No images? Click here
Were you forwarded this newsletter? Sign up to receive it here.
Newsletter - January 2025
Dear language educators, we hope that you are taking this time to rest and recharge for the upcoming Spring semester. As you plan your upcoming few months, check out our perspectives from our ViVID participants and the 2025 MAFLT LCTL Innovation Awards announcement! 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.
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
Two Years of ViVID
Our ViVID fellows are comprised of LCTL instructors from all over the United States. In this program, they had the opportunity to join a like-minded cohort of LCTL instructors to share and brainstorm language teaching strategies as well as research opportunities. Read on to hear a firsthand account of their experience.
Announcing the 2025 MAFLT LCTL Innovation Awards
These awards, offered by the NLRC and generously funded by the Michigan State University Online Graduate Programs in Foreign Language Teaching (MAFLT and Certificate), recognize outstanding, innovative, and transformative uses of technology in the teaching of Less Commonly Taught Languages (LCTLs). For the purposes of this award, we consider LCTLs anything other than English and the commonly taught world languages of French, German, and Spanish. Three prizes ranging between $250 and $500 will be awarded this year. Last year’s award winners are featured on our blog.
The deadline for applying is January 31!
Penn State LCTL Survey
LCTL instructors and graduate students, check it out! Penn State’s CALPER (Center for Advanced Language Proficiency Education and Research) has an anonymous survey that for LCTL instructors and graduate students teaching any language other than the following: English, Spanish, French, or German! Check it out here: https://pennstate.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_e2maco8BrD2e4yq
The ViVID project has now welcomed its third cohort with fellows coming from 11 institutions and representing 5 target languages including Mandarin Chinese, Arabic, Portuguese, Russian, and Serbian. The teachers work in a variety of teaching contexts, such as 9-12 grade secondary schools and 4-year college or universities, and their teaching experience varies from 2 to 20+ years in the classroom, which enriches the peer mentoring groups and provides the perfect opportunity for professional growth. More information about the fellows will be coming in future newsletters!
Free 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
It’s a new year, new us at the NLRC! We’ve got a lot of things planned, so follow our social media and subscribe to your newsletter to stay updated! To end 2024, we reminded our followers about the deadlines for our PD funds (April 15 is the next deadline!), and then we celebrated the fact that December is National Learn a Foreign Language Month! Speaking of languages, December 18th was also Arabic Language Day! To kick off some of the holidays in this monthly batch, we celebrated Christmas and the start of Hanukkah (which happened to land on the same day this year!), and Kwanzaa! Check out our social media to stay in the loop!
OER Textbooks from MSU
There are three new OER (Open Educational Resource) books that have been published at MSU, which include the languages of Vietnamese, Tamil, and Khmer! OER Textbooks are a great form of accessible teaching and learning, for all subjects and languages! MSU and the NLRC will continue to promote and provide resources for LCTL teachers and students. Check them out here:
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.
- The Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition (CARLA) just announced the schedule for their 2025 Summer Institutes for Language Teachers. For its 30th annual program, CARLA will offer ten online institutes and four in-person institutes, all of which are designed to link research and theory with practical applications for the classroom. Applications open on January 6th.
- CERCLL 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 for this academic year, including topics surrounding proficiency-based instruction and teacher wellbeing.
- 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.
- 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.
