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Objectives,
Activities, & Accomplishments of the Council
Before the Council was established in 1990 there
were no institutional mechanisms that worked to integrate issues
important to less commonly taught languages into national systems
of foreign language instruction in the United States. Since being
established, the Council has carried out a variety of activities
to raise the awareness of the importance of less commonly taught
languages and to build a framework for the development of professions
focusing on the teaching and learning of these languages.
The Council was established in 1990 with funding
from the Ford Foundation to become a national alliances of organizations
representing individual languages and language groups of less
commonly taught languages in the United States. The mission of
this alliance was to directly benefit the growth and development
of these language-specific programs. Once established, the Council,
in collaboration with the National Foreign Language Center (NFLC), worked to develop
a conceptual framework designed to help sustain and enrich LCTL
programs in American academic institutions by sharing resources
and expertise across the country.
 Activities
CouncilNet: This interactive website,
CouncilNet, serves as a medium for Council members to communicate
on critical issues and to share information, and as an easily
accessible source of information important to the growth and development
of the Council's member organizations and the field of less commonly
taught languages.
Annual Conference: Since October of 1997,
the Council has sponsored an annual Conference in conjunction
with the annual Council Assembly. The Fifth Annual Conference
was held on April 12-14, 2002 in Arlington, Virginia.
The Council is also involved in the following on-going activities:
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planning for
and establishing a national policy for building the national
capacity for the study of the LCTLs;
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conducting research
to promote and facilitate the learning and teaching of the
LCTLs;
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enhancing the
capacity of existing LCTL national associations, and organizing
new ones;
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establishing
a system for networking and communication among member organizations,
and facilitating their collective efforts to solve problems
in the LCTL field;
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developing language
learning frameworks to guide teacher training, curriculum
design, materials development, and seek ways to address
problems of articulation among different levels of the American
educational system;
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working, on behalf
of the members, with government agencies, foundations, and
the general foreign language community on policy issues
and to seek funding to establish effective standards for
the less commonly taught language field;
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collecting data
on the need, demand, and supply capacity of individual less
commonly taught languages; and
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fostering national
and international linkages within and across the various
language areas, as well as with domestic and international
user groups.
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Accomplishments
The National Council of Organizations of Less Commonly Taught
Languages (NCOLCTL) was inaugurated during the 4th Annual Conference
of the Less Commonly Taught Languages held at the National Foreign
Language Center on May 18, 1990. Eleven organizations formed the
founding members of the Council. Since its founding the Council
has been engaged in a variety of activities designed to strengthen
the teaching and learning of less commonly taught languages in
the United States. Below is a brief summary of the Council's main
accomplishments organized by the following categories:
ANNUAL ASSEMBLIES / MEETINGS / CONFERENCES
TEACHER
TRAINING
DATA COLLECTION
SUPPORT
TO MEMBER ORGANIZATIONS
NEW ORGANIZATION
BUILDING
NETWORKING
& PUBLICATIONS
ANNUAL ASSEMBLIES / MEETINGS / CONFERENCES
First Annual Assembly, May 1990
Second Annual Assembly, May 1991
Third Annual Assembly, September 1992
Fourth Annual Assembly, June 1993
Language Learning Framework Meeting, May 1993
Fifth Annual Assembly, May 1994
Sixth Annual Assembly, April 1995
Language Learning Framework Meeting, April 1995
National Conference, January 1996
Seventh Annual Assembly, March 1997
First Annual Conference on LCTLs and Eighth Annual
Assembly, October, 1997
Second Annual Conference on LCTLs and Ninth Annual
Assembly, September, 1998
Third Annual NCOLCTL Conference and Tenth Annual
Assembly, May, 2000
Fourth Annual NCOLCTL Conference and Eleventh
Annual Assembly, April, 2001
Fifth Annual NCOLCTL Conference and Twelfth Annual
Assembly, April, 2002
Sixth Annual NCOLCTL Conference and Thirteenth
Annual Assembly, April 2003
Seventh Annual NCOLCTL Conference and Fourteenth
Annual Assembly, April - May 2004
Eighth Annual NCOLCTL Conference and Fifteenth Annual Assembly, April 2005
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TEACHER
TRAINING
One of the Council's goals is to strengthen the
teaching of less commonly taught languages. As part of achieving
this goal, the Council organizes teacher training seminars.
In July 1990 a Teacher Training Workshop at Bryn
Mawr was organized. This workshop provided an opportunity for
experienced program managers to plan a pilot workshop for teacher
trainers. It was attended by key figures in teacher training in
foreign languages, and particularly in the LCTLs.
A Teacher Training Seminar was also convened at
Bryn Mawr at June 22-28, 1991. This meeting resulted in the formation
of a conceptual framework and the development of practical knowledge
to enable program managers and teacher trainers to create new
designs and formats for teacher training at their home institutions.
It also enabled them to assume responsibility for organizing workshops
at other summer language training institutes conducted for some
of the less commonly taught languages. One of the key outcomes
of this work was an understanding that the LCTL Fields share many
common problems which might be best addressed through collective
solutions in the form of a generic, learner-centered and learner-driven
language learning frameworks (LLFs). It was also agreed that the
generic LLFs could be adapted and modified to develop language-specific
LLFs.
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DATA COLLECTION
The National Task Force on Data Collection, during
a meeting held September 22-23, 1990, identified the kind of information
needed for the LCTL field. The instruments and templates resulting
from this meeting have served as a model for NCOLCTL to guide
efforts of the member organizations to collect data on resources
and process to enhance the learning of less commonly taught foreign
languages.
The Council also designed and developed a resources
overview packet, including a listing and sample of widely used
and recommended texts, short statements from the authors summarizing
the goals and merits of their books along with users' comments,
sample curriculum outlines, and the names of individuals willing
to serve as curriculum consultants.
The Council is also engaged in developing electronic
databases for the LCTL fields, that includes information on members
name, addresses, phone and fax numbers,e-mail addresses, areas
of academic specialization, etc.
One of the more important resources developed
by the Council and its members are the twenty-one Language Learning
Frameworks that have become a central driving force in efforts
to strengthen the member's language fields. The LLFs provide key
leverage points for change and improvement and are based on field-wide
agreements as to the language learning goals for learners of a
given language, as well as to agreement on the most effective
design of the language learning environments necessary to achieve
these goals. Thus, the LLFs are unique in that they strive to
develop field-wide standards for the actual learning of a given
language rather than merely standards for individual learner outcomes
which constitute a critical component that has been addressed
for some time in language education. They are intended to serve
as the basis for curriculum development, the development of instructional
materialism, the use of new language learning technologies, and
the training of teachers and teacher trainers. The Council believes
that this collective effort to develop such frameworks is unprecedented
in the learning and teaching of LCTLs and may well have an impact
on the way all languages are taught in the future.
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to Accomplishments
SUPPORT
TO MEMBER ORGANIZATIONS
Funds raised by the Council have been allocated
to the original members to strengthen their role in the field
of less commonly taught languages in ways that would not be possible
under normal circumstances.
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to Accomplishments
NEW
ORGANIZATION BUILDING
The Council has been instrumental in founding
national teachers organizations in language fields for which there
were none. The following organizations were created through Council
efforts:
Formation of the African Languages Teachers Association
(ALTA) in 1990.
Formation of the South Asian Languages Teachers
Association (SALTA) in 1993.
Formation of the American Association of Teachers
of Korean (AATK) in 1994.
Formation of the Cantonese Language Association
(CLA) in 1994.
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NETWORKING
& PUBLICATIONS
To facilitate communication and networking among
the Council's members, an electronic bulletin board system (BBS)
was developed. This system was replaced by the Internet-based
CouncilNet.
To promote the sharing of information, the Council
published the NCOLCTL Newsletter in 1994, the NCOLCTL Bulletin
in 1995, and the NCOLCTL Newsletter annually since 2000.
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