated on the creation of a book and CD ROM
combination on material development that will be released at the end of
this academic year. The project has also continued its work of offering
professional development through its popular yearly summer institute for
LCTL teachers in which 96 LCTL instructors from around the country have
participated. Finally the project has continued its work on increasing
communications among LCTL teachers and programs through its expansion
and ongoing maintenance of databases of where LCTLs are taught, a host
of LCTL listservs, and an extensive Web site of resources for LCTL
teachers.

**Immersion Education**

The goals of this initiative are to: 1) expand the membership of the
American Council on Immersion Education, an organizational network for
individuals interested in immersion education (teachers, administrators,
teacher educators, researchers, parents); 2) coordinate the publication
of the ACIE Newsletter three times each year; 3) collaborate with the
CoBaLTT Project staff to target an audience of immersion teachers for
one of the CoBaLTT professional development cohorts; and 4) host an
international conference on immersion education.

The American Council on Immersion Education (ACIE) has grown during the
current funding cycle and currently includes 25 institutions across the
country and over 200 individuals. The ACIE Newsletter, which goes to
press three times during each academic year, continues to be one of the
best sources of information for immersion educators. CARLA houses a
growing archive of ACIE articles and a section entitled "The Bridge"
that highlights what has been learned from research and how this
knowledge can be applied in the classroom. A cohort of immersion
teachers was recruited for the 2003-04 CoBaLTT professional development
cycle and the content-based materials developed by the participating
teachers are in the process of being finalized for inclusion in the
CoBaLTT Web Resource Center. *Pathways to Bilingualism: Evolving
Perspectives on Immersion Education* was held in Minneapolis on October
21-23, 2004 and focused on those involved with educational programs
focused on the concept of additive bilingualism. The conference brought
together over 330 immersion teachers and researchers from a variety of
instructional contexts to initiate and sustain meaningful dialogue and
share new knowledge across languages, levels, program models and
sociopolitical contexts. The themes of the conference were Program
Design and Development, Assessment and Program Evaluation, Language
Development and Immersion Pedagogy, and Policy and Advocacy.

**Strategies in Learning Pragmatics Research Project**

The goal of this unique research projects is to determine the impact of
specialized speech act training materials on non-natives' ability to
learn and use pragmatic information more successfully when speaking a
foreign language.

The research project began with the design of strategies-based
instructional materials for enhancing the learning and effective use of
Japanese speech. The Web-based materials were field-tested and were
found to be user-friendly and exciting for students. Using these
materials, the research team conducted an experiment to determine the
effects of training second language speakers to learn and use speech
acts more successfully. The research targeted learners of Japanese
during the academic year 2003-04 and the results of the research are
posted on the CARLA website at:
[www.carla.umn.edu/speechacts/research.html](http://www.carla.umn.edu/speechacts/research.html).
The study will be replicated with learners of Spanish in 2005-06 after
new materials are created for learning speech in Spanish.

**Language Teacher Education Conference**

The goal of this conference is to address the education of teachers of
all languages, at all instructional and institutional levels, and in all
the many national and international contexts in which this takes place
to discuss and share research, theory, and best practices and to
initiate and sustain meaningful professional dialogue across languages,
levels, and settings.

Two hundred and fifty researchers and educators attended the third
biennial International Conference on Language Teacher Education
sponsored by CARLA in May 2003. *Voice and Vision in Language Teacher
Education: Fourth International Conference* will be held in Minneapolis
from June 2-4, 2005. Featured speakers include Marilyn Cochran-Smith
(Boston College) as the keynote speaker, Heidi Byrnes (Georgetown
University), B. Kumaravadivelu (San Jose State University), and
Catherine Snow (Harvard University). The conference planning committee
expect between 250 and 300 participants for this conference.

[]{#__RefHeading___Toc94767008 .anchor}Center for Applied Second
Language Studies (CASLS)

####### University of Oregon

1600 Millrace Drive, Suite 350\
Eugene, OR 97403

Phone: 541-346-5699

Fax: 541-346-0322

E-mail:  [info@darkwing.uoregon.edu](mailto:info@darking.uoregon.edu)

<http://casls.uoregon.edu/>

Focus

The Center for Applied Second Language Studies (CASLS) focuses on
working with communities of world language teachers to provide
assessment, curriculum, and professional development support.

# Key Academic Staff

Robert Davis, Academic Assistant -- Spanish, content-based curriculum,
assessment

Carl Falsgraf, Director -- Japanese linguistics, second language
education, applied linguistics

Greg Hopper-Moore, Research and Development Director -- French,
curriculum development, technology

Joana Jansen, Graduate Teaching Fellow -- linguistics, professional
development

Sachiko Kamioka -- Japanese pedagogy, curriculum tool and materials
development, articulation and oral assessment projects

# Major research and curricular projects

# I. Standards-Based Measurement of Proficiency (STAMP)

**Project Goals**

The Standards-based Measurement of Proficiency (STAMP) is an online
reading and writing assessment tool. STAMP addresses the need for an
affordable and accessible proficiency assessment. STAMP is a
criterion-referenced test based on a set of benchmarked standards
consistent with ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines. Using Computer Adaptive
Testing (CAT) technology, STAMP identifies students' levels from
Novice-Low to Intermediate-Mid. CAT technology makes it possible to
present individual, customized tests at students' level of competency,
reducing test time and students' frustration when forced to answer items
beyond or below their proficiency level.

STAMP requires no special software or hardware. In addition, no teacher
grading or special training is required, making STAMP both cost
effective and easy to administer. STAMP measures interpretative (reading
and listening) and presentational (speaking and writing) proficiency.

French, German, Hebrew, Japanese, Spanish, and Turkish versions of STAMP
are now being used by schools around the country to evaluate language
programs, place students, and provide accountability data. A Chinese
STAMP is currently under development.

**Key methodologies and data sources**

STAMP item writers have extensive classroom experience as well as
familiarity with the content, text types, and functions that students
must master to be proficient at each benchmark level. Various types of
items are created at each level to assess different aspects of
proficiency. Writers

work closely with CASLS staff and master teachers in developing each
test item. Each item then goes through a committee review process,
rigorous piloting, and item analysis.

Each version of STAMP goes through a thorough pilot processes. The first
pilot gathers information on individual test items and determines if
students are performing as expected. The second pilot verifies the
testing algorithm. Test items are verified through rigorous piloting and
statistical analysis to assure that every student is fairly evaluated.
Trained raters grade the writing and speaking sections. Raters are
monitored to assure greater than 90 percent inter-rater reliability.

Desired impact of project

> All students of world languages should be proficient in both the
> language and in the culture. As a result, STAMP test items are based
> upon authentic tasks, which allow educators to measure a student's
> true proficiency. STAMP is also available with curricular materials
> and formative assessments (ClassPak) to further prepare students to
> succeed.

# II. Second Language Acquisition Web (SLA Web)

**Project Goals**

> The goal of SLA Web is to provide SLA researchers with data on learner
> performance from a large and diverse pool of subjects in a searchable
> database.

**Key methodologies and data sources**

> CASLS, along with partner Language Learning Solutions (LLS),
> administers its online STAMP test nationally. Currently, reading,
> writing, and speaking data on over 10,000 subjects in Spanish, French,
> Japanese, and German resides on the CASLS archive. SLA Web makes this
> data available to SLA researchers in an easy-to-use, searchable
> format. Data for Turkish, Hebrew, and Chinese will be entered in the
> system this year. In addition to student samples, SLA Web contains
> demographic data, allowing for advanced searches according to
> parameters such as age, length of study, and heritage language
> background.

**Desired impact of project**

> SLA Web seeks to become a prime destination for SLA researchers
> worldwide. By providing researchers with data, CASLS aims to advance
> SLA and education research.

# III. Western Initiative for Language Learning (in Oregon): WILL and WILL-O

**Project Goals**

> The Western Initiative for Language Learning (WILL) is a professional
> development program designed to provide rural second language teachers
> (K-12) with opportunities to build stronger communities and improve
> their pedagogic and leadership skills. A supplemental grant from No
> Child Left Behind funds participation of additional teachers from
> Oregon in the WILL-Oregon (WILL-O) program. WILL is a two-year program
> consisting of teachers in isolated regions of the Pacific Northwest.
> Year one of the program focuses on conducting action research projects
> based on standards-based instruction and assessment. Year two of the
> program focuses on leadership training in order to prepare the
> teachers to take positions of leadership in their schools and
> communities. Participants gather in Eugene each summer. WILL unites
> and supports these teachers, linking them through technology.

**Key methodologies and data sources**

-   Two weeklong workshops

-   Ongoing communication and mentoring

-   Support and facilitation of action research and leadership projects

**Desired impact of project**

> CASLS would like the WILL project to improve teachers' pedagogic and
> leadership skills so that they can provide a high-quality
> international education for their students as well as being leaders in
> their communities.

# IV. Mosaic Project

#### Project Goals

> The goal of the Mosaic project is to develop content-based thematic
> units of instruction that are linked to standards in world languages
> and another content area. We are currently developing materials in
> Spanish and Japanese.

#### Key methodologies and data sources

> Each language group has a lead writer and an editorial board. The lead
> writer is responsible for creating lessons, while the editorial board
> directs the lead writer by giving suggestions and helping to develop
> new units. The editorial board consists of a university language
> teacher, a university content area scholar, a K-12 language teacher,
> and a K-12 content teacher. We invite interested individuals to
> contact CASLS in order to help us to pilot these innovative units.

**Desired impact of project**

> Through the MOSAIC project, CASLS hopes to show how a combined team of
> experts across the humanities can impact curriculum development in the
> second language classroom. The inclusion of team members from both the
> K-12 and postsecondary levels insures the widest appeal among teachers
> at multiple levels.

# V. Diverse Learner's Initiative

## **A. Project Goals**

Diverse Learner's Initiative (DLI) is a longitudinal research project
that aims to measure student proficiency as well as attitudes and
motivations related to various program models including immersion, FLES,
high school start, and middle school start.

#### Key methodologies and data sources

> Teacher and student surveys and interviews
>
> Student assessments
>
> Observations

### Desired impact of project

CASLS hopes that this project will present a clear picture of the
expected results from any of the various model programs, giving
administrators the information they need to make informed decisions when
employing a particular model in their district.

[]{#__RefHeading___Toc94767009 .anchor}Center for Language Education and
Research (CLEAR)

A712 Wells Hall

Michigan State University

East Lansing, MI 48824-1027

Phone: 517.432.2286

Fax: 517.432.0473

Email: <clear@msu.edu>

[http://clear.msu.edu](http://clear.msu.edu/)

######## 

######## Focus of Program

CLEAR's goal is to promote and support the teaching and learning of
foreign languages in the United States by facilitating foreign language
learning and teaching research, developing materials, and providing
professional development training opportunities. CLEAR has projects
touching all world areas and in both commonly and less commonly taught
languages.

# 

# [Key Academic Staff and Research Interests]{.underline}

-   **Susan Gass** conducts research in second language acquisition and
    in particular in the area of input and interaction and attention.
    She is particularly interested in conducting research on heritage
    language learners.

-   **Patricia Paulsell** lists the following areas of interest:
    language for business and the professions; content-based
    instruction; language and technology; promotion of the study of
    foreign languages, and foreign language policy.

-   **Margo Glew**'s professional interests include distance learning of
    languages, language policy for the less commonly taught languages,
    language acquisition, and language instruction.

-   **Charlene Polio**'s research interests include teaching and
    assessing second and foreign language writing, preservice and novice
    teachers' interaction patterns, and research methodology in second
    language writing research.

-   **F. Scott Walters** has research interests in language testing and
    assessment; second-language pragmatics, conversation analysis,
    hermeneutics, second-language acquisition, and ESL/FL pedagogy.

-   **Anne Violin-Wigent**'s research interests include French
    sociolinguistics, including regional varieties of French and
    attitudes towards non-standard dialects.

-   **Yong Zhao**'s research interests include technology enhanced
    language education, innovation diffusion in schools, teacher
    adoption of technology, online and distance education, and
    comparative and international education.

# [Current Research Projects]{.underline}

**Feedback to Heritage Language Learners**

-   **Goals**: This project seeks to understand what it is that heritage
    speakers bring to the language learning situation that allows them
    to learn their heritage language more rapidly than non-heritage
    speakers. In previous research it was found that the perception of
    feedback by learners was not always perceived in the way it was
    intended. Further, differences were found between ESL learners and
    foreign

-   language learners. Within the foreign language group there appeared
    to be a split between heritage and non-heritage speakers. The
    current study was designed to systematically investigate these
    differences.

-   **Key methodologies and data sources:** Students participated in a
    task-based activity followed by a stimulated recall in which they
    were asked to comment on or were asked directly about feedback
    episodes and their perceptions of those episodes.

-   **Desired impact of project:** It is anticipated that this research
    project will help understand how heritage language speakers and
    non-heritage language speakers approach the language learning task
    differently.

## **Dissemination of Technology-based Language Education Innovations** 

-   **Goals**: This project will investigate the dissemination paths of
    federally funded language education software and factors affecting
    its dissemination in an attempt to understand why many federally
    funded technology-based language learning applications have not been
    widely used by classroom teachers.

-   **Key methodologies and data sources**: Interview and survey

-   **Desired impact of project**: Proposing new strategies for better
    dissemination of federally funded language education software.

## **Examining Perceptions of Feedback in Preservice Teachers** 

-   **Goals**: This study examines perceptions of feedback by preservice
    teachers during the completion of a task with nonnative speakers.
    Previous research has shown that various types of implicit feedback
    (e.g., repeating a learner\'s utterance with corrections, asking for
    clarification) as well as various types of explicit feedback (e.g.,
    giving a grammatical explanation of the error) are helpful to and
    desired by learners. Research has also shown that preservice and
    novice teachers give less feedback than experienced teachers and it
    has been suggested that this is because they believe it will
    negatively affect the learners\' attitudes toward using the target
    language. The purpose of this study is to review videotaped
    interactions between preservice teachers and language learners
    (using stimulated recall) to determine the preservice teachers'
    perceptions of what was happening in the interaction and why they
    did or did not give feedback. In addition, learners review the
    interactions to assess their perceptions of feedback or lack
    thereof. At a later stage of this research, data will be collected
    from advanced teachers to compare their perceptions with those of
    developing teachers.

-   **Key methodologies and data sources**: Students participated in a
    task-based activity followed by a stimulated recall in which they
    were asked to comment or were asked directly about feedback episodes
    and their perceptions of those episodes.

-   **Desired impact of project**: This research project will help us
    understand how teachers become sensitized to feedback and how they
    perceive the feedback they give to learners.

## **Task-based Interactions in Classroom and Laboratory Settings** 

-   **Goals**: This research fits within the input and interaction
    framework and specifically invesitgates the extent to which research
    on interaction and negotiation conducted within an experimental
    laboratory can be generalized to a classroom setting.

-   **Key methodologies and data sources**: Matched groups of students
    from foreign language classrooms participated in three task-based
    activities, which were analyzed for negotiation, language-related
    episodes and interactional episodes.

-   **Desired impact of project**: This research project help us
    understand the relationship between the literature on interaction
    conducted within a laboratory setting and the implications of that
    research for classroom. It also help understand the relationship
    between task types and the amount of interaction learners produce.

## **An Investigation of the Ordering Effect of Input and Interaction** 

-   **Goals:** This study explores the ways that learners have of obtain
    information about the target language. The main focus is the effects
    of input and interaction as separate entities and in combination
    with varying order. These effects are considered as a function of
    different language areas.

-   **Key methodologies and data sources:** Students were placed into
    one of five groups (input only, interaction only, input +
    interaction, interaction + input, control) and were provided with
    input or interactional input on one of two Spanish grammatical
    structures (gender agreement, *estar* + location) and vocabulary.
    Learning was measured in a pre-, pro-test design.

-   **Desired impact of project:** This research project will help us
    understand the relationship between types of pedgagogical materials
    in language classrooms.

## **Language Attitudes Toward Bilingualism and Non-Standard Varieties in France and in Canada**

-   **Goals:** This study explores the attitudes of people toward
    bilingualism (French and English in Canada, French and Arabic or a
    regional language in France), as well as toward non-standard
    varieties of French in both Quebec and France.

-   **Key methodologies and data sources:** Interviews, linguistic maps
    (labeling regions according to language use), questionnaires
    evaluating various recordings in terms of feeling associated with
    the speakers.

-   **Desired impact of project:** This project will show that people
    tend to view bilingualism as an asset if it is official. It will
    also show that the attitude associated with a particular language or
    variety is a reflection of the attitude toward the people who speak
    the language. This includes self-depreciation in the case of
    non-standard varieties or minority languages without official
    status.

## **Investigation on Prioritization of LCTL Instruction at Institutions of Higher Education** 

-   **Goals:** This project seeks to investigate the various factors
    affecting the selection and delivery of instruction in particular
    less commonly taught languages.

-   **Key methodologies and data sources:** Interview and survey

-   **Desired impact of project:** An articulation of the factors
    influencing decisions about which languages are currently being
    offered at institutions of higher education, and a suggested process
    for prioritizing languages at individual institutions.

## **Evaluation of FLAS Language Program and FLAS Fellows' Experiences**

-   **Goals**: Cross-sectional survey of present and past Foreign
    Language and Area Studies fellowship recipients on issues relating
    to their language learning experiences (both as FLAS fellows and
    previously) and how their language learning impacted their studies,
    their research field work, their careers, and their lives in
    general.

-   **Key methodologies and data sources:** Interview and survey

-   **Desired impact of project**: Information about the impact of the
    FLAS fellowship program on the fellow's careers and their lives in
    general. Also, information about the effectiveness of tutorial-based
    language programs which serve as the major instructional mode for
    FLAS fellows.

## **Ongoing Assessment of CLEAR Tests and Products**

-   **Goals:** To investigate validity of inferences made from CLEAR
    assessment results; investigate impact of CLEAR assessments on
    learners, instructors, and/or educational systems.

-   **Key methodologies and data sources:** Crafting of validity
    arguments re: CLEAR assessments via quantitative and content-related
    analysis of test items; reverse-engineering of test or item
    specifications; linking of CLEAR assessments to Federal or local
    educational mandates; review/application of relevant professional
    language-testing literature

-   **Desired impact of project:** establishment of criterion-referenced
    language-test development (CRLTD) protocols within CLEAR, including
    creation of item-specification banks (\"specbanks\"); enhanced
    validity of inferences made from CLEAR assessments vis-à-vis
    foreign-language (FL) proficiency and/or achievement; facilitation
    of positive washback on learners, teachers, and educational
    institutions engaged in FL learning.

[]{#__RefHeading___Toc94767010 .anchor}Center for the Languages of the
Central Asia Region (CELCAR)

**Indiana University**

Coulter Hall, 1975 East 7th Street

Bloomington, IN 47405-7510

Phone: (812) 856-1230

Fax: 812-856-1206\
E-mail: <celcar@indiana.edu>

<http://www.indiana.edu/~celcar/>

Focus of program

> Preparation of language text books for the languages of the Central
> Asia Region using authentic materials, task-based approach within
> proficiency guidelines. Resulting text books will have CD-ROM
> components and Center for the Language materials. Materials are tried
> at language Summer School, and CeLCAR works closely with NRC at CEUS
> of IU.

**Key Academic Staff and Their Research Interests**

> William Fierman (Co-Director): Soviet Union, Russia (20^th^ century)
> and Central Asia. Politics of language with stress on Central Asian
> Republics.
>
> Cigdem Balim (Co-Director): Turkic Languages and cultural studies.
> Educational Linguistics (i.e. language teaching); Applied Linguistics
> (Socio-linguistics) with focus on Central Asia and the Caucasus.
>
> Cathy Raymond (Curriculum Developer): Educational Linguistics in
> general with specialization on "task based language learning";
> Materials Development; CALL material design.

**Major Research and curricular Projects Now Underway**

Name of Project

> Curricular project: Writing language textbooks for the languages used
> in Central Asia
>
> Research:(continuing) Language teaching workshops adapted to Central
> Asian languages; (planned) an international research conference on
> Turkic Languages; (planned) a standing international teacher training
> workshop.

Goals of Project

Preparing Beginners' Level Pashto, Uyghur, Uzbek and Tajik textbooks.

Key Methodologies and Data Sources

> Task based language learning and teaching stressing four language
> skills; communicative language instruction; authentic video and audio
> recordings and texts (filmed and recorded by the Center on location).

Desired Impact of Project

> Provide versatile language and culture teaching materials that use
> contemporary techniques and technologies, which can be used either for
> reference or for language learning.
>
> There will also be a pool of authentic materials which can be utilized
> at a different time for a variety of purposes.

**Other Areas of Research Strength**

> Below are the areas of strength available at IU, that the Center will
> be making immediate use of:

Language Teaching Methodology and Learner Centered Approaches

Linguistics

Computing

History

Cultural Studies (of Caspian, Caucasus, Central Asia)

Ethnomusicology

Performing arts and film

[]{#__RefHeading___Toc94767011 .anchor}Language Acquisition Resource
Center (LARC)

**San Diego State University**\
5500 Campanile Drive\
San Diego, CA 92182-7703

Phone: 619-594-6177

Fax: 619-594-0511

Email: <nlrcsd@mail.sdsu.edu>

<http://larcnet.sdsu.edu/>

> San Diego State University, the flagship institution of the California
> State University system, the largest undergraduate system in the
> world. SDSU is a doctoral-granting institution and is research
> extensive, now actively seeking research intensive classification. San
> Diego County is home for many heritage language learners and recent
> immigrants to the United States.
>
> **Focus of LRC/NFLI program**

-   Developing innovative, research-based approaches to teaching and
    online proficiency testing for critical and/or less commonly taught
    languages (LCTL), their literatures, and cultures for several world
    areas:

    -   [Latin America]{.underline}: Mixtec and other Latin American
        LCTL languages; Spanish at the professional levels (superior,
        distinguished)

    -   [Middle East]{.underline}: MSA Arabic, Iraqi, Egyptian, and
        Syrian dialects, Persian

    -   [Pacific and East Asia]{.underline}: Chinese, Japanese, Filipino
        and Tagalog, Vietnamese

-   Creating programs in translation and interpreting, heritage language
    teacher education, distinguished language skills (Arabic, Persian,
    Spanish), and after school L2 literacy (Arabic, Spanish, Vietnamese)

> **Key academic staff and their Research interests**
>
> [LARC Faculty]{.underline}

-   Mary Ann Lyman-Hager -- Evaluating L2 reading and listening; online
    proficiency-based testing; assessment and evaluation;
    Interdisciplinary program development.

-   Mario Martin Flores -- Using distributed and education approaches in
    literary and cultural studies in Spanish (the literature and culture
    of Baja California).

-   Nora Strejilivich -- Using distributed education approaches in
    professional level Spanish studies (human rights in Spanish
    language).

-   Ghada Osman -- Arabic language; heritage learners; history,
    philosophy and religion of Arabic cultures.

-   Claudia Angelelli -- Evaluating Spanish at the superior and
    distinguished levels; heritage language learning; translation and
    interpreting.

-   Christian Degueldre -- Distinguished level language programs;
    translation and interpreting; language testing and assessment.

-   Minjuan Wang -- Educational technology; heritage language programs;
    Chinese language program development and assessment; instructional
    design.

-   Jim Gerber -- Spanish and Latin American e-LCTLS; interdisciplinary
    language program development.

-   Ramona Perez - Spanish and Latin American e-LCTLS; anthropological
    approaches to language and culture.

-   Eniko Csomay -- Discourse analysis; corpus linguistics; textual
    analysis.

-   Bob Underhill -- Linguistic analysis and research; developing
    descriptive grammars and textbooks for LCTLs.

-   Margaret Field -- Applied linguistics, socio-anthropological
    approaches to language.

-   Mark Gawron -- Computational linguistics; corpus linguistics;
    quantitative methods.

-   Ryu Kitajima -- Applied linguistics; Japanese language and culture.

-   Elham Sadegholvad -- Persian language; heritage learners;
    ACTFL-based testing.

-   Baida Putris -- Arabic language, Iraqi dialect; heritage learners;
    ACTFL-based testing.

-   Rasha Roshdy -- Arabic language, Iraqi dialect; heritage learners;
    ACTFL-based testing.

-   Iman Hashem- Arabic language, Iraqi dialect; heritage learners;
    ACTFL-based testing.

> **[LARC Staff]{.underline}**

-   Lynn Eddy-Zambrano -- Online language testing, Latin America culture
    and languages.

-   John Vitaglione -- Digital media archiving, distributed and distance
    education; instructional design.

-   Norman Leonard -- Heritage language teacher education and after
    school programs for Arabic, Spanish, Vietnamese.

-   Wayne Stromberg -- Online testing (4 skills); multimedia and
    distributed education; language laboratory design and maintenance.

-   Robin Martin -- Website and database development; distributed and
    distance education; instructional design and assessment.

-   Kirsten Barber -- Database development; online testing; online
    survey development and research.

> **Major research and curricular projects now underway**

-   Name of project: Human Rights in Latin America

-   Goals of project: To assemble authentic materials acquired in
    country from a variety of informants, to illustrate advances in
    human rights in Latin America. To work closely with the NRCs
    (National Resource Centers -- Title VI funded) to provide content
    and digital (internet-based) access to interdisciplinary materials
    for their programs.

-   Key methodologies and data sources. Researchers in Latin America,
    with first-hand oral and written testimonies and unusually direct
    access to archival materials obtained in country.

-   Desired impact of Project: These online materials will serve as
    content for the subsequent development of superior-distinguished
    level intensive language programs at SDSU, to be offered in a
    distance or distributed mode and offered nationwide through Extended
    Studies. The materials will also be available nationwide through the
    Digital Media Archive (DMA).

-   Name of project: CAST (Computerized ACTFL-based Screening Tool) and
    Diagnostic Assessment and Online DMA materials

-   Goals of project: To create online low-stakes proficiency screening
    tests in Arabic, Persian, Spanish, Chinese, Iraqi, Egyptian, Syrian
    dialects and a generalized test for interpreter readiness; To create
    digital materials for teachers to use in courses nationwide through
    the DMA (Digital Media Archive).

-   Key methodologies and data sources. Discourse and linguistic
    analyses of digitized OPIs (oral proficiency interviews, from
    ACTFL), VOCIs (by partners CAL and ACTFL yield a framework for the
    online screening test. The tests are tailored for each learner based
    on questionnaire data and yield reliable floors (but not ceilings)
    of language proficiency. Data from testees are tagged and marked for
    linguistic researchers' use in corpora.

-   Desired impact of project: To create a positive washback for
    proficiency-based teaching and assessment approaches across the
    nation; to give learners detailed feedback about what they need to
    do to improve their language proficiency and the authentic texts and
    pedagogical materials they might use independently or with cohorts
    to improve language skills.

-   Name of project: Distinguished Level Language Programs

-   Goals of project: To research the characteristics of distinguished
    level language in Persian, Arabic, and Spanish. To increase the
    number of distinguished level language users available to government
    and private sector agencies in several key critical languages by
    institutionalizing programs and by training the trainer, multiplying
    the number of teachers trained to instruct or mentor at this level.

-   Key methodologies and data sources: Discourse analysis and
    evidence-based linguistic corpora inform assessment and teaching
    strategies.

-   Desired impact of project: Increased numbers of teachers and
    speakers available to work at the highest level of proficiency
    needed for diplomacy, trade, and translation and interpreting in
    legal, scientific, health, and other environments. Enhanced
    opportunities for talented heritage language speakers or recent
    immigrants for government and private sector service.

Other areas of research strength -- Heritage language programs, [Center
for Translation and Interpreting]{.underline}, K-16 teacher training and
materials development; Outreach to Filipino, Vietnamese communities to
create text materials that are California Standards-compliant; Online
testing (LARCStar, an Open Source, online test authoring tool);
Development of the Spanish Business Exam (EXIGE), in concert with the
Center for International Business and Education Research (CIBER) at
SDSU; Development of teaching and tutoring intensive programs for
military personnel (Navy SEALS and Camp Pendleton Marines).

[]{#__RefHeading___Toc94767012 .anchor}National African Language
Resource Center (NALRC)

####### University of Wisconsin-Madison

4231 Humanities Building\
455 North Park Street\
Madison, WI 53706\
Phone: (608) 265-7905\
Fax: (608) 265-7904\
E-mail: <nalrc@mhub.facstaff.wisc.edu>\
[http://lang.nalrc.wisc.edu/nalrc](http://african.lss.wisc.edu/nalrc)

**1. Focus of NALRC:**

NALRC serves the entire community of African language educators and
learners in the United States by sponsoring a wide range of educational
and professional activities designed to improve the accessibility and
quality of African language instruction in the United States. In
addition, NALRC facilitates dialogue among teachers, learners, and
administrators from a wide variety of cultural and institutional
perspectives and promotes the profession of African language teaching.

**2. Key academic staff and their research interests:**

Since NALRC is a National Center, it does not host local academic staff
per se but rather draws input from African Language Scholars with
diverse research interests from all over the United States. Scholars
outside of the United States have also had considerable input in the
activities of the center depending on the kind of project being
undertaken. Because of this, we

cannot include a list of our research participants here.

**3. Major research and curricular project now underway:**

The NALRC is conducting various projects and research, all of which are
described below. Most of the goals and desired impacts are interrelate
and are discussed together.

**a. The projects**

NALRC is conducting research and curricular projects in several areas:
the Reference

Grammar text books project; the Let's Speak Series projects; the K-12
materials project; and Multimedia Projects.

In the *Let's Speak Series*, Let's Speak Text books for Amharic,
Sesotho, Zulu, and Setswana Languages are underway. The *K-12 materials*
for kindergarten through fifth grade are in the process of development
for both Yoruba and Kiswahili languages. Reference grammars text books
for Amharic and Zulu languages are in the process of completion. NALRC's
multimedia *resources*

development project has just recently released Tuseme Kiswahili CD ROM.
*Flash cards* to assist in the self-learning of four languages, Lingala,
Zulu, Kikuyu, and Chichewa, are also in the process of completion.

**b.The Goals**

The goals of these various projects are to ensure the accessibility and
availability of African languages in the United States by developing
resources for research, teaching, and learning these languages.

**c. Key methodologies**

The NALRC depends on scholars from different parts of the United States
and Africa who have expert knowledge in their respective languages to
conduct their research. Then, the NALRC staff is able to make the
projects a reality. NALRC has its own press staff and technology
assistants who help in the technical aspects of these projects.

**d. Desired Impact.**

NALRC wants to create awareness of the of less commonly taught African
languages and thus expand students' choices of the languages that are
available for study in the United States.

**6. Other Areas of Research Strength.**

Another research project is the African Language Enrollment project
where NALRC is conducting a survey of African Language enrollment in
United States colleges and universities. The *goal* of this project is
to find out what kind of African language courses are offered in the
United States and how many students have enrolled in those courses since
2002. This project will ultimately enlighten African language
instructors, African language program coordinators, and even African
language material developers because the enrollment trends will help
forecast the material needs. It will also enable the existing schools to
collaborate and allow potential students to know what courses are
offered and where.

[]{#__RefHeading___Toc94767013 .anchor}The National Capital Language
Resource Center (NCLRC)

**Consortium of Georgetown University (GU), The George Washington
University (GWU), and the Center for Applied Linguistics (CAL).**

2011 Eye Street N.W., Suite 200

Washington, DC 20006

Phone: (202) 973-1086

Fax: (202) 973-1075

E-mail: <info@nclrc.org>

<http://www.nclrc.org/>

Our goals are to focus on projects that impact foreign language teaching
nationally, and to make information available to the greatest number of
foreign language educators possible at minimum cost.

> **KEY ACADEMIC STAFF AND RESEARCH STAFF:**

**Dr. James E. Alatis, (GU)** Co-Director**:** Dr. Alatis has served as
co-director of the NCLRC since its inception in 1990. At Georgetown
University, he is the Senior Advisor for International Language Programs
and Research to the Dean of Georgetown College, Dean Emeritus of the
Faculty of Languages and Linguistics, Director of the Master of Arts in
Teaching program, and Distinguished Professor of Linguistics and Modern
Greek.

**Dr. Anna Uhl Chamot, (GWU)** Co-Director: research interests are in
language learning strategies, language acquisition in ESOL students, and
literacy development in older students.

**Dr. Catharine Keatley, (NCLRC)** Associate Director**:** research
interests focus on the organization of bilingual memory, learning
strategies, and reading.

**Dr. Dorry M. Kenyon, (CAL)** Senior Advisor**:** research interests
are in language assessment and bilingual literacy acquisition.

**Dr. Margaret Malone,** **(CAL**) Director of Testing: research
interests are in assessment, teacher professional development in
assessment approaches and program evaluation.

**Dr. Heidi Byrnes,** **(GU):** research interests in development of
advanced proficiency in language learning.

**Dr. Richard Robin, (GWU):** research interests in development and
assessment of advanced Russian, characteristics of heritage Russian
learners, and technology in teaching Russian.

**Dr. Karin Ryding, (GU):** research interests in diglossia in Arabic,
pedagogy for Arabic, learner characteristics of arabic heritage
learners.

**Dr. Margaret Nydell, (GU):** research interests in Arabic
dialectology.

**Mrs. Dora Johnson:** **(CAL)** research interests in Arabic
instruction K-12 and in materials for teaching LCTLs.

> **MAJOR PROJECTS**

##### The Essentials of Language Teaching: The purpose of this online resource is to introduce university and college instructors, as well as teaching assistants, to the language teaching methods and strategies now being employed by universities in the United States. The Essentials of Language Teaching can be accessed at [***www.nclrc.org/essentials/***](http://www.nclrc.org/essentials/). The Essentials will be extended to include examples of "best practices" in Arabic and Russian, hopefully with an option for video streaming on the web.

1.  **Language Learning Strategies Resource Guides:** Based on extensive
    research on successful learning strategies, the NCLRC has developed
    resource guides designed to help language teachers integrate
    learning strategies and content based language activities into an
    existing curriculum. Guides exist for elementary language immersion,
    middle and high school, and higher education.

2.  **Learning Strategies of Learners of Less Commonly Taught Languages
    (LCTL)**: Heritage and non-heritage speakers of Arabic, Japanese,
    Chinese, and Korean at the beginner-intermediate and the
    intermediate-advanced levels are being interviewed in focus groups
    and then individually (stimulated, think-aloud interviews) to
    determine the particular challenges they face in studying the
    specific LCTL and what learning strategies they use to meet these
    challenges. Focus is on skills: reading, writing, listening and
    speaking (interpersonal and presentational). Analyses will be
    primarily qualitative. Outcomes will be reports on challenges faced
    and successful learning strategies reported and observed: language x
    heritage vs. non-heritage x level.

3.  **Arabic K**-**12: Survey**: The NCLRC is continuing to survey all
    schools that teach Arabic K-12 in the United States. The survey
    includes information about background of students, languages of
    students, teacher professional development, class sizes, materials,
    challenges faced by teachers and administrators. Method: structured
    questionnaire and individual interviews; outcome, summary of status
    of teaching Arabic K-12 in the United States.

4.  **Arabic K**-**12: Building a Network**: The NCLRC has an IRS grant
    to develop a network for teachers of Arabic K-12 through a
    newsletter, a Web site, and a materials archive.

5.  **Arabic K-16: Developing Learning Standards:** The NCLRC is working
    with ACTFL, MELRC, the AATA, and the National Standards
    Collaborative to develop Standards of Learning for Arabic K-16. The
    NCLRC acts as the coordinating organization for the Arabic Standards
    Task Force.

6.  **Modern Standard Arabic -- Iraqi:** The NCLRC at GU has developed a
    conversion course and materials from MSA to Iraqi and has taught the
    course for two summers. It will again be offered in summer 2005.The
    materials have been given to the FSI and the CIA for use in Baghdad.

7.  **Modern Standard Arabic-Syrian:** The NCLRC at GU will next develop
    a similar conversion course and materials for Syrian. It will be
    piloted in a summer course offered at GU in the summer of 2005.
    Outcomes will be a curriculum and materials for a conversion course
    in MSA to Syrian dialect.

8.  **Russian for Russians:** The NCLRC GWU has developed an online
    course in Russian for heritage speakers "Russian for Russians,"
    which can be accompanied by the book "Russian for Russian" published
    by Slavonica Press. The course can be accessed from the NCLRC Web
    site.

9.  **Russian WebCasts:** The NCLRC GWU produces a bi-weekly Russian
    WebCast of current news spoken at a controlled rate, which is
    accessible to intermediate learners of Russian. It is accompanied by
    pre-listening and post-listening questions and prompts. This program
    is very widely used by teachers and learners of Russian. It can be
    accessed from the NCLRC Webpage.

10. **Newsletter:** The Language Resource is a free monthly e-newsletter
    produced by the NCLRC with a direct subscription of 10,500 and a
    minimum of 10,000 indirect subscribers. Subscribers are mainly
    middle and high school FL teachers. This is a particularly good
    resource for dissemination of research results to teachers.

11. **Summer institutes:** The NCLRC offers two-day teacher institutes
    each summer. Last year we offered 14 institutes, in addition to the
    intensive three-week summer institute in Iraqi at GU.

12. **Assessment Activities:** CAL is developing a self-instructional
    CD-ROM to train teachers and other language professionals to apply
    the ACTFL Guidelines and rate the simulated oral

> proficiency interview (SOPI) in Spanish, French and German.

13. **Updated Rater Training Kits:** CAL is updating the
    self-instructional kits to train teachers and other language
    professionals to apply the ACTFL Guidelines and rate the simulated
    oral proficiency interview (SOPI) in Arabic, Chinese, Japanese and
    Russian.

14. **Assessment workshops:** Each year, CAL staff conducts workshops
    for teachers and other language professionals in approaches to
    classroom-based assessment.

15. **Other assessment projects:** CAL NCLRC staff work on a variety of
    assessment and testing projects outside the current scope of the
    NCLRC, including Web-based oral proficiency tests in Arabic,
    Chinese, Korean and Spanish; distance learning courses to train
    raters to rate oral proficiency according to the ACTFL Guidelines
    and a web-delivered test of listening and speaking in Russian.
    Outside the realm of foreign language, CAL NCLRC staffs are also
    working on a project to test English language.

> **OTHER AREAS OF RESEARCH STRENGTH**

1\. Contrastive analyses of Arabic dialects. (Nydell)

2\. Arabic linguistics, including acquisition (as L1 or L2), diglossia,
analysis of formal spoken Arabic, diglossia and register. (Ryding,
Nydell)

3\. Language learning strategies of learners of Arabic. (Chamot, Keatley
and Ryding)

4\. Characteristics of advanced level Russian -- esp. role of aspect.
(Robin)

5\. Effectiveness of using genre and task- and theme-based instruction
in accelerating FL acquisition

(Byrnes)

[]{#__RefHeading___Toc94767014 .anchor}National East Asian Languages
Resource Center (NEALRC)

**The Ohio State University**

100 Hagerty Hall

1775 College Road

Columbus, OH 43210-1340

Phone: (614) 292-4361

Fax: (614) 688-3355

E-mail: <li.28@osu.edu>

<http://nealrc.osu.edu/>

**Introduction:** The National East Asian Languages Resource Center is
organized around a set of tasks focused on increasing the number of
Americans who reach advanced skill levels in Chinese, Japanese, and
Korean. We have two basic strategies: 1) define advanced skills and
develop the resources for reaching them, and 2) expand access to these
languages in American education. Our pedagogical emphasis is on
autonomous learning and our goal is to provide the infrastructure to
train Americans to function successfully in the cultures of China,
Japan, and Korea. Here we present our current projects, past projects,
and some potential for further contributions.

**Advanced skills:** We define advanced skills as the ability to
participate in the major media of the cultures of East Asia.
Participation includes interpreting oral and written media, discussing
them in culturally appropriate ways, and creating presentations for
target-culture audiences. Projects include:

***Kaleidoscope, A Course in Intermediate to Advanced Spoken
Cantonese***, Xiaobin Jian, Matthew Christensen, Roxanna Feng. Based on
the first television series using colloquial Cantonese, this extensive
set (eight books, eight video tapes, and five audio tapes) provides the
autonomous learner with a guided access to the daily conversational life
in Guangzhou.

***Say It Like It Is: Natural Chinese for the Advanced Learner***, Wang
Jianqi, Yale University Press.\
This project a result of the experimentation and practice of pedagogy
based on television programming. Obtaining the rights to a popular China
Central Television (CCTV) audience participation talk-show named after a
common expression for veracity and forthrightness: *Shihua Shishuo*
(Tell It Like It Is) is created to present the total context in which
linguistic performance occurs, rather than on a singular emphasis on the
linguistic code. This material trains advanced learners to comprehend
and respond to natural utterances at a sophisticated level. Learners
have the opportunity to learn not only what is said, but also how it is
said, and why a listener in that context responds to it in a specific
manner. The product consists of one volume of 494 pages and two DVD
videos. The NEALRC negotiated rights to the programming, edited the
manuscript, published the field test version, and arranged field tests
Ohio State, Middlebury College, and Brigham Young University. At
present, the volume is in press and is expected to be released by the
end 2005.

***Pathways to Advanced Skills,*** The *Pathways to Advanced Skills*
publications series has been dedicated to the pedagogies of less
commonly taught languages since volume I was published in 1995.
Currently consisting of eight Volumes, the series offers program
builders and teachers of Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, and African
languages conceptual and pedagogical resources for advancing their
teaching and program building missions. All NEALRC publications are
available through Foreign Language Publications and Services directly,
over the internet via our online catalog, and at conferences where we
exhibit. The *Pathways* series now consists of eight volumes available
through our Web site. Future publications on performed culture, Korean
language pedagogy, and reading Japanese are in process.

**Online Catalog of Study Abroad Opportunities for Students of East
Asian Languages,*\
***with need for Americans to learn advanced Chinese, Japanese, and
Korean increasing, an up-dated directory of all study abroad programs in
East Asia is coming online in the next year. This Web site will help
American students select the institutes to study in East Asia. The
information will consist of four parts: 1) information on institutions
in East Asia offering study abroad programs; 2) information on American
institutions that run programs in the areas; 3) information on financial
aid programs; and 4) a discussion board to share the students'
experiences of studying in East Asia.

This project is currently being tested. Completing that, we will invite
institutions in East Asia and other information providers to input
program specific data into the database. The information will then be
verified and posted for the American students to use. The fully
operational online searchable catalog is expected to be functioning by
June 2005.

**Summer Conference of East Asian Languages (SCEAL),** NEALRC sponsored
and organized the symposium \"Chinese Language as Performed Culture,\"
held in September 2003 with thirty participants. Papers and discussions
focused on the teaching of language as performed culture among prominent
scholars who support, oppose, and show indifference toward teaching
language in culturally appropriate contexts. A collection of papers
reflecting these three views is being by Professor Jianqi Wang from The
Ohio State University and Professor Xiaobin Jian from the College of
William and Mary. This volume is expected to consist of eight papers to
be completed in 2005.

The NEALRC sponsored and conducted a symposium on advanced skills and
study abroad, convened on March 19, 2004 at The Ohio State University,
Columbus, Ohio. The organizers were Mari Noda (OSU) and Pat Wetzel
(Portland State University), with participants from University of
Pittsburgh, University of California, Davis, Waseda University,
University of Findlay, Washington University at St. Louis, and Ohio
University. The main issues covered in the symposium were: 1) the
background knowledge and questions about study abroad programs; 2) the
advantages of doing small scale, in-depth projects in study abroad; 3)
the anthropological nature of language study and study-abroad; 4) the
perspectives of the receiving institution(s) in Japan; 5) bridging the
gap between classroom and real-world experience that many students
perceive; 6) a framework for cataloguing the kinds of skills that
students need in language study and for assessing their progress in
study-abroad; and 7) 'grammar' isolated from other systems of human
convention that contribute to the process of communication. The papers
will be edited and published as a collection.

**Expanding Access:** Expanding access to quality East Asian language
study is primarily a matter of building the infrastructure to increase
the numbers of learners and improving the quality of the instructional
opportunities. The NEALRC has implemented the following projects to
accomplish these infrastructure goals.

**Online Programs in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean**

Beginning with individualized instruction programs in East Asian
languages, the NEALRC is putting the resources in place to conduct
online courses in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean designed around the
feature of video conferencing. We are initially targeting high school
students for these programs, but are also accepting students from
smaller colleges, community colleges, and corporate training programs.
These resources include orientations, workstations for face-to-face
video interviews, virtual language labs, workbooks, study agendas, a
course management system, and record-keeping system.

We are currently piloting beginning Chinese with high school students
and expect to expand slowly to the other languages and institutions next
year.

Once we have online programs up and running, we will proceed to a
planned development of a category four languages distance program with
Ohio Community College Consortium for Global Education and Ohio Foreign
Language Consortium. One of the challenges in establishing distance
learning is to build the institutional relationships that permit
students of one school to take courses offered by another school. Among
the most requested languages on the part of community colleges are the
four "Category Four" languages, Japanese, Chinese, Arabic, and Korean.
This project will focus on forging agreements between Ohio State and
other suppliers of distance courses and the community colleges
throughout Ohio. Since all of these institutions are connected by
OARnet, the broadband utility forOhio, they are all sufficiently
connected to permit the face-to-face video conferencing and all other
electronic transfers required by the individualized learning model. The
NEALRC team will meet with representatives of the community colleges and
schools represented in the Ohio Foreign Language Coalition to present
model agreements, negotiate points of contention, and convey the results
to administrators of the school involved.

***Chinese: Communicating in the Culture*, by Galal Walker and Yong
Lang**

**Interactive DVD**: The film *Strange Friends* (Mosheng de pengyou) is
based on the design and content by Walker and Lang and is an extensive
audio program. The first of these DVD's is being published in November
2005. Designed for the autonomous learner, this course introduces the
novice student to the culture and language of communicating in everyday
spoken Chinese.

**Audio and print:** The first of a multi-volume set was published in
2004. It covers instructional expressions, recognizing and addressing
people in their social environments, and discussing people and their
activities, and locations. The book functions as a supplement to the
audio program, which carries most of the instructional burden.

***Korean Headstart: Beginning Korean***

The goal of this project is to produce first-level materials for
students with no previous exposure to the Korean language. Materials
developed comprise a "head-start" package for these true beginners,
introducing them to the Korean sound system, instructional expressions,
and performances of basic personal interactions before introducing
*hangul*, the Korean alphabet. We intend to build the foundation for a
first-level Korean program, with the self-study format that
characterizes individualized learning materials, including print, audio,
and electronic programs. The introduction to spoken Korean is currently
available online (at [http://nealrc.osu.edu](http://nealrc.osu.edu/)).
The final recordings for the introduction to *hangul* will be completed
in December.

***Summer Programs East Asian Concentration* (SPEAC), Mari Noda,
Director**

The year 2004 marked the 11^th^ anniversary of the Summer Programs East
Asian Concentration (SPEAC). This year, SPEAC had intensive language
programs in Chinese and Japanese integrated with a teacher training
program in Chinese and Japanese. The language courses enrolled 67
students and 17 teacher trainees earning 15 graduate credit hours. These
figures indicate that SPEAC language programs have now become an
integral part of the OSU East Asian language learning experience, and
that they contribute significantly to taking the learners from novice to
advanced levels in these languages at a fast pace. Teacher training
participants represented a wide geographical area, from Beijing, Tokyo
to Maryland, Massachusetts, and California. In terms of prior teaching
experience, some of the participants had years of teaching the target
East Asian languages while some others were new to the profession. In
the program evaluation, their feedback was generally highly positive.
Many mentioned the careful balance between the theoretical discussion
and the practical experience of practice of teaching as the most
positive factor in the program.

***East Asian Teacher Training Series***

*Task-based Language Instruction*, Chuanren Ke, University of Iowa - Two
versions of the training program, one in video tape format and the other
as a CD-ROM, are available along with a user guide authored by Ke and
Alan Peterka.

***Foreign Language Publications and Services***

Foreign Language Publications and Services (FLPubs) is a publishing
house that serves as the dissemination vehicle for The National East
Asian Languages Resource Center at The Ohio State University.
Specializing in autonomous learning and classroom teaching materials for
more than a dozen less-commonly-taught languages, FLPubs has served
collegiate, independent, and secondary-school learners since 1987.
Foreign Language Publications and Services has grown significantly since
it joined with the NEALRC and today augments its historical
print-workbook specialty with new NEALRC books, software, and multimedia
titles, and scholarly journals all devoted to language learning and most
dedicated to LCTLs. FLPubs and the NEALRC host exhibit booths at major
language conferences each year and---together with its corporate,
academic, and private distribution partners---FLPubs serves an
international clientele. The catalog Web site uses a dynamic, searchable
form to make it convenient for users to find and obtain materials from
FLPubs. FLPubs distributes a catalog, advertises in select periodicals
and conference programs, conducts strategic mass mailings, partners with
international vendors such as Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, Borders, and
Ingram Book Company, and maintains a web-site ordering system. The
NEALRC published the following book during this reporting period:

**Walker, Galal and Yong Long. 2004. *Chinese: Communicating in the
Culture (Performance Text One)*** and continues to publish two journals:
the ***Journal of the Chinese Language Teachers Association*** and
***Modern Chinese Literature and Culture**.* These journals reach
individual and institutional subscribers in North America, Europe, Asia,
and Oceania.

***Chinese Language Association of Secondary-Elementary Schools*
(CLASS)**

The NEALRC supports the leadership development of CLASS to strengthen
the teaching of Chinese on the pre-college levels. The support enables
the CLASS leadership to attend conferences, develop professional
standards, and to conduct training.

***Chinese Language Field Coalition* (CLFC)**

There are four national organizations in the field of Chinese language
teaching and research in the United States: 1) Chinese Language Teachers
Association (CLTA, at tertiary level); 2) Chinese Language Association
of Secondary-Elementary Schools (CLASS); 3) National Council
Associations of Chinese Language Schools (NCACLS, heritage schools from
Taiwan); and 4) Chinese Schools Association in the United States (CSAUS,
heritage schools from Mainland China). In August 2003, anticipating the
launch of the AP Chinese Project, the four organizations recognized the
necessity to have better communication among them in order to form a
balanced and comprehensive voice towards important issues in the field.
They selected our Center as the base with the title "Chinese Language
Field Coalition" (CLFC), which consists of two representatives from each
organization, and four independent scholars, in total 12 members, with
Dr. Minru Li as the coordinator.

[]{#__RefHeading___Toc94767015 .anchor}National Foreign Language
Resource Center (NFLRC)

####### University of Hawai', at Manoa

1859 East-West Road, #106

Honolulu, HI 96822-2322

Phone: (808) 956-9424

Fax: (808) 956-5983

E-mail: <nflrc@hawaii.edu>

<http://www.nflrc.hawaii.edu/>

The mission of the Hawai'i NFLRC is to provide resources to improve
foreign language education nationally. Projects focus on pedagogy,
materials development, applied linguistics, and SLA research and are
carried out primarily in LCTLs of Asia and the Pacific. The NFLRC
director is Richard Schmidt; a national board provides advice and
evaluation for center projects.

# Projects 2002--2006

Conversation analysis as an approach to second language acquisition

Project director: Gabriele Kasper - language: German

This project uses the analytical tools of Conversation Analysis (CA) to
examine the learning activities afforded by different activities in
German foreign language classrooms, as well as out-of-classroom settings
such as conversation partner sessions and proficiency testing
interviews. A 2003 workshop provided hands-on training in CLAN software
for CA, and a symposium in 2006 will bring together scholars working in
various languages who use CA to understand the processes of second
language acquisition.

Corpus linguistics for language teaching and learning

Project director: Robert Bley-Vroman - language: Korean

Readily available collections of written or spoken language and
easy-to-use analytical tools offer exciting possibilities for using the
techniques of corpus linguistics to improve language teaching and
learning. This project focuses on Korean, for which there has been
explosive growth in corpora and software but no prior work on
pedagogical corpus linguistics. Products will include a volume of
studies applying corpus linguistics to problems in Korean language
teaching and learning and a technical report on the uses of language
corpora in teaching foreign languages in general.

Distance education, distributed learning, and introductory language
instruction

Project directors: David Hiple, Stephen Tschudi - languages: Chinese,
Filipino, Ilokano, Indonesian, Khmer, Thai

The NFLRC has been carrying out a series of interrelated distance
education projects since 1995. In the current grant cycle, a course
shell, originally developed for online advanced reading and listening
courses in East Asian languages, is being used to develop a prototype
distributed model featuring a mix of online instruction and face-to-face
tutorials. An experimental two-year introductory course sequence in
Mandarin Chinese is being developed and taught to cohorts of students at
the University of Hawai'i and Dillard University, an HBCU (Historically
Black Colleges and Universities) in New Orleans.

Elicited imitation as an oral proficiency measure

Project director: Craig Chaudron - languages: Indonesian, Vietnamese

This project will develop elicited imitation, sometimes referred to as
"sentence repetition," as a standardized measurement instrument of
foreign language linguistic proficiency. A completed test will be
developed for Vietnamese and made available in a ready-to-use
computerized format, along with guidelines on administration, scoring,
and interpretation. In addition, a handbook on elicited imitation will
be developed containing guidelines for the development of comparable
measures in any language.

Heritage language education

Project directors: Kathryn Davis, John Mayer - languages: Samoan,
Ilokano

The NFLRC is cooperating with the University of Hawai'i Center for
Second Language Research in supporting the development of heritage
language curricula for Hawai'i public schools, sponsoring a conference
on Cultural Diversity and Language Education, and hosting the annual
conference of the Association for the Teaching of the Samoan Language.

Issues in placement

Project directors: J. D. Brown, Thom Hudson - languages: all

This testing project involves the development of a manual of best
practices in placement in modern language programs. The focus is placed
not only on traditional foreign language placement problems such as
articulation between secondary and university programs but also such
areas as the placement of heritage students and placement issues
following study abroad programs.

**Language Learning and Technology**

Editors: Dorothy Chun, Irene Thompson\
Managing editor: Pamela DaGrossa\
Languages: all

*Language Learning and Technology* is a refereed journal, published
exclusively on the World Wide Web, which began publication in July 1997.
The journal seeks to disseminate research to foreign and second language
educators in the United States and around the world on issues related to
technology and language education. The journal is co-sponsored by NFLRC
and CLEAR, the Michigan State University Center for Language Education
and Research.

Reading in a Foreign Language

Editors: Richard Day, Thom Hudson, managing editor: Kerri Russell -
languages: all

*Reading in a Foreign Language* is a refereed international journal of
issues in foreign language reading and literacy, published twice yearly
on the World Wide Web and sponsored by NFLRC and the University of
Hawai'i College of Languages, Linguistics and Literature.

Teacher training for Southeast Asian languages

Directors: David Hiple, Stephen Tschudi - languages: Filipino, Ilokano,
Indonesian, Khmer, Thai

Through direct teacher training and other support, the NFLRC has helped
enhance U.S. capacity in Southeast Asian languages in many ways,
including:

• Hosting the 2004 meeting of the Council of Teachers of Southeast Asian
Languages (COTSEAL);

• Providing Web hosting for COTSEAL at no cost;

• Training local tutors at in-country workshops for advanced American
learners of Southeast Asian languages in Cambodia, Indonesia, the
Philippines, and Vietnam; and

• Training UH Southeast Asian language faculty to develop Web-based
courses and instructional resources during the NFLRC 2004 summer
institute.

Technology-mediated professional development courses

Directors: David Hiple, Stephen Tschudi - languages: all

This project (also funded by Title II -- NCLB) will create and deliver
online three new teaching methodology courses for pre- and in-service
language teachers to enhance their knowledge of principles and practices
of the field and their use of computers and other technologies.

**National K-12 Foreign Language Resource Center (NFLRC)**\
**Iowa State University**

N131 Lagomarcino Hall

Ames, Iowa 50011

Phone: (515) 294-6699

E-mail: <nflrc@iastate.edu>

<http://www.educ.iastate.edu/nflrc/>

# In recognition of the language needs of American children, the NFLRC strengthens student learning though collaborative efforts to promote extended-sequence K-12 foreign language programs and improved teacher preparation. By building a sound foundation in early language study, the NFLRC promotes post-secondary, as well as life-long language learning.

Dr. Marcia Harmon Rosenbusch, NFLRC Director; Adjunct Associate
Professor, Departments of Curriculum and Instruction and Foreign
Languages and Literatures. Research interests: Early foreign language
teaching, learning, and language assessment; teacher training.

> Nancy C. Rhodes, NFLRC Associate Director; Director, Foreign Language
> Education Division, Center for Applied Linguistics, Washington, D.C.
> Research interests: Early foreign language teaching, learning, and
> language assessment.

Lynn Thompson, Research Associate, Center for Applied Linguistics,
Washington, D.C. Research interests: Oral proficiency assessment,
teacher training.

Ingrid Pufahl, Research Associate, Center for Applied Linguistics,
Washington, D.C. Research interests: Technology in language learning,
discourse analysis.

Major Research or curricular projects now underway:

> **Center for Applied Linguistics**: As a subcontractor with the NFLRC,
> the Center for Applied Linguistics is conducting four projects
> addressing various aspects of language assessment that are critical to
> enhancing high quality standards-based elementary school foreign
> language instruction. The projects include:

\(a\) *Listening and Reading Foreign Language Test for Children: A
Framework Development and Feasibility Study*. Goals are to (1) develop a
framework for a foreign language listening and reading assessment for
elementary school children, including recommendations for a Spanish
assessment instrument, and (2) investigate the feasibility of a
technology-mediated assessment.

\(b\) *Development of a Foreign Language Test for Childre*n. The goal of
this project is to develop a listening and speaking assessment following
the recommendations of the framework study.

> \(c\) *Development of an Administrator's Manual and Test
> Administration Kit for the Early Language Listening and Oral
> Proficiency Assessment (ELLOPA*). The goal of this project is to
> develop a training manual and test kit for the ELLOPA. In-service
> training in the administration and rating of the ELLOPA will also be
> offered, using the developed materials.

\(d\) *Enhancement of the Directory of K-12 Foreign Language Assessment
Instruments and Resources.* The goal of this project is to revise and
update the Directory of K-12 Foreign Language Assessment Instruments and
Resources (Thompson, 2000*)*, a Web-based NFLRC publication.

In addition to these activities, CAL staff has completed work on a
publication, *Language by Video: An Overview of Foreign Language
Instructional Videos for Children,* published jointly in 2004 by the
NFLRC, CAL/Delta, and the Brown University Regional Educational LAB.
Based on research conducted by the NFLRC, *Language by Video* describes
the overall benefits of video-based language instruction, pros and cons
of five commonly-used programs, and provides recommendations to
educators about classroom use of video-based programs.

> **National K-12 Foreign Language Resource Center:**
>
> *(a) New Visions in Action.* During 2002-03 the NVIA national survey,
> funded by the U.S. Department of Education's Title VI International
> Research and Studies Program, was made available to the profession to
> gather information about perceptions regarding what constitutes ideal
> professional practice in the areas of: 1) Curriculum, Instruction,
> Assessment, and Articulation; 2) Teacher Development; 3) Teacher
> Recruitment and Retention; and 4) Research. Several aspects of the
> NVIA survey make it unique: a) the survey was specifically designed to
> be deployed online in order to obtain the highest possible response
> rate and sample representation; b) it was the first attempt to broadly
> measure participants' perceptions on a wide variety of aspects that
> affect the profession at large, ranging from practice in K-12 to
> university settings, and from issues concerning early language
> learning to retention of foreign language teachers. An overview of
> survey results was published online in 2003 at
> \<<http://www.educ.iastate.edu/newvisions>\> and results have yielded
> important information used to help the NVIA task forces identify
> foreign language programs that exemplify aspects of ideal professional
> practice. Currently programs considered exemplary according to
> specified criteria are being nominated for review by NVIA working
> groups. Selected programs will be shared on the NVIA Website during
> 2005. Additionally a publication on the complete survey findings is
> currently in preparation.
>
> *(b) Survey in collaboration with the Northeast Conference on the
> Teaching of Foreign Languages on the Impact of the No Child Left
> Behind Act.* The NFLRC collaborated with the Northeast Conference on
> the Teaching of Foreign Languages (NECTFL) on the design of a survey
> to assess PK-12 foreign language program cut backs in the 2002-03
> academic year among member states. Specifically, the survey examined
> (1) grade levels of foreign language instruction, (2) foreign language
> teaching positions, and (3) languages for which instruction was
> eliminated or scaled back and the perceived impetus for these actions
> by survey respondents. The NFLRC analyzed the data and submitted a
> written report on the survey findings to NECTFL. An article on the
> results of the survey is currently in press.
>
> *(c) Wyoming Foreign Language in the Elementary School Project
> (WYFLES).* This Wyoming project provided funding to the NFLRC for
> program evaluation from a U.S. Department of Education Foreign
> Language Assistance Program (FLAP) grant. For this evaluation in
> spring 2003 the NFLRC developed attitude surveys for 1) classroom
> teachers, 2) elementary students, 3) administrators, and 4) parents.
> The surveys were used in schools participating in each of the four
> elementary school Spanish program models established through WYFLES
> FLAP funding. The surveys were administered by the WYFLES project and
> returned to the NFLRC, which analyzed the data and prepared a written
> report of the attitudes and perceptions of the WYFLES participants in
> the four elementary school program models. In spring 2004 the NFLRC
> assisted with the design of student assessments and analyzed the data
> and prepared a written report on the student assessments and on
> student ELLOPA assessments.
>
> *(d) Survey: Threats to Elementary School Foreign Language Program.*
> The NFLRC designed an electronic national survey for elementary school
> foreign language teachers that examined threats of program elimination
> and/or cutbacks experienced across the nation during the 2002-03
> academic year. The survey examined the most important threat(s) the
> early language programs encountered, the source of the threat(s)
> (administration, budget, etc.) and the strategies used to counter the
> threat(s) that resulted in successfully maintaining the program.
>
> *(e) Longitudinal Study of Student Oral Proficiency and Cultural
> Attitudes in a Midwest School District: Grades 1-6.* The NFLRC was
> invited by a midwest school district to assess the language skills and
> cultural attitudes of sixth grade students who have been in the
> district's content-related Spanish program since first grade. This
> assessment is a follow up on assessments the NFLRC completed on these
> same students in 2000 when they were in second grade and in 2002 when
> they were in fourth grade. The instrument used for these longitudinal
> assessments was the Student Oral Proficiency Assessment (SOPA) and a
> cultural attitude survey.
>
> *(f) NFLRC Training Initiatives and Curriculum Development Projects.*
> The core activities of the NFLRC, national teacher training institutes
> and curriculum development projects, aim to:
>
> \(1\) Enhance participants' knowledge and skills in language and
> content, and establish collaborative professional relationships among
> the leaders, K-12 language teachers, district supervisors of foreign
> languages, and post-secondary teacher educators from across the nation
> such as with the 2002 K-8 Arabic, Hebrew, and Japanese institute and
> the 2005 K-8 Arabic, Hebrew, Japanese, and Russian institute.
>
> \(2\) Develop K-12 curriculum materials. The NFLRC has published nine
> thematic units, developed by institute participants, which exemplify a
> new approach to teaching language in which, instead of being
> textbook-based, content is focused on a theme that integrates
> language, subject matter content, and culture. As an example, a
> recently published thematic unit for middle school students of Spanish
> addresses a story about slavery in the mid-1800s in Puerto Rico: *La
> peineta colorada*.
>
> \(3\) Enhance skills in action research. Participants in the 2002
> Action Research institute explored critical issues in teaching and
> learning foreign languages, formulated questions related to their own
> teaching situations, and designed research projects that they
> initiated during the 2002-03 academic year. Participants returned to
> the NFLRC in the summer of 2003 for a three-day institute designed to
> provide further guidance on their research projects. Project leader
> Dr. Richard Donato led the discussions on strategies for data analysis
> and writing up findings. Participants met again in Washington, D.C. in
> January 2004 to share their research findings and questions related to
> data analysis and writing. Participants are currently finalizing their
> research articles.
>
> \(4\) Build leadership capability. The NFLRC offered the 2003
> Mentoring, Leadership, and Change Institute to assist participants in
> synthesizing their knowledge and skills in all areas of foreign
> language education, in expanding their perspectives on initiating and
> sustaining change, and in acquiring research-based techniques for
> creating effective change through mentoring and leadership.

[]{#__RefHeading___Toc94767016 .anchor}National Middle East Language
Resource Center (NMELRC)

**Brigham Young University**

214 HRCB

Provo, Utah 84602

Phone: (801) 422-7192

Fax: (801) 422-0382

E-mail: <nmelrc@byu.edu>

<http://nmelrc.byu.edu/>

NMELRC coordinates efforts aimed at increasing and improving
opportunities for learning the languages of the Middle East. The center
undertakes and supports projects in areas such as teacher training,
materials development, testing and assessment, integration of pedagogy
and technology, study abroad, and K-12 programs. It works across Middle
East languages to foster cooperation and joint utilization of expertise
and resources.

Key academic staff and their Research interests

NMELRC represents a consortium of language experts from more than twenty
universities. The associate directors, each charged with primary
oversight of one of the major languages of the region, are: Mahmoud
Al-Batal (Arabic), Emory University; Shmuel Bolozky (Hebrew), the
University of Massachusetts-Amherst; Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak (Persian),
University of Maryland; and Erika H. Gilson (Turkish), Princeton
University. Key SLA personnel and their research interests include:

-   Kirk Belnap: teaching and learning of Arabic, language attitudes,
    language policy and planning, literacy

-   Mahmoud Al-Batal: teaching Arabic as a foreign language, discourse
    analysis

-   Micheline Chalhoub-Deville: second/foreign language assessment

-   Martha Schulte-Nafeh: Arabic syntax

-   Shmuel Bolozky: Hebrew linguistics; current focus: building a Spoken
    Hebrew corpus which can be exploited by language learners

-   Esther Raizen: teaching Hebrew as a foreign language,
    computer-assisted instruction, computational linguistics

-   Erika Gilson: language acquisition, writing as an enabling language
    learning activity, instructional technology and language learning

**Major research and curricular projects now underway**

*Name of project:* Strategic Study of Middle East Language Learning

*Goals of project:* Assess needs and identify solutions.

*Key methodologies:* We are surveying students and teachers at all
institutions with Title VI Middle East NRCs, as well as a stratified
random sample of other institutions. To be followed by site visits.

*Desired impact of project:* Leverage resources to significantly expand
and improve learning opportunities for students and encourage greater
professionalism in LCTLs.

*Name of project:* Intensive Teacher Training Seminars

*Goals of project:* Improve quality of instruction nationwide.

*Key methodologies:* Two-week seminars at Middlebury College. One-week
workshop for Hebrew at Brandeis. Turkish and Persian in planning.

*Desired impact of project:* We may only reach a limited number of
instructors but we have already found that the leavening effect is
considerable.

*Name of project:* Online Professional Development Seminars

*Goals of project:* Provide similar training benefits nationwide.

*Key methodologies:* Interactive monthly webcast starting in January,
incorporating Arabic, Hebrew, Persian and Turkish Best Practice video
footage.

*Desired impact of project:* Reach instructors of all ME languages, many
of whom cannot travel due to financial or other reasons.

*Name of project:* [*Sevgili Murat* ("Dear Murat") - Turkish
Film](http://nmelrc.org/index.php?module=pagemaster&PAGE_user_op=view_page&PAGE_id=16&MMN_position=38:34)

*Goals of project:* Provide rich source of comprehensible input and
cultural material for beginning and intermediate students.

*Key methodologies:* In-country team shot video in 2004 with first DVDs
already in use in almost 20 universities. Full editing and development
of learning activities will take two more years.

*Desired impact of project:* Motivate learners and transform classrooms
to be more communicative.

*Name of project:* Persian Syllabus Project

*Goals of project:* Construct model syllabus for Persian curriculum.

*Key methodologies:* Leading figures of Persian field, supported by
expert consultants, design model Persian curriculum, building on SLA
research and tried and tested models from other languages.

*Desired impact of project:* Transform Persian field, likely leading to
a common communicative curriculum.

*Name of project:* Online Modern Hebrew Reading and List. Comparative
Proficiency Test

*Goals of project:* Create inexpensive assessment measure that can be
used nationwide and will encourage program assessment.

*Key methodologies:* Cooperate with Oregon LRC.

*Desired impact of project:* Develop cost efficient model that can be
used for all Middle East languages.

*Name of project:* Vernacular Arabic Video Project

*Goals of project:* Collect vernacular Arabic footage (narratives,
interviews, daily-life situations) to provide comprehensible input for
beginning and intermediate students nationwide.

*Key methodologies:* Distribution of video on DVD with exercises and
audio components available online.

*Desired impact of project:* Provide access to Spoken Arabic to the
thousands of students.

[]{#__RefHeading___Toc94767017 .anchor}Slavic and East European Language
Resource Center (SEELRC)

+-----------------------------------+-----------------------------------+
| Duke University                   | University of North Carolina,     |
|                                   | Chapel Hill                       |
| Box 90260                         |                                   |
|                                   | CB#5125, 223 East Franklin St.    |
| Durham, NC 27708-0260             |                                   |
|                                   | Chapel Hill, NC 27599-5125        |
| Phone: 919-660-3157               |                                   |
|                                   | Phone: 919-962-0901               |
| Fax: 919-660-3188                 |                                   |
|                                   | Fax: 919-962-2494                 |
| E-Mail: <eda@duke.edu>            |                                   |
|                                   | E-mail: <janda@unc.edu>           |
+-----------------------------------+-----------------------------------+
| <http://seelrc.org/>              |                                   |
+-----------------------------------+-----------------------------------+

Established in 1999 and operated jointly by Duke University and the
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the Slavic and East
European Language Resource Center (SEELRC) is one of fourteen National
Foreign Language Resource Centers.

The mission of SEELRC is to improve the national capacity to teach and
learn Slavic and East European languages. The Center accomplishes this
by developing teaching and assessment materials as well as by supporting
research and a variety of activities, including undergraduate and
graduate education and exchange programs, conferences, seminars, and
public outreach programs. Funding for the Center comes from the U.S.
Department of Education under Title VI of the Higher Education Act of
1965.

# Projects

The SEELRC\'s mission is, in part, to produce materials to aid the
teaching and learning of the languages of our world region. Current
projects include:

## 

## [Reference Grammar Network]{.underline}

A set of parallel online grammars of the languages of our world region.
Each grammar has been written by world experts on that language, and is
indexed for instantaneous comparison of semantic fields across
languages. Supplementary, self-grading exercises for advanced-level
users accompany each grammar. Additionally, individual grammars can be
downloaded for offline use. The Czech, Macedonian, Russian (with
exercises) and Polish grammars are currently available online, with
Romanian, Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian, and Georgian available soon.

## [Grammatical Dictionaries]{.underline}

A searchable database of full word paradigms with native-speaker
examples for each inflection. Each entry

includes an English glossary and detailed annotation for semantics and
pronunciation variants. The Grammatical Dictionaries for Russian and
Czech are currently under development and will be released once they
have 5,000 headword entries.

## [Language and Culture Through Film]{.underline}

An innovative project to teach language and culture to advanced-level
students. This project integrates film clips, full transcript, embedded
dictionary, and live, online exercises. Instructors can track student
progress and answers through a robust reporting system. The Russian
language version is currently available and a supplement on the Russian
Avant Garde is under development. Language and Culture Through Film is
available online as well as through a four-CD standalone version.

[Text Databases]{.underline}

Searchable concordance of the entire works of Evgeny Zamyatin. The works
of Mikhail Bulgakov will be available in the near future. These
databases are intended for scholarly purposes only.

## [Virtual Petersburg]{.underline}

Tour St. Petersburg, virtually allow students to explore hundreds of
photos and virtual reality panoramic movies of St. Petersburg, Peterhof,
Helsinki, Stockholm, Tallinn, Narva, and more.

## 

## [Case and Aspect Book Series]{.underline}

Complete descriptions of the meanings and uses of all of the cases in a
given language (for example, nominative, genitive, dative, etc.), plus
various verbal phenomena relating to aspect (the use of perfective and
imperfective verbs, plus verbs of motion, etc.), written in an
accessible style, and illustrated with authentic examples drawn from an
extensive database representing a variety of genres and topics. Selected
draft and sample chapters of the Case Books for Czech and Russian are
currently available online.

## [Webliographies]{.underline}

SEELRC maintains webliographics (annotated bibliographies of Web sites)
on the languages and cultures of the countries of our region. At present
webliographies on the following languages and cultures are included:
[Albanian](http://www.seelrc.org/webliography/albanian.ptml),
[Armenian](http://www.seelrc.org/webliography/armenian.ptml),
[Belarusian](http://www.seelrc.org/webliography/belarusian.ptml),
[Bosnian, Croatian,
Serbian](http://www.seelrc.org/webliography/bcs.ptml),
[Bulgarian](http://www.seelrc.org/webliography/bulgarian.ptml),
[Czech](http://www.seelrc.org/webliography/czech.ptml),
[Georgian](http://www.seelrc.org/webliography/georgian.ptml),
[Greek](http://www.seelrc.org/webliography/greek.ptml),
[Hungarian](http://www.seelrc.org/webliography/hungarian.ptml),
[Macedonian](http://www.seelrc.org/webliography/macedonian.ptml),
[Polish](http://www.seelrc.org/webliography/polish.ptml),
[Romanian](http://www.seelrc.org/webliography/romanian.ptml),
[Russian](http://www.seelrc.org/webliography/russian.ptml),
[Slovak](http://www.seelrc.org/webliography/slovak.ptml),
[Slovenian](http://www.seelrc.org/webliography/slovenian.ptml),
[Turkish](http://www.seelrc.org/webliography/turkish.ptml), and
[Ukrainian](http://www.seelrc.org/webliography/ukrainian.ptml).

## 

## [Glossos]{.underline}

*Glossos* is a peer-reviewed online journal devoted to publishing
original, independent research in languages and linguistics. In addition
to publishing articles devoted to any of the world\'s languages,
*Glossos* also exists to provide an avenue of publication for articles
based on [SEELRC](http://www.seelrc.org/) research projects. In this
way, *Glossos* is devoted to the specific needs of Slavic and East
European language instructors and learners, as well as the applied and
theoretical linguistics communities.

## [Summer Institutes]{.underline}

Each year, SEELRC sponsors a Summer Institute for novice and
professional teachers (K-12 and university faculty) and language program
coordinators in Slavic and East European languages and language
technologies. Topics have included:

-   Teaching film and culture

-   Legal and business Russian

-   The use of technology in the language classroom

-   Integrating heritage students in the language classroom

-   Addressing the needs of differently-abled students

-   Using computer technologies to create pedagogical materials

-   The role of grammar in proficiency-based instruction

-   Ethnicity, religion, and nationalism and their impact on language

-   Popular culture and language instruction

-   Web resources for Slavic and East European language teachers

[]{#__RefHeading___Toc94767018 .anchor}South Asia Language Resource
Center (SALRC)

**The University of Chicago**\
Kelly Hall 315\
5848 S. University Avenue\
Chicago, IL 60637

Phone: (773) 834 3399

E-mail: <salrc@uchicago.edu>

**Focus of LRC/NFLI program**

Create and disseminate new resources for teaching and research on South
Asian languages, primarily via the internet. Provide pedagogical and
technological workshops and support for South Asia language faculty.

**Key academic staff and their research interests**

Steven M. Poulos, SALRC Director: Hindi and Urdu.

**Major research and curricular projects now underway**

5.1 *On-line Sindhi -* Jennifer Cole (University of Illinois)

5.1.a *The Development of an Online Course in Spoken and Written Sindhi*

5.1.b *Sindhi Online: Phase II Development and Creation*

The goal of this project is to develop an online course in spoken and
written Sindhi at the beginning level. The target audience is adult
learners, with special focus on college-age students. The materials are
designed to be used as a self-guided study, but can easily be adopted in
a university-level classroom-based course with a Sindhi-speaking
instructor.

5.2 *Tibetan Language Learning Resources* - David Germano and others
(University of Virginia and multiple other institutions)

This project will produce online resources with original audio-video
material shot in Lhasa for studying advanced spoken Tibetan both in
colloquial and literary contexts. Advanced colloquial materials will be
purely digital.

5.3 *First Year Classical Literary Tibetan Primer -* John Dunne
(University of Wisconsin)

To develop a comprehensive and practical first year classical literary
Tibetan primer for distribution over the Internet. The primer will
complement the SALRC supported project *Tibetan Language Learning
Resources*.

5.4 *Marathi integrated online and print media courses -* Phillip
Engblom (University of Chicago)

5.4.a *Developing a Web-Based First-Year Marathi Course*

Online interactive first-year Marathi course based on the first-year
Marathi textbook [Marathi in Context]{.underline}.

5.4.b *Development of Integrated Intermediate Marathi Course*

This project will rectify the situation in which there has been no text
available that presents grammar, exercises, conversational situations,
and readings in a graded and integrated way as a coherent intermediate
Marathi course.

5.5 *Tamil online courses -* Vasu Renganathan (University of
Pennsylvania)

5.5.a *An Interactive Digital Reader and Grammar for Elementary Tamil*

The first of four phases to create a comprehensive, interactive digital
reader and grammar for learning Tamil. This phase will produce an
interactive reader and grammar for elementary Tamil to be delivered in
three media: Web, CD ROM and book.

5.5.b *Tamil Language In Context: An Interactive Reader and Grammar for
Intermediate Tamil*

The second phase to cover the second year curriculum. Much attention
will be paid in this project to develop a set of readings for literary
Tamil along with materials that would enhance the spoken skill that is
acquired during the first year of learning.

5.6 *Hindi Online -* Rakesh Bhatt and others (University of Illinois,
University of Texas, Syracuse)

Three-year integrated Hindi language instruction via the Web through
online language courses that incorporate interactive technologies to
teach skills for spoken and written language. The goal of these
materials will be to prepare learners to become functionally bilingual
and bicultural in the Hindi language. In order to accomplish that goal,
we will closely follow the communicative-interactional teaching
methodology, supplemented with appropriate grammatical details.

5.7 *Rehabilitation of Hindi Video Materials -* Vijay Gambhir and others
(University of Pennsylvania, University of Texas)

The quality and pedagogic utility of widely used Hindi materials will be
restored and enhanced by converting them into digital format and adding
new exercises (including pre and post activities) and multimedia
learning tools. These will preserve and enhance the quality of fading
video materials.

5.8 *Building a Comprehensive Database of Hindi Vocabulary Words -*
Jishnu Shankar and others (Syracuse, University of Texas)

To develop online vocabulary lists as well as a dictionary of basic
words crucial for first and second year Hindi courses.

5.9 *A Web-based course in natural language Nepali -* Kathryn March and
others (Cornell)

This project will refresh the excellent pedagogical learning resources
developed at Cornell by constructing a Web-based course in natural
language Nepali. We will produce a beginner level online course and
glossary in Nepali Unicode for self-study of both spoken and literary
Nepali in a natural language environment.

5.10 *Intermediate Language Curricula Improvement (Urdu, Nepali, and
Tamil) -* Jonathan Mark Keynoter, South Asia Summer Language Institute

South Asian languages taught in the South Asia Summer Language Institute
and many departments around the country are not taking advantage of
modern pedagogical approaches or modern technological advances. While
there is need for significant improvement at all levels, this proposal
requests funds to focus on intermediate language training.

5.11 *Gujarati in Cultural Context (Beginning Gujarati Interactive
Reader) -* Babul Soother (University of Pennsylvania)

A proposal to revise and upgrade existing teaching and learning material
for Beginning Gujarati available at
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/plc/gujarati/.

5.12 *Collaborative South Asian Language Learning Using
Handheld/Wireless Technology -*

Konstantin Läufer and others (Loyola University of Chicago))

To develop a suite of software applications to support the collaborative
learning of South Asian languages using handheld and wireless devices.
Specifically, we plan to develop several applications that support
various forms of collaborative interactions. (n.b. This project will be
focusing on Urdu.)

5.13 *Workshop on the Development of Bengali Teaching Materials*

The SALRC has not yet participated in a project to enhance Bengali
teaching in the United States with appropriate Web-based material
Existing materials date from the 1960s and early 1970s. This ongoing
workshop combines ideas on how to go about developing a Bengali project,
considering existing resources and potential new players in such a
project in the development of project plan.

5.14 *Kannada at Iowa*

The University of Iowa is initiating the study of Kannada on its campus
in spring 2005. There are no suitable teaching materials for any level
of Kannada. This ongoing workshop considers the unique needs of the Iowa
community where undergraduate students can study in Mysore for a
semester and where the International Studies NRC has taken a particular
interest in the teaching of Kannada and will support it. The workshop
also examines the present state of Kannada teaching materials to arrive
at a roadmap to address immediate as well as long term needs.

5.15 *Development of Online Kannada Language Pedagogical Material -*
Vimala Rajagopal and others (University of Pennsylvania, Villanova)

A planning grant to develop the initial phase of a Web-based curriculum
for Kannada.

[Completed in 2004]{.underline}

5.16 *Intermediate Urdu Project -* Amy Bard and others (Columbia,
Harvard, Virginia)

A planning grant to develop an intermediate-level Urdu textbook with Web
enhancement. The project targets a mixed, but largely heritage-learner
population, and will interlock with the first-year Urdu textbook and
sound materials created at Harvard.

5.17 *Standard Proficiency/Competency Examination for Pashto -*
Benedicte Grima Santry (University of Pennsylvania)

ACTFL currently provides no proficiency testing for Pashto. This project
filled that gap. The exam tests four skill areas: listening
comprehension, reading comprehension, writing, and spoken proficiency.
Each skill area is broken into four proficiency levels.

5.18 *Web-based Resources for the Study of Pashto Literature -* Wilma
Heston (University of Pennsylvania)

An expandable Web site to (a) serve as a repository for information on
current teaching and research in Pashto language and literature and (2)
offer an initial set of modules for the study of Pashto literature.
These modules can be used for self-instruction, as a supplement for
existing first and second year teaching materials, or as a first step
toward an online course in Advanced Readings in Pashto.

**Other areas of research strength**

Technological tools for language faculty

Pedagogical upgrading for language faculty