The materials were produced at the Defense Language Institute by Wendy Ashby, Ph D. and may be reproduced and used if the acknowledgment of their source and the disclaimer remain on printed copies. They were produced for and presented at the ACTFL 2007conference and have thus far only undergone minor piloting in actual classroom settings. While feedback thus far has been positive, there is room for improvement. Please direct any comments or questions to: wendy.ashby@us.army.mil

The materials were designed for formative use and are best used in close collaboration with the person receiving the feedback. I personally suggest that all copies of such feedback remain with the teacher and not be otherwise stored. Summative/evaluative use is discouraged because of the specificity of each category and the impossibility of any one of them to provide a clear picture of overall teaching effectiveness.

Feedback Rubric (pdf)

Introduction to materials (.doc)

Background information (.doc)

BEIJING, Dec. 6 (Xinhua) -- China established its first Confucius Institute on the air here Thursday at China Radio International (CRI), offering Chinese language teaching in 38 foreign languages worldwide. The broadcast Confucius Institute, jointly set up by the Office of Chinese Language Council International, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT), Confucius Institute headquarters and CRI, is to meet surging overseas demand to learn the Chinese language, according to Zhang Xinsheng, vice minister of education.

Full story at http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2007-12/06/content_7211620.htm

Conventional wisdom holds that the United States needs all the Arabic speakers it can get. But in Seattle this semester, Hussein Elkhafaifi had to turn 150 would-be Arabic students away.

“This is a major challenge for us because there is no correlation between the increased enrollment, which is now up about 127 percent, to the number of teachers who are trained,” says Elkhafaifi, an assistant professor and director of the University of Washington’s Arabic language program. “There’s no correlation between this desperate national security need, and here we are turning away 150 students.”

Full story at http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/11/29/arabic

“CHINA will be the dominant power in the 21st century and the employment opportunities that speaking Mandarin will give are immense.” Thus Anthony Seldon, headmaster of Wellington College, at a conference in 2006 entitled “Why every school should offer Mandarin”. Nearly two years later, the spectacular growth of the language in British schools shows no sign of slowing. More than 400 secondary schools now teach it, according to the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust, which is lobbying to bring Mandarin into the national curriculum. And Britain is not alone in its enthusiasm for the language: some 30m foreigners are studying Mandarin today, and Chinese authorities expect the number to rise to 100m by 2010.

Full story at http://www.economist.com/world/britain/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10180807

Almost all Latino adults born in the United States to immigrant parents are fluent in English, but among their parents, just fewer than 1 in 4 say they are skilled English speakers, according to a report released Thursday by the Pew Hispanic Center in Washington, D.C.

"The ability to speak English very well and the amount of English used increase sharply from one generation to another among Hispanics," said one of the report's authors, D'Vera Cohn. "The first generation speaks mainly Spanish and doesn't speak English very well. The second generation speaks English very well but holds onto its Spanish. And by the third generation and beyond, English is universal and pervasive, and Spanish fades into the background."

Full story at http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/11/30/MNJTTLDL1.DTL

Invitation to a series of panel discussions on the topic of
“Representing Foreign Language Education at the Federal Level in the United States”

You are invited to attend a series of four moderated panel discussions that have been organized by Leo van Lier, Editor of The Modern Language Journal, and Heidi Byrnes, Associate Editor of Perspectives, in order to lay the ground work for Perspectives 92, 4 (December 2008). The topic for that issue of Perspectives and the panels is: "Representing Foreign Language Education at the Federal Level in the United States.” Open sessions will take place at the following conferences:

* ACTFL, Friday, Nov. 16, 2007, San Antonio, TX. Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center, Room 218: 3 – 5 p.m.
* MLA, Saturday, Dec. 29, 2007, Chicago, Sheraton Chicago Hotel and Towers, Erie Room: 8:30 – 9:45 a.m.
* Northeast Conference, Friday, March 28, 2008, New York, Marriott Marquis: 2 - 4 p.m.
* AAAL, Monday, March 31, 2008,Washington, DC, Omni Shoreham: 2:00 - 5:00 p.m.

Each panel features experts representing various constituencies and education policy experiences and interests. They are charged with imagining forms of institutionalization for foreign language education policy-making at the federal level of the U.S. that assure the development of encompassing, coherent, and long-term policies and practices. Following panelists’ brief opening statements, the sessions will feature a moderated discussion and seek commentary from attendees.

More information at http://www1.georgetown.edu/departments/german/faculty/byrnes/perspectivespanels/

Location & Time: Saturday, October 13, 2007 9 a.m. to Noon CCIT, Room 337- see link below
Workshop Participants: K-16 Educators
Credit: K-16 participants receive 3 units of continuing education credit

Description: In this workshop, participants will engage in art activities designed to facilitate language learning. They will learn how to implement the creation of art technique into their classrooms, thus increasing memory and retention of concepts, and creating an engaging, stress-free learning environment.

Theresa Catalano has a Master’s degree in English Language/Linguistics from the University of Arizona and a Bachelor’s degree in Elementary Education from the University of Nebraska at Lincoln. She has been a language teacher for more than 15 years, and has taught and/or studied in Pakistan, Turkey, Italy, and the US. Her teaching experience includes Italian, Spanish, and English as a Second/Foreign Language from elementary school to post-secondary level. Theresa has written curriculum for numerous institutions for ESL/EFL programs; published her book, Art Activities for the English Language Classroom (Cambria Press, 2006); and was the recipient of the Excellence in Teaching Award at the University of Nebraska in 2006. She is currently working on her Ph.D. in Second Language Acquisition at the University of Arizona.

If in need of more information email: cercll@email.arizona.edu

To Register: Registration Form (PDF)

Registration: $30.00. Pay to CERCLL by October 9th
(includes art supplies at workshop)
Mail payment to:
The University of Arizona
1077 N. Highland Rm #337
Tucson AZ 85712-0073

Download Flyer (PDF)

Map to Center
Computer Center Building, located on the Southeast corner of Mountain Ave. and Speedway Blvd. Parking is available in the lot located just east of the building.

This is sponsored by CERCLL and PAL

"3Q d orz!" Understand that? You're not alone. Net-speak is a growing trend among China's younger generation of cyber-citizens, many of whom speak entirely in what, at first glance, appears to be the malicious stompings of a cat on a keyboard. Incidentally, the message was "Thank you sincerely." The abbreviation-laden lingo has spread to the messages.

Full story at http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/citylife/2007-09/12/content_6099927.htm

An Irish language film has been submitted for an Oscar for the first time ever. IFTA, The Irish Film and Television Academy, announced that 'Kings' was officially selected for submission for the Best Foreign Language Film category to the 80th Academy Awards.

Full story at http://breakingnews.iol.ie/entertainment/story.asp?j=231229120&p=z3yzz98z6

First there was Franglais, a mangled combination of English and French. Then came Spanglish and subsequently Denglish, a mixure of German and English. Don't fret. Just start getting used to Runglish -- the the English-laced argot of young Russians -- especially if you are planning a visit to the erstwhile Soviet Union.

Full story at Economic Times

Any language with fewer than 300,000 speakers is regarded by international linguistics experts as endangered. The Butuanon language at present can only be spoken by fewer than 500 youngsters in Butuan itself. If the next generations of Butuanons are not taught Butuanon in school that will be the end of the Butuanon ethnolinguistic people.

Full article at http://www.manilatimes.net/national/2007/sept/06/yehey/opinion/20070906opi7.html

The press, and the police, looked on as students arrived at the Khalil Gibran International Academy Tuesday, greeted by about a dozen supporters of the controversial Arabic-language school. While there are 70 dual-language schools in the city, Khalil Gibran is the first to focus on Arab language and culture. The school has been met with plenty of opposition since it was announced earlier this year.

Full story at http://www.ny1.com/ny1/content/index.jsp?stid=4&aid=73264

The Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition (CARLA) manages a listserv to meet the needs of parents, teachers, administrators, researchers, and others involved with language immersion education in North, South, and Central America. Patterned after an existing electronic discussion forum for language immersion education in Europe (LIME), the focus of this new endeavor is to provide necessary opportunities to collaborate and exchange ideas and experiences related to the teaching, study, and administration of immersion programs in the Americas.

More information at http://www.carla.umn.edu/immersion/LIMA.html

COARSEGOLD, Calif.—The few remaining speakers of the Chukchansi language have begun preserving their tribal words and songs using electronic translators first developed for military use. The unwritten Chukchansi language has long been spoken by residents of the Madera County foothills, the traditional territory of the Picayune Rancheria of the Chukchansi Indians. But like many other American Indian languages in California, it is considered nearly extinct. Just six tribal members are sufficiently fluent to teach it to others. "We're recording our language ... to save our language," said Jane Wyatt, 62, of Coarsegold, who has been teaching the language at the Wassuma Round House culture center. "I learned because my grandmother raised me. That's all we spoke." Tribal members gathered Friday near the tribe's busy Chukchansi Gold Resort & Casino in Coarsegold to try out the "Phraselator," an electronic translator developed by the Banning-based Thornton Media Inc. Seventy tribes in the United States and Canada have purchased the hand-held translation devices, which also are used by U.S. troops to translate Farsi in Iraq and Afghanistan, said the company's president Don Thornton. The tribe will use the units to start a language preservation program, said Picayune Rancheria tribal administrator Cornel Pewewardy.

http://www.mercurynews.com/breakingnews/ci_6670195

EXPAND YOUR HORIZONS

By learning a language of YOUR CHOICE @ The CRITICAL LANGUAGES PROGRAM

Languages offered for U of A credit, Fall 2007:

* CANTONESE * CZECH * DUTCH * HINDI * IRISH-GAELIC * *KOREAN * NORWEGIAN * POLISH * SCOTS-GAELIC * *SERBO-CROATIAN * SWAHILI * SWEDISH * TAGALOG *THAI * UKRAINIAN* VIETNAMESE…

…or others of your choice!

For more information please call: Critical Languages Program, College of Humanities
520-621-3387 mcdowels@email.arizona.edu

More information at http://www.coh.arizona.edu/crit_lang/

A searchable database of over four million modern Scottish words has gone online today. The Scottish Corpus of Texts and Speech was put up by Glasgow University with funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

Full story at http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2196586/scots-database-goes-online

Tourists heading for Galicia's green hills and beaches will be given phrasebooks to teach them some basics in Galician, one of many local languages spoken in Spain.

Full story http://uk.reuters.com/article/oddlyEnoughNews/idUKL0784953120070807

Just can't manage to nail down the subjunctive tense in French or the difference between the Spanish verbs for "to be"? Blame your Heschl's gyrus - or at least your left one, anyway. That is a tiny part of the brain that appears to play an important role in how well adults can learn another language, a new study finds.

Full story at http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/08/08/arts/snvital.php

Mi'kmaq has somehow survived repeated attempts to wipe it out. But despite current efforts to keep it alive, the only language to ever arise from Nova Scotia's forests, rivers and coast is in trouble. Many young people whose parents speak Mi'kmaq have switched to English and French. And that generation is the only thing keeping it from joining the 13 aboriginal languages currently listed as endangered. "It is the language of Canada itself," said Eskasoni resident Joel Denny. "There should be a law in protecting the language in Canada."

Full story at http://www.hfxnews.ca/index.cfm?sid=52012&sc=89

Supports scientific research of all types that focus on human language as an object of investigation. The program supports research on the syntactic, semantic, phonetic, and phonological properties of individual languages and of language in general; the psychological processes involved in the use of language; the development of linguistic capacities in children; social and cultural factors in language use, variation, and change; the acoustics of speech and the physiological and psychological processes involved in the production and perception of speech; and the biological bases of language in the brain.

More information at http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=5408

The first group of Zimbabwean students enrolling for a Chinese language course at the University of Zimbabwe (UZ) will graduate Friday, New Ziana said on Thursday. UZ acting Director for Information and Public Relations Daniel Chihombori said a total of 57 students successfully underwent the five-month course.

Full story at http://english.people.com.cn/90001/90781/6230657.html

Friends of Bulgaria from 40 countries in Europe, America, Asia and Africa met on July 30 2007 in the Bulgarian town of Veliko Turnovo at the 30th International Summer Seminar for Bulgarian Studies. The 125 participants include 80 foreign students, as well as a diplomat, a financier, a chef and a designer, according to Bulgarian news agency BTA.

Full story at http://www.sofiaecho.com/article/bulgarian-language-and-culture-seminar-attracts-enthusiasts-from-40-countries/id_24116/catid_70

Hundreds of balloons were set free from Borders Book store in Talbot Green, Glamorgan, to encourage more peopleto take up learning the Welsh language. Adults and children packed the store to celebrate the official launch of the University of Glamorgan Welsh for Adults Centre.

Full story at http://www.newswales.co.uk/?section=Culture&F=1&id=11997

Prosecutors are seeking jail terms of up to three years for two mayors who were elected from the Democratic Society Party (DTP) and 17 aldermen who introduced Kurdish and other languages to official business while in office, court officials said Monday. According to the Turkish Constitution, Turkish is the sole official language and no other language may be used in government offices and municipalities. The accused are Osman Baydemir, the mayor of Diyarbakır, and Abdullah Demirbaş, who was removed last month from his post as mayor of Sur, a town in Diyarbakır. Demirbaş was removed after his city council in January passed a bill allowing the use of Kurdish, Armenian, Arabic, Syriac and English in municipal services.

Full story at http://www.todayszaman.com/tz-web/detaylar.do?load=detay&link=118122&bolum=103

Think you haven't got the aptitude to learn a foreign language? New research led by Northwestern University neuroscientists suggests that the problem, quite literally, could be in your head. "Our study links brain anatomy to the ability to learn a second language in adulthood," said neuroscientist Patrick Wong, assistant professor of communication sciences and disorders at Northwestern and lead author of a study appearing online July 25 in Cerebral Cortex.

Full story at http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/07/070725152034.htm

A computer program that learns to decode sounds from different languages in the same way that a baby does helps to shed new light on how people learn to talk, researchers said on Tuesday. They said the finding casts doubt on theories that babies are born knowing all the possible sounds in all of the world's languages.

Full story at http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070725/od_nm/babytalk1_dc;_ylt=666

Maori Language Week has been marked since 1975 as a time for New Zealanders to celebrate te reo Maori and use Maori phrases in everyday life. What makes 2007 special is it also marks 20 years since Maori became an official language of New Zealand.

Full story at http://tvnz.co.nz/view/page/411365/1251198

New York, July 17 (PTI): India has asked all member states of the United Nations to take immediate and strong steps for making Hindi, the second most spoken tongue in the world, an official language of the World body.

It also made a fervent and passionate appeal to all Indians settled abroad to put pressure on their respective governments for supporting the proposal.

The proposal would take time as the political leaders and diplomats would have to convince other nations to garner their support. But work in this direction would start immediately, Karan Singh, president of Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR) said at the sidelines of the 8th World Hindi Conference which concluded on Sunday.

Singh, a renowned Hindi and Sanskrit scholar, was Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's special envoy for the conference.

http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/holnus/001200707170357.htm

Dr. Iognáid Ó Muircheartaigh, President of NUI Galway today launched an MA in Language Planning, the first MA of its kind in Europe. Acadamh na hOllscolaíochta Gaeilge, NUI Galway’s pioneering Irish Language college, which provides third-level education through the medium of Irish, developed this innovative and pioneering programme in the field of language planning.

Full story at http://www.nuigalway.ie/news/main_press.php?p_id=502

New York, July 16 : The three-day eigth World Hindi Conference has concluded here with an appeal to India to make a concerted effort to mobilize other nations towards giving recognition to Hindi as the seventh official language of the United Nations.

Full story at http://story.malaysiasun.com/index.php/ct/9/cid/b8de8e630faf3631/id/265235/cs/1/

.S. Deputy Secretary of Education Raymond Simon today announced the award of a $747,768 grant to Cincinnati Public Schools (CPS) at an event today at the Cincinnati Public Schools Education Center with CPS Superintendent Rosa Blackwell, to help increase the number of Americans learning foreign languages critical to national security and commerce. As part of President Bush's National Security Language Initiative, the grant is intended to address the shortage of critical foreign language speakers by supporting new and expanded programs in grades K-12.

Full story at http://www.ed.gov/news/pressreleases/2007/06/06122007.html

The State Department, in an unprecedented move highlighting its desperate need for Arabic speakers, is allowing U.S. diplomats to curtail their current assignments anywhere in the world and begin Arabic language training in September.

Full story at Arabic

Voting-rights advocates are lobbying state legislators to translate voting materials and ballots into Asian languages such as Korean, Chinese and Gujarati for voters who primarily speak those languages, though critics say the idea is impractical and insulting to the very concept of citizenship.

Full story at Asian

A second rally to demand a rights-based Irish Language Act has been organised by Irish language activists for Saturday, 9 June in Belfast. Since the first march, which took place in February, the situation has become a political football for unionists. The first Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure consultation process finished with 93% of submissions received in favour of a strong, rights-based Irish Language Act.

Full story at http://www.anphoblacht.com/news/detail/19378

The REALIA Project publishes faculty-reviewed media for the teaching and study of modern languages and cultures. Faculty and students at all levels are encouraged to contribute materials to our searchable, online database. The focus of the REALIA Project is realia: Materials which convey the everyday life of different cultures.

More info at REALIA

The Open Culture Blog from Stanford University tracks academic podcasts. They have an interesting listing of podcasts in LCTL languages including Arabic, Chinese, Danish, Dutch, Finnish and more. Check it out at http://www.oculture.com/weblog/2006/10/itunes_learn_fo.html

(This posting is for information purposes only, CERCLL does not endorse the content)

The Modern Language Association supports a broad, intellectually driven approach to teaching language and culture in higher education. To study the best ways of implementing this approach in today's world, the MLA Executive Council established an Ad Hoc Committee on Foreign Languages, chaired by Mary Louise Pratt, who served as the association's president in 2003. The committee was charged with examining the current language crisis that has occurred as a result of 9/11 and with considering the effects of this crisis on the teaching of foreign languages in colleges and universities. It began working in 2004 and submitted its report to the Executive Council two years later. Committee members have made presentations at the MLA convention and at other public venues, including events sponsored by federal agencies, professional associations, and universities. This summary of the committee's and the Executive Council's deliberations offers background and context for the association's recommendations regarding the challenges and opportunities facing language study in higher education. While the recommendations address issues specific to the United States, they may be applicable to other contexts and countries.

Full press release at http://www.mla.org/mlaissuesmajor

The United Nations General Assembly has proclaimed 2008 the International Year of Languages. It will aim to promote unity through linguistic diversity. The Assembly called upon States and the Secretariat to work towards the conservation and defence of the world's languages and requested the Secretariat to appoint a coordinator for multilingualism.

Representatives from several States made contributions. The Andorran representative said, "Protecting languages is one of the fundamental pillars of cultural diversity".

Meanwhile, there was refreshing news for our Breton, Basque, Occitan and Corsican readers when the representative from France said, “The right to use your own language, the capacity to communicate and, therefore, to understand and be understood, the preservation of an inheritance that dates back centuries or even millennia, should be of prime importance to the United Nations”.

More info at http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs//2007/ga10592.doc.htm

June 15-August 10, 2007

Intensive language training has been offered at the Bloomington campus of Indiana University since 1950. The Summer Workshop provides up to 200 participants in Slavic, East European and Central Asian languages the opportunity to complete a full year of college language instruction during an eight-week summer session. Utilizing the resources of Indiana University's own specialists as well as native speakers from other universities and abroad, the Summer Workshop has developed and maintained a national program of the highest quality. Allowing all participants to pay in-state tuition fees, the program has as its goal the enhancement of speaking, reading, listening and writing skills through classroom instruction and a full range of extra-curricular activities. Fellowships and funding are available.

More info at http://www.indiana.edu/~iuslavic/swseel/

By ILAN GREENBERG

ALMATY, Kazakhstan, March 27 Amid a series of idiosyncratic decrees aimed at removing traces of Soviet influence, the president of Tajikistan announced Tuesday that he had dropped the Slavic ov from the end of his surname and that, henceforth, the same must be done for all babies born to Tajik parents. Most Tajiks added a Slavic ending to their surnames when
the country came under Soviet rule early in the last century. The president, Emomali Rakhmon (formerly Rakhmonov) also banned certain school holidays and traditions associated with the Soviet period, including a holiday known as ABC Book Day, when toddlers gather in a circle to
read aloud. He also ordered all university students to leave cellphones and cars at home, saying they distracted from academic study.

Full story at http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/28/world/asia/28tajikistan.html_r=1&oref=slogin

By Erika Niedowski
Sun Foreign Reporter
May 12, 2007

NARVA, Estonia -- In this quiet Estonian city on a wide river separating the small Baltic nation from its mammoth Russian neighbor, the official state language, in practical terms, is also
a foreign one. One hardly seems to need Estonian in Narva, where the majority of residents are ethnic Russians and where ordering a taxi, getting medicine at the pharmacy, even instruction in school, are done in Russian.

Full story at http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nationworld/bal-te.language12may12,0,7908325.story

Technology for Second Language Learning (TSLL)
5th Annual Conference, September 21-22, 2007
Towards Adaptive CALL: Natural Language Processing for Diagnostic Language Assessment
Plenary Speaker Professor Robert Mislevy, University of Maryland.

More information at http://www.iastate.edu/~apling/TSLL/5TSLL_CAllforpapers.html

A University of Arizona scientist who has specialized in studying how fireflies and other creatures communicate has won a million-dollar grant to conduct a pioneering 5-year study on the roles that attention and memory play when the human brain hears and processes spoken language.

"This is the chance to study the ultimate form of animal communication -- language," said Thomas A. Christensen of UA's department of speech, language and hearing sciences (SLHS). "Humans have evolved a very sophisticated symbolic form of communication. Language affects how we think, what we believe, how we interact with each other. I'd even go so far as to say that our future as a species depends on understanding how we communicate. But very little is known about what's going on in the brain when we're having a simple conversation."

Full story at http://uanews.org/cgi-bin/WebObjects/UANews.woa/30/wa/SRStoryDetails?ArticleID=13897

This is a quote from 20 year old Fidele Harfouche, a native-born Lebanese who has been living in the U.S. since she was 6. She is one of many voices sharing their experiences in a May 7th article in the New York Times about how the younger generation in the United States is appreciating and embracing their families' languages more than ever!

Full story at http://anamericanbetweenworlds.blogspot.com/2007/05/because-language-really-does-matter.html