No images? Click here
Were you forwarded this newsletter? Sign up to receive it here.
Newsletter - February 2025
Dear language educators,
Spring semester is in full swing! We are happy to announce our that our 2025 Shared LCTL Symposium will once again be held in Chicago this spring. We also extended the deadline for our 2025 MAFLT LCTL Innovation Awards to ensure LCTL educators have enough time to be considered for this award. Don't forget to explore opportunities from other LRCs and Language Centers in our PD Opportunities and Resources section, such as KU's upcoming Language OER Conference.
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
Looking Back, Looking Forward
The Shared LCTL Symposium will be held in conjunction with the National Council of Less Commonly Taught Languages (NCOLCTL) Annual Conference in Chicago on April 24, 2025 from 1-5:30pm!
Personnel from the Mellon Transforming Language Instruction project and the LCTL and Indigenous Languages Partnership project will review their collaborative efforts over the years of their funding with the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, which has made SLCTLS possible over the past nine years. We will then have an exploratory panel discussion with representatives from various LCTL organizations to explore possible collaborative avenues for the future.
2025 MAFLT LCTL Innovation Awards Deadline Extended
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 has been extended to February 10!
CERCLL Spring Webinars
CERLL is offering spring webinars on Current Directions in Language Program Administration! This is a FREE webinar series. Each session will explore crucial aspects of language program development and administration, complementing CERCLL and CARLA's (Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition) collaborative Language Program Direction self-study modules.
Check out the link for more info here.
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! You can take the survey here.
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
Can’t believe it's already a month into 2025! As we progress further into 2025, the NLRC hopes and wishes that everyone’s wishes and manifestations come true, and we will continue to provide resources for as many languages and cultures as possible. This month, we posted quite a lot, starting with World Braille Day on January 4th, followed by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day on January 20th. We also celebrated International Day of Education on January 24th, as well as the Year of the Snake for Chinese/Lunar New Year on January 29th! To see what else we post about, follow our social media to stay updated!
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 Open Language Resource Center at the University of Kansas will host the fourth annual Language OER Conference on Saturday, March 8th via Zoom. The conference provides a venue to showcase large-scale language OER and to exchange information on topics related to OER production and adoption. This year’s conference will highlight materials in Arabic, Chinese, English as a Second Language, French, Italian, Russian, Spanish, Ukrainian, and Vietnamese. The Language OER Conference is completely free, but registration is required.
- 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.
- The CALPER program at Penn State is hosting their Spring 2025 Professional Development webinar series, revolving around "Advances in World Language Pedagogy". Register here.
- The National Foreign Language Resource Center (NFLRC) at University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa is offering a 5-module open-enrollment self-study course for language educators beginning to learn about Project-Based Language Learning (PBLL). Register here.
