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Newsletter - August 2024
We're gearing up for another academic year full of LCTLs! Guess what? Our Intermediate Teach-a-LCTL guide was released YESTERDAY! Check out details further below!
Check out more of our latest happenings below, including the Fall 2024 Learning Community and the just-announced Fall 2024 OLT course dates! Don't forget to explore opportunities from other LRCs and Language Centers in our PD Opportunities and Resources section, at the end of the newsletter. Don't forget to come see us at several conferences this fall - including MIWLA and ACTFL!
New to our newsletter? Explore all eleven of our projects in our three core areas of professional development, open resources, and strategic collaboration on our website!
Check out other events on our joint LRC calendar (also linked below under PD Opportunities and Resources).
Updates
2024-2025 Learning Community:
Project-Based Learning
This year’s Learning Community will focus on project-based learning. Last year and the year before the Learning Community adopted assessment-based learning and task based and proficiency-oriented language instruction, respectively. This time, we will be launching a project-based learning view on language instruction. Project based language learning can immerses language learners in real-life issues (i.e., a response to a challenging problem or question) and practical language application, achieved through creating meaningful projects serving genuine purposes, and sharing their products with an audience beyond the classroom context. The learning community is an excellent way for LCTL instructors to expand their teaching methods repertoire and explore with peers how small- or large-scale projects, infused or not with technology, help integrate culture, content and language and help advance their student to that next proficiency level. Participants will have the opportunity to:
- Learn how to design projects that engage students and help develop their language and life skills at the same time
- Create and scaffold appropriate and authentic materials with a student-centered approach
- Brainstorm with fellow LCTL instructors and learning community facilitators, and share ideas and stories to build off each other
Check it out: Our newest Teach-a-LCTL guide was just released, aimed at the intermediate level!
The Teach-a-LCTL Resource Guides combine scholarship on community language education, research on heritage language learners, and literacies-based approaches to language learning. The guides aim to provide teachers and coordinators in community LCTL education programs with an easy-to-use resource, adaptable to their languages, cultures, and learners. Each guide has an introduction that describes the project’s rationale, as well as some of the things that make community LCTL programs unique. Both guides contain sample lesson plans on 5 themes: music; sports and movement; clothing; expressions and emotions; and food.
Does your institution want to expand their world language options for your students? We are actively seeking institutional partners to pilot our asymmetrical course sharing project. Partner with MSU to offer Persian, Russian, Tamil, or Vietnamese! (Other language options can be explored if there is interest!)
We are piloting this collaborative partnership structure, which would allow your institution the following benefits:
- Students retain access to their own financial aid
- Students earn home institution credits
- Students pay their normal tuition rate
- Keep a portion of the student’s tuition money for administrative costs
Please reach out to us if you are interested in exploring a partnership with us!
Consulting/Coaching with the NLRC
Did you know that the NLRC offers FREE consulting/coaching?
Do you or your language department want to talk through something related to LCTL teaching or learning? From grant writing feedback to proficiency-based teaching, from online language learning to OERs, you can book time with the NLRC to gather resources, get feedback, and process ideas about the teaching and learning of LCTLs.
Don't hesitate to reach out to us to book an initial 30 minute call!
NLRC Social Media Highlight
As summer is slowly dimming away, it’s time to review the days and events of importance this past month. This July, we celebrated good ol’ fashioned Independence Day, July 4th! Shortly after that, we acknowledged Swahili Language Day on July 7th. Props to everyone that speaks, is learning, and teachers Swahili, it is truly a beautiful and challenging language to learn. The month of July is also recognized as National Foreign Language Month—we celebrate every and all LCTLs here at the NLRC! Throughout this month we also highlighted some of our new GAs, as well as our OLT courses and the ViVID project. Check us out on our social media to get more updates!
Online Language Teaching
(Free PD Courses)
Purposeful Technology Integration
Explore novel and alternative technology-supported pedagogical approaches, identify technology-enabled practices with the most transformative potential, and design an intentional “new normal” for what language instruction might look like for you in the near future.
Fall Dates: September 9 – 27
Oral Communicative Tasks
Engage in best practices for designing and facilitating synchronous and asynchronous oral communicative tasks for both presentational and interpersonal modes of instruction. Design scaffolded task progressions in order to meet all your language objectives in rigorous fashion.
Fall Dates: October 7 – November 1
Creating Engaging Materials
Develop in-depth expertise for developing engaging online materials. Build a portfolio of 3-6 sets of materials in a variety of domains of your choice (vocabulary or grammar, reading or listening, and culture or pragmatics) for use in your online or hybrid courses.
Fall Dates: November 4 – 22
Applicants can apply to more than one course, but please note we will try to accommodate as many applicants as possible. Deadlines for Fall course applications are:
- Purposeful Technology Integration: August 26th
- Oral Communicative Tasks: September 23rd
- Creating Engaging Materials: October 21st
PD Opportunities and Resources
To view all current LRC offerings in an aggregate format, please see this calendar:
Many of our fellow Language Resource Centers and National Resource Centers (and some of our collaborative partners) have their own professional development opportunities. This section highlights some of those opportunities/resources.
- CERCLL
- Interested in learning about "ungrading"? Join the Professional Learning Online Network Space (PLONS) about Bringing Ungrading to Language Teaching by August 15th!
- Webinar Series Rebooting Language Educ-AI-tion from Spring 2024 has all recordings available for reference!
- The Teaching and Learning Languages in the United States (TELL-US) podcast series is available. This resource is aimed at novice LCTL instructors with content focusing on pedagogy and school culture.
- The Language Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has several professional development events online this past academic year (2023-2024), including topics surrounding SLA and language ideologies. Check out the link above for more information!
- The Cornell Language Resource Center has a podcast called "Speaking of Language" as well as a Speaker Series (with archived videos of previous events), covering topics of wide-ranging interest for language learners and instructors!
- Registration is now open for the 11th Annual Community-Based Heritage Language Schools Conference on October 4-5, presented by the Coalition of Community-Based Heritage Language Schools!
- The LCTL Program at the Ohio State University has created self-paced, asynchronous LCTL Courses on their Scarlet Canvas platform. Course options exist in Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian, Catalan, Persian, Polish, and Romanian.
