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• Winter 2001

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President's Message

This is an especially interesting time, I think, to be involved professionally in the learning and teaching of the Less Commonly Taught Languages (LCTLs).  By “interesting,” I do not mean here the sense captured by the putative Ancient Chinese Curse (“May you live in interesting times!”)—although I am sure that all of us feel at moments that we could stand it if things were a little more boring.  Rather, I use the word in its mostly positive sense, captured in my thesaurus by such synonyms as appealing, stimulating, intriguing, inspiring, and exciting, which in turn has such synonyms as dynamic, thrilling, exhilirating, tantalizing, breathtaking, alluring, attractive, tempting, and awesome.  Simply said, there is a great deal going on these days that relates to—or could relate to—the LCTLs.

The activities that are among the most obvious are the professional conferences and meetings that deal with issues related to the teaching and learning of languages other than French, Spanish and English as a Second Language.  In this NCOLCTL Newsletter, there is a list of about 20 professional conferences on language-related issues, and almost all of them have scheduled feature sessions on the LCTLs.  Most of us can remember times, not very long ago, when we would go to a professional conference and have to really hunt to find one or two sessions that were really relevant to our work in the classroom, but that is clearly no longer the case.  Not only do we have our own meetings in the areas of our own specific professional areas (African languages, Arabic, Chinese, Hebrew, Korean, Southeast Asian languages, etc.), but the more general conferences are also paying increasing attention to the LCTLs. For example, the Computer Assisted Language Instruction Consortium (CALICO), which met this March in Orlando, Florida, included sessions about courseware for Cantonese, Chinese, German, Italian, Korean, and Turkish, in addition to software usable for any language.

The most important LCTL conference of all is the annual NCOLCTL Conference, which was held this year in Washington, DC, on April 6-8, where many of us gathered together and shared with each other our insights about common concerns and possible shared solutions.  This year’s program was truly outstanding!  Presenters came from major institutions overseas, as well as from Canada and the United States. The sessions—colloquia, presentations, and demonstrations—represented research, teacher development or program design for more than 40 LCT languages.  If you were not there, you missed a special event.

The explosion of technology and its applications to communication and learning is one of the major factors contributing positively to the excitement in the LCTLs.  Communication has been improved significantly with the establishment of such Websites as Councilnet.org, NASILP.org, and SIL.org, by the online databases at the University of Minnesota (http://carla.acad.umn.edu/lctl/lctl.html) and at UCLA (http://lmp.ucla.edu), and by the development of the National Foreign Language Center’s Langnet.  Just the last couple of years have seen the successful development of many computerized courses and learning activities for LCTL languages, including Arabic, Brazilian Portuguese, Cantonese, Finnish, Hindi, Indonesian, Korean, Kazakh, Persian, Swahili, Thai, Turkish, and Yoruba, among many others.  With excellent authoring software also being developed, such as the MaxAuthor program that the Critical Languages Project at Arizona and NASILP have made available at no charge to anyone who wants to use it, we can expect even more development to be taking place, in the U.S. and around the world. 

Another aspect of this is the growth of Internet use in the LCTLs.  I have seen it estimated that, on the Internet right now, almost 25% of the Web pages are in languages other than English, and that more than 42% of the world-wide Internet users are not English speakers.  And this proportion is apparently increasing rapidly.  Already, countries such as Finland and Estonia have a higher per capita usage of the Internet than the United States, and, as font problems are solved in Asia and the Middle East, Internet usage there is also increasing exponentially.  I have also seen estimates that within the next five years more than half the Internet users in the world will be native speakers of Chinese.  While it was once widely assumed that English would be the single favorite medium on the Internet, pushing out other languages, it now seems increasingly likely that the Internet will also serve to help enable communities of language users scattered around the world to sustain their common community of discourse.  Perhaps this will be the true incarnation of the “Global Villages” predicted by Marshall McLuhan thirty-some years ago.

Attention to the Least Commonly Taught Languages has also arisen outside of our profession, as researchers and journalists have documented the escalating loss of small-population, often very poorly documented languages around the world. Among these works are David Crystal’s Language Death, Daniel Nettle and Suzanne Romaine’s Vanishing Voices: The Extinction of the World’s Languages, and R.M.W. Dixon’s The Rise and Fall of Languages. Among their shared theses is the idea that the existence of linguistic diversity in the world is being threatened as much as that of biological diversity, and that the loss of these languages may be equally important for humankind. 

From a perspective closer to home, there were two days of testimony last fall before the Senate Subcommittee chaired by Senator Thad Cochran (R-Miss.) that addressed the “State of Foreign Language Capabilities in National Security and the Federal Government.”  In those hearings, such government agencies as the FBI, the CIA, and the Departments of Defense and State, among others, testified that there is a significant need for additional highly proficient speakers/readers in the government in many critical languages, especially the “Central Eurasian, East Asian and Middle Eastern languages.” One speaker reported, “Thousands of technical papers that provide details on foreign research and development in scientific or technical areas currently go untranslated because we lack the funds and personnel to interpret the material.” The front page of the New York Times on April 16, 2001, featured an article that elaborated on this same theme, concluding that a “dire lack of foreign language expertise [especially in the ‘critical languages’]… is undermining national security.”

Also in Washington, on a more positive note, the year 2000 ended with President Clinton and Secretary of Education Riley declaring the week of November 13-17 as “International Education Week 2000.”  The week was intended, in part, to feature and celebrate programs sponsored by colleges, universities and other educational institutions, in partnership with government, to “help our citizens gain the international experience and skills needed to meet the challenges of an increasingly interdependent world.” (Presidential Proclamation, November 13, 2000.)  This declaration is being followed by the preparation of important think-pieces by many national educational organizations about the meanings and implications of a national policy encouraging International Education.  I am pleased to report to you that our Council has had significant input in many of these important discussions.

I know that we in the LCTLs sometimes look around ourselves at our “do-everything” workload, the tremendous diversity of our classes, and the budget cuts that have affected so many of our programs, and we feel discouraged.  Yet, as I have tried to show in this message, I believe that there is good reason for optimism that the nation has begun to notice the value and importance of what we do.  As I wrote at the beginning, it is an interesting—and exciting!—time to be working in the Less Commonly Taught Languages.

Frederick H. Jackson, Council President

News from NCOLCTL Members

American Association of Teachers of Korean (AATK)

The new officers and board members for the American Association of Teachers of Korean are as follows:

Alliance of Associations of Teachers of Japanese (Association of Teachers of Japanese (ATJ) & National Council of Japanese Language Teachers (NCJLT)

The Japanese language field has launched several new projects aimed at offering professional development opportunities for teachers and developing a field-wide assessment and placement program.

Professional organizations, under the aegis of the Alliance of Associations of Teachers of Japanese, in February convened a conference on programs that offer K-12 teaching credentials, as the first step in a program to promote better cooperation among schools of education, language teaching departments, and state departments of education and ultimately train larger numbers of teachers better prepared for the K-12 classroom.

The Alliance is offering several summer training programs for teachers in 2001, offering both language instruction for non-native-speaking teachers and pedagogy and advocacy training for all teachers. Collaborators include the Japan Foundation's Los Angeles Office and Language Center, the Middlebury College Language Schools, and the National Institute for Multimedia Education in Japan.

The field is beginning work on developing a national program of assessment and articulation, which ultimately will offer teachers and institutions at all levels a uniform, technology-mediated test instrument for all four language skills. The instrument, which is based on one that is being developed at Oregon's Center for Applied Japanese Language Studies, will be ready for initial field-testing late this year.

North American Association for Celtic Language Teachers (NAACLT)

NAACLT (The North American Association for Celtic Language Teachers) will hold its 7th Annual Conference at St. Peter's College, Jersey City, NJ on June 7, 8, 9 and 10, 2001. Previous conferences took place at Glendale Community College, California, University of Pennsylvania, St. Francis Xavier University, Nova Scotia, University of Minnesota, University of Ottawa and The University of Limerick, Limerick, Ireland.

NAACLT 2001 is aimed at teachers of Celtic languages, learners of such languages and researchers in related fields such as Celtic Studies, Linguistics, Computational Linguistics, Psychology and Sociology.  It will comprise a workshop day, two conference days and an excursion day.

Conference Web Site: http://www.naaclt.org/conf/naaclt01/

Professional Development Opportunities

American Councils for International Education:  ACTR/ACCELS

JUNIOR FACULTY DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM (JFDP)

Call for Applications from U.S. Host Institutions for the 2001-2002

Academic Year

            The JFDP brings university faculty to the United States from the Newly Independent States (NIS) for a one-year fellowship.  Current JFDP Fellows are from Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russia, Ukraine and Uzbekistan.   The fellowship consists of non-degree study, during which the Fellows create curricula for new courses, modify curricula for courses they already teach, and develop new teaching methodologies.  In addition, JFDP Fellows may focus on developing the administrative infrastructures of their home universities.  Fellows fulfill these goals by informally auditing and observing courses, working with faculty in hosting departments, networking, attending conferences, and teaching (if circumstances permit).  The program lasts one year, and includes a summer practicum. The JFDP is fully funded by the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the U.S. Department of State, and is administered by the American Councils for International Education: ACTR/ACCELS.  Please visit the JFDP website at http://www.actr.org/jfdp to find more information and to download an application to host Fellows, or write to jfdp@actr.org to request an application.  Deadline for submitting application: March 12, 2001.

 





Summer Institutes 2001

All nine of the National Foreign Language Resource Centers (LRCs) now can be accessed by a common website of http://nflrc.msu.edu/.  At that site you will be able to find information about the various summer institutes being offered at the LRCs. Some of the courses offer partial funding, fellowships and scholarships.

Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition

The summer institute, Developing Materials for Less Commonly Taught Languages, will be offered from June 25-29, 2001 to LCTL teachers around the country. This third annual institute is specially designed to provide LCTL teachers with practical tools and hands-on experience in developing a wide range of materials that will fit the needs of LCTL students and will improve their ability to use the language for  communicative purposes. Participants at the institute will:

explore the latest research on second language acquisition and its implications for LCTL material development;

create new materials for teaching and improve materials  currently available;

adapt materials and activities from other languages;

learn how to use technology in appropriate and effective ways;

incorporate current, authentic resources and visual elements into their materials.

Professor Bill Johnston from Indiana University and Louis Janus will lead participants in an interactive program that features lectures, discussion of pedagogical principles and practices, and hands-on work sessions in small groups and in the computer lab. More information about this and other CARLA summer institutes is available at: http://carla.acad.umn.edu/summerinst.html. 

Funding Support Available

This year, we are pleased to offer LCTL teachers a series of funding opportunities to attend the LCTL summer institute. For any participant who submits sharable LCTL materials within 6 months of the institute will receive a refund of $125. In addition, stipends of  $650 for LCTL teachers to attend any of the CARLA summer institutes are offered through the European Studies Consortium and Institute for Global Studies at the University of Minnesota. Details for applying for a LCTL stipend are available on the web at: http://esc.cla.umn.edu/stipends.html. 

LCTL Mini-Grant Opportunity

            To augment its support of LCTL teachers, the LCTL Project awards grants of up to $1,000 for the development and submission of sharable material for teaching a LCTL. The materials will be used to expand the LCTL Project's growing collection of web-based instructional materials. Last year we awarded grants for the development of material in Japanese, Zulu, Turkish, and Arabic. The deadline for submitting proposals to the spring LCTL Mini-grant competition is March 15, 2001. Read more about this opportunity and get a grant application for a mini-grant at: http://carla.acad.umn.edu/lctl/minigrant.html.  

Summer course listings

            Summer course database is available at: http://carla.acad.umn.edu/LCTL/access.html. 

As of 5 February 2001, we have listings for the following language courses, including some study abroad and some high school credit: Amharic, Arabic, Armenian, ASL, Aymara, Azeri, Bamana, Bulgarian, Burmese, Cebuano, Chichewa, Chinese, chiShona, Czech, Danish, Dutch,  Filipino, Finnish, Finnish,  Fula/Fulfulde/Puula, Georgian, Greek, Hausa, Hebrew, Hindi, Hmong, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian,  Modern and Old Irish, Italian, Japanese, Javanese, Kazak, Khmer, Korean,  Lao, Latin, Lithuanian, Macedonian, Malayalam, Mandarin, Norwegian, Old Norse, Ottoman Turkish, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Punjabi, 

Quichua, Romanian, Russian, Sanskrit, Serbian, Shona, Swahili, Swedish, Tagalog, Tajiki, Tamil, Tatar, Thai, Tibetan, Turkish, Turkmen, Twi, Ukrainian, Uzbek, Vietnamese, Wolof, Xhosa, Yiddish, 

Yoruba, and Zulu. Please send additions and corrections to lctl@umn.edu. 

Advanced Filipino Abroad Program

            The Advanced Filipino Abroad Program (AFAP) will be at its 10th year during the summer of 2001. By that time, there will have been 100 participants in the program. To celebrate this occasion, several faculty and AFAP members are enthusiastically working on having a conference in Hawaii in August 2-4, 2001. Topics, call for papers and logistics will soon be announced. Please join us.

The Advanced Filipino Abroad Program (AFAP), now on its 10th year, is funded by the U.S. Department of Education and administered by the University of Hawaii Center for Southeast Asian Studies. Dr. Teresita V. Ramos, Director of the program has announced that for the year 2001, the summer intensive program will begin June 1 and end July 14, 2001. A national selection will take place sometime in February 2001. The application deadline was January 31, 2001.

These summer programs are designed to provide American teachers and students with the opportunity to learn the Filipino language (Tagalog) in a Philippine setting, through a unique short-term immersion program. Unlike the typical and conventional travel abroad programs, it focuses on advanced-level language acquisition and consists of a structured academic program of four hours every morning and from two to three hours of task-based language use in the afternoon. The latter activity provides the participants maximum exposure to native speakers outside the classroom. It is this combination of structured and unstructured learning environments that is difficult to duplicate in the student's home institution.

This program has six primary goals:

It is designed to provide intensive and specialized instruction in Filipino (Tagalog) for advanced students and teachers of Filipino and Philippine studies within its natural, cultural, and social context.

It will enable participants from a variety of American institutions and different disciplines to supplement their previous training in Filipino and to attain a high level of language competence within a relatively short period of time.

It is intended to promote cooperation between the United States and the Philippines and stimulate discussions among scholars from these countries.

It aims to provide in-country experience and preparation that will enable the participants to deal with cross-cultural stress in the Philippine society and to develop the social skills necessary for life in the Philippine society before they go into the field.

It will provide potential researchers an opportunity to see their chosen area first hand, and to select appropriate research sites and introductory contacts.

It will provide and test a body of pedagogical materials for intensive language study abroad programs and field test proficiency examinations in Filipino.

The AFAP was first funded for $45,000 by the Fulbright-Hays Group Projects Abroad Program in the summer of 1991. It was funded again in 1993 at $120,000 for 3 summers, and again in 1996 at the same amount. This year 1999, AFAP's eighth year, the program was again funded $141,000 for 3 summers. The program has received a total of $426,000 from Fulbright-Hays Groups Projects Program of the U.S. Department of Education since 1991.

A consortium of six universities supports this program: Cornell University; University of Hawaii; University of Michigan; University of Wisconsin at Madison; University of California at Berkeley; and University of Washington. They contribute consortium fees, participate in the selection of participants, and their Tagalog faculty act as co-directors for the project.

Students' evaluations of this program reveal extremely positive feedback. Their overall response spoke highly about their maximum exposure to Philippine language and culture. They attribute significant gains in achieving higher proficiency in Tagalog to this aspect of the program. It is a level of proficiency in Filipino which existing programs in the United States are not able to achieve. This experience not only adds immeasurably to their language competence, it develops greater awareness and sensitivity about another culture, and possibly of their own.

For further information about the program, contact:

Dr. Teresita V. Ramos, AFAP Director

Department of Hawaiian and Indo-Pacific Languages and Literatures

University of Hawaii-Manoa

Spalding 255, 2540 Maile Way

Honolulu, HI 96822

Phone: (808) 956-8933

Fax: (808) 956-5978

Email: teresita@hawaii.edu

NCOLCTL Officers

 


Some Upcoming Professional Conferences and Meetings

March 8-10

Georgetown University Round Table on Language and Linguistics (GURT). Washington, DC. Contact: Prof. James Alatis, Georgetown University.  Email: alatisj@gusun.georgetown.edu

March 13-17

Computer Assisted Language Instruction Consortium (CALICO).  Orlando, Florida. Contact: CALICO, Southwest Texas State University; Email: info@calico.org; URL: http://www.calico.org/CALICO01/

March 22-25

American Association of Asian Studies, Chicago, IL.  Contact:  Karen Fricke Email:

kfricke@aasianst.org; URL: http://www.aasianst.org/  

March 30-April 1

Northeast Conference on the Teaching of Foreign Languages.  New York, NY.  Contact: (717) 245-1977; Fax: (717) 245-1976; Email: nectfl@dickinson.edu; URL: http://www.dickinson.edu/nectfl/

April 25-28

African Language Teachers Association (ALTA), 5th Annual Conference. Theme: "Professionalizing the Field: Initiative, Collaboration and Progress." Madison, WI. Contact: 608-265-7905; URL: http://african.lss.wisc.edu/nalrc/ ; E-mail: kbhartwig@facstaff.wisc.edu

April 26-29

Society for the Advancement of Scandinavian Study (SASS). North Park University, Chicago, IL.  Contact: Charles Peterson, 3225 West Foster Avenue, Chicago, IL 60625-4895, phone 1-800-888-6728.

May 23-26

International Association for Language Learning Technology. Houston, TX.  Contact: Claire Bartlett, Rice University (713) 737-6157; Email: Bartlett@rice.edu; URL: http://iall.net/

May (date to be announced)

Southeast Asian Linguistics Society Annual Conference.  Madison, Wisconsin.

June 8-10

North American Association for Celtic Language Teachers. Jersey City, NJ (St. Peter's College).  URL: http://www.naaclt.org/

July 13-14

COTSEAL/SEASSI Annual Conference on Southeast Asian Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics. Madison, WI. Contact: Carol J. Compton; Email: compton@facstaff.wisc.edu

November 15-18.

American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL). Annual conference, Washington, DC. ACTFL, 6 Executive Plaza, Yonkers, New York 10701-6801. Tel. 914-963-8830. Fax 914-963-1275. E-mail: actflhq@aol.com; URL: http://www.actfl.org/

November 16-18

Chinese Language Teachers Association (CLTA).   Meeting in conjunction with ACTFL, Washington, DC. Contact: 808-956-2692; URL: http://CLTA.DEALL.OHIO-STATE.edu; E-mail: mailto:cyndy@hawaii.edu

November 16-18

National Council of Japanese Language Teachers (NCJLT), Meeting in conjunction with ACTFL, Washington, DC. Contact: 303-492-5487; URL: http://www.colorado.edu/ealld/atj/ncjlt/; E-mail: ncjlt@hotmail.com 

November 17

American Association of Teachers of Arabic (AATA). Meeting in conjunction with Middle East Studies Association, San Francisco, CA. Contact: 757-221-3145; E-mail:

mailto:jceise@facstaff.wm.edu

November 17-20

American Association of Teachers of Turkic Languages (AATT), Meeting in conjunction with Middle East Studies Association, San Francisco, CA. Contact: 609-258-1435; URL:

http://www.princeton.edu/~ehgilson/aatt.html; E-mail: ahgilson@princeton.edu

November 22-25.

Japan Association for Language Teaching. Pan Asian Conference 3 at JALT 2001, "A Language Odyssey," Kitakyushu, Japan. David McMurray, Japan Association for Language Teaching, Urban Edge Building, 5F, 1-37-9 Taito, Taito-ku, Tokyo 110-0016. Tel. +81-3-3837-1630. Fax +81-3-3837-1631 E-mail: mailto:jalt@gol.com

; URL: http://www.jalt.org/

December 27-30

American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages.  Location to be announced.  Contact: AATSEEL Fax: (520) 885-2663; Email:

 AATSEEL@compuserve.com ; URL: http://clover.slavic.pitt.edu/~aatseel/

December 27-30

Modern Language Association of America, Location to be announced.   Contact: MLA, 26 Broadway, New York, NY 10004-1789; Fax: 212-477-9863; Email: convention@mla.org

December 27-30

North American Association of Teachers of Czech, Location to be announced.  Contact: Masako Ueda (401) 863-3933; Fax: (401) 863-7330; Email: masako_ueda@brown.edu