ILR Showcase 2005

Mr. Tom Glaser, Vice President of Information Technology, Howard Community College

Dr. Carl Falsgraf, Director, Center for Applied Second Language Studies, the National Foreign Language Resource Center at the University of Oregon

Morning Concurrent Sessions:

Auditorium Featured Presentations

1030-1125 Initiatives Undertaken by the Departments of Defense and State to Address

National Language Needs

Dr. Susan Kelly, Defense Language Office and Ambassador Michael C. Lemmon, former Dean, School of Language Studies, Foreign Service Institute

Dr. Richard Brecht, Dr. William Rivers, Center for the Advanced Study of Language, University of Maryland

Room A Teaching

This presentation will give an overview of the public speaking needs of Foreign Service professionals and of the techniques the School of Language Studies at the Foreign Service Institute has developed to address them. The session will include examples of activities at different proficiency levels, including a "Mock Reception" with more than 20 students from beginner to advanced participating.

The paper will report preliminary findings from Title VI-funded research projects on prospects for internationalizing teacher education; the first project focused on teacher training for the secondary level and the current project has an elementary education focus. Data and opinions, about foreign language needs and instruction are drawn from over 350 interviews with university faculty, deans, students, and senior administrators, as well as some 80 current teachers.

1100-1125 College-Level Courses Can Easily Employ All the Language Students Know

This presentation will demonstrate that through the use of readily available materials in multiple languages and the provision of opportunities for language-specific small-group discussion, virtually any college course can present multiple international perspectives on course subject matter and facilitate the maintenance and discipline-specific growth of students' skills in whatever languages they know.

At lower levels learners need to see that the foreign language makes sense, both on a decoding/linguistic level and in its connection to the larger world. At higher levels, we want learners to see the composition of a text as deliberate, written or spoken for a purpose. The basic question is, "Why did the author choose the words and that particular structure as opposed to some others? " We will present ten questions, which will help guide the learner to "hear" the author's voice. We base our classroom exercises on these questions and will share some of the activities we use to illustrate approaches to a level 3 text.

Room B Teaching Resources & Materials

Presenters: Dr. Antonia Schleicher and Adedoyin Adenuga, National African Language Resource Center, University of Wisconsin

The LCTL project at the University of Minnesota offers a wide variety of free resources for LCTL teachers and students. This session will take participants on a tour of these valuable resources.

Presenter: Dr. Louis Janus, Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition, University of Minnesota

1100-1125 Resources from the Language Resource Centers: Don't Reinvent the Wheel!

This presentation will inform participants about the wide range of materials and resources for teaching foreign languages available to government instructors through the 14 Department of Education-funded Language Resource Centers (LRC) housed in universities across the U.S. Many of the LRC materials and resources have been designed for adult students of the Less and Least Commonly Taught Languages, as well as the more Commonly Taught Languages. Six LRCs are devoted to languages of specific areas: Slavic and East European, East Asian, Central Asian, South Asian, African, and Middle Eastern. Handouts will include descriptions and information on how to obtain materials.

Presenter: Dr. Catharine Keatley, National Capital Language Resource Center, George Washington University

This is a demonstration of web-based resources for teachers and learners of 129 less commonly taught languages. The presentation will offer examples of language profiles, a bibliography of pedagogical and linguistic materials, downloadable authentic materials, and sample lesson plans.

Room C Research

Presenters: Dr. William Rivers, Dr. Eva Golonka, and Dr. David Mehall, Center for the Advanced Study of Language

1100-1125 Observations in Conversion Courses: Spanish to Portuguese and Turkish to Turkmen

Presenters: Marisa Van de Putte, Antonio Caiafa, and Bakar Tuzinovic, Foreign Service Institute

Presenter: Dr. Catherine Doughty, Area Director for Second Language Acquisition, Center for the Advanced Study of Language

Room D Listening Comprehension

1000-1025 RAILS: Russian Advanced Interactive Listening Series and web-authoring tools for all LCTLs

This presentation will demonstrate new web-based instructional materials developed under a USED grant to the University of Wisconsin-Madison to create a full-year's curriculum of advanced-level listening comprehension lessons for intermediate-advanced students of Russian. The lessons are created with new authoring software developed at UW-Madison, the Multimedia LessonBuilder and Annotater. The lessons, based on excerpts from films and videotaped interviews, are being shared with institutions across the U.S. The authoring tools are available for other language instructors to create similar web-based materials.

1030-1055 GLOSS Listening Lessons as a Proficiency Maintenance and Enhancement Tool

GLOSS (Global Language Online Support System) is an online language maintenance and enhancement tool offered by the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center (DLIFLC). The site provides stand-alone interactive reading and listening lessons in several languages, including Arabic, Russian, and Chinese among others. GLOSS lessons are not limited to online self-study, and can be incorporated in teach-mediated or monitored courses. The presentation will show how the various features of GLOSS lessons can help learners who do not have access to teachers, and how the lessons can support traditional and online courses.

1100-1125 Processing the Spoken Text: Designing Listening Comprehension Activities in Arabic and Urdu

1130-1200 LangNet: Listening at Higher Levels; Multimedia Professional Development

Presenters: Dr. Catherine Ingold, National Foreign Language Center, and Pat Fisher, Department of Defense

Room E Language Mini-Lessons I

Let’s learn Georgian! Georgian (Kartuli), an Ibero-Caucasian language, is the only written member of the Kartvelian linguistic family. It is the official language of Georgia (Sakartvelo). The Georgian alphabet is one of the 14 ancient alphabets of the world, and is distinguished by its originality. The Georgian language has the reputation of being a difficult langauge. But with desire and a good teacher, a student can learn Georgian easily. In 20 minutes participants will learn several phrases, and demonstrate that Georgian doesn’t deserve its reputation as a difficult language.

Very little of importance happens between people in the Albanian culture that doesn’t happen over a cup (or two!) of coffee. This mini-lesson will provide an introduction to this important aspect of Albanian culture and the opportunity to practice a few appropriate phrases and expressions in the language.

The Latvian culture and language are unique and Riga one of the most beautiful cities in the world. The presenters will offer a short, fun introduction to the culture, with multi-media support and realia from the Baltics. Everyone will speak some Latvian by the end of the lesson.

Presenters: Anika Ahmed, Shabbir Bilani, and Tasnim Razi, Foreign Service Institute

Room F Technology I

Learners of "foreign" languages in the U.S. often lack opportunities to use the language(s) they are studying, particularly outside the classroom. In the absence of sustained contact with the language--as it is employed in the community--advancement is often restricted. In this session, a pragmatic, community-based approach to foreign language and English as a Second Language (ESL) enhancement, termed the collaborative continuity model will be presented. The utility of the approach for both child and adult language learners will be demonstrated with representative video clips and other data samples.

A web page with links to specific exercises or activities by topic and/or function on an Internet site, to electronic flashcard lists, or to instructor developed exercises. Reading, listening, grammar, vocabulary, culture, area studies. All levels of proficiency.

An example task tying a textbook chapter on adjectives describing people to a real-life activity, using a national police web site with pictures and descriptions of criminals. There will be a classroom speaking activity of students describing a criminal and others guessing which picture matches the description and then reading the actual description by the police. The activity includes speaking and reading vocabulary at beginner level.

Room G Technology II

1000-1025 Developing and Mentoring Portuguese Express: Dealing with Two Variants

This session consists of a PowerPoint presentation of the development and mentoring of the Portuguese Express course. It will also demonstrate one lesson and activities, paying closer attention to the issue of two variants of the same language. Finally, mentoring methods and guidelines will be discussed.

American consular officers need to have the job-related language skills in order to successfully carry out their duties abroad during the war with terrorism. They need the language to conduct a visa line interview and to interact appropriately with the applicants. FSI is developing an On-Line Russian Consular Course to build these job related language skills. The presenters will demonstrate interactive activities for both listening comprehension and speaking skills. Participants will be able to see the demo of the one lesson of Russian Consular On-Line Course and also will be provided with handouts of sample activities

Arabic is offered by less than 10% of American colleges and universities, and far fewer high schools. With FIPSE funding, the University of California Consortium on Language Learning & Teaching and NMELRC have teamed up to produce an asynchronous first-year Arabic distance learning course, Arabic without Walls. The AWW model leans heavily on technology to provide learners a rich interactive learning environment, including critical human interaction essential for successful language learning.

How to keep a foreign language alive while posted in a country different from the language of interest? Reading is a remarkable endeavor to maintain our skills in the target language and this course is a relevant tool to achieve this goal. We will discuss the role that content, mentor, software, and technical and administrative support play in the learning process. We will show how this course works and how students benefit from it. Finally we will provide recommendations that we have tested as effective to achieve the best results.

Room H Language In Use

A presentation about my experiences as a Serbian-Croatian interpreter in the former Yugoslavia during 1995/96; including interpreting for Muslim and Serb war criminals, locating a Bosnian Serb mass grave and discovering a Muslim-supported terrorist training camp. The focus will be on how my language experience and area studies expertise (B.A. in Balkan History and M.S. in Strategic Intelligence) benefited the implementation of the Dayton Peace Accords.

1130-1200 Two Examples of Leveraging Technology to Meet Language Needs of Deploying Soldiers

1200-1300 LUNCH

Afternoon Concurrent Sessions

Auditorium

1330-1355 Twelve Months to Advanced (2/2+) Proficiency in Arabic: Tapping Higher Education’s Potential

In response to National Middle East Language Resource Center's survey of 640 students of Arabic, 73% indicated they want to achieve "professional-level fluency." Nevertheless, few of the 10,000+ students of Arabic in the collegiate pipeline reach even Level 2 proficiency. As a result, NMELRC has developed a model to help students from institutions of all types move expeditiously toward their goal. In a pilot study, 57 students of Arabic spent the Fall 2005 semester in Egypt, with 80% scoring 2 or 2+ in speaking. Many began their first Arabic class in January, therefore achieving 2/2+ in one calendar year. Implications for all LCTL's are considerable.

Presenters: Dr. Kirk Belnap, National Middle East Language Resource Center, and Dr. Ray Clifford, Brigham Young University

Room A High Level Language

The SEALANG Lab targets advanced learning systems for mainland Southeast Asian languages. Non-Roman orthographies and linguistic distance from English make acquiring these least-common languages particularly difficult. We discuss design of a) advanced reading/drill/self-test tools b) data resources that exploit similarities between these languages, and c) programs designed to meet DoD 'Language Roadmap' requirements. SEALANG 3/3/3 emphasizes rapid acquisition of the 3/3/3 rating, with a heavy emphasis on ‘autonomous learning’ tools, targeting Burmese, Khmer, Lao, and Thai. SEALANG Surge leverages verbal fluency of heritage speakers, and/or competence in cognate/contact languages, targeting national and minority languages, including Shan, Karen, Mon, and Wa.

Each year the Arizona State University Critical Languages Institute (CLI) is able to generate graduates with Level 3 ILR proficiency in less commonly taught languages of the Islamic rim. In large part it does so by combining cutting-edge use of interactive technology in the classroom with traditional immersion in overseas study programs in frontier regional centers, such as Tirana, Yerevan, Tashkent, and Kazan. This presentation addresses the CLI strategy for effective layering of proficiency development in the four basic skills by integrating U.S. and overseas training. The discussion will include case studies illustrating CLI's success.

Presenters: Dr. William Young, Dr. Jonathan Owens, and Dr. David Mehall, Center for the Advanced Study of Language

1430-1500 Helping Teachers Integrate Multimedia Technologies into Language Training

The presentation will address multimedia lab training for language instructors at the Foreign Service Institute (FSI). We will focus on the training program developed by Instructional Support Division (ISD) multimedia lab staff to help instructors enhance language learning through incorporating multimedia instructional resources and technology into their teaching strategies. We will cover the principles and objectives of the training program, its key topics, and technology-specific methods of training facilitation utilized.

Room B Technology for Teachers & Learners

Introduction of any grammar point through lots of examples, such as possessive suffixes in Turkish. PPT is readily available easy-to-learn easy-to-use technology that allows for easy display of visuals, color, and animation which provide enhanced input as required by adult learners for better retention.

Since 1999, the Foreign Service Institute (FSI) has been designing and delivering distance-learning courses and self-study programs for languages to foreign affairs professionals around the world. These programs teach listening, reading and speaking skills in 14 languages, which are essential to their work. All federal government personnel, eligible family members and Marine Security Guards may engage in distance language learning. Programs will be demonstrated and made available to showcase participants for hands-on exploring.

1400-1425 Technological Applications to Grammatical and Lexical Categories: Russian Grammatical Dictionary

SEELRC has developed an innovative web-based grammatical dictionary of contemporary standard Russian that provides on a single screen (1) full grammatical paradigms, (2) sound files for every grammatical form (pronounced by native speakers) (3) case government indicators, (4) English gloss of basic meanings, (5) Russian examples in gloss and in notes, (6) related words and (7) aspectual information for verbs. This new dictionary is available to multiple platforms and browsers and is the first such grammatical dictionary of its kind. Our presentation will discuss how this project differs from its predecessors and the problems encountered in its compilation, which include issues of aspectual relationships, presence and absence of specific conjugated forms, addressing questions of bi-aspectual verbs, and determination of plural formation of nouns where their existence is questionable.

Presenter: Dr. Edna Andrews, Slavic and East European Language Resource Center, Duke University

The Critical Languages Series DVD-ROM courseware for Beginning Ukrainian, Intermediate Cantonese, Intermediate Turkish, Intermediate Kazakh, and Advanced Kazakh was completed over a 3-year period at the University of Arizona. Each extensively tested DVD-ROM contains lessons comprised of video dialogues with native speakers, thousands of audio recordings, exercises, and extensive footnotes.

Presenters: Scott Brill and Alexander Dunkel, University of Arizona, College of Humanities, Critical Languages Program

Room C Helping Learners Learn

1300-1325 Learning Consultation in School of Language Studies, FSI: An Interactive Case Study

A counselor and a learning consultant from the FSI Learning Consultation Service will use an interactive case study to show how teamwork, learning style preference data, and discussion with the language learner can come together to clarify and overcome problems that may be hindering an individual’s progress. Participants will have the chance to develop their own hypotheses about the case and possible recommendations for the learner. Presenters will end by sharing the outcome of the case.

1330-1355 Development of an Effective In-Country Transition Immersion Program in Hebrew

Presenters: Dr. Robert Slater and National Security Education Program Panel of Returned Grantees

Room D Language Policy

1300-1350 Towards a New Model of Language, Culture, and Area Education: A Report from MLA's Committee on Foreign Languages

Presenters: Karin Ryding, Georgetown University; Michael Geisler, Middlebury Language School, Middlebury College; Peter Patrikis; Mary Louise Pratt, New York University

Fifty years of time-tested instructional strategies, professional writing on policy questions, reports, narratives, interview and survey results, and reflection on one searchable CD --whether browsing, reminiscing, or researching, you will find what you need using this unique professional tool! Teachers, educators, practitioners, archivists, students, and researchers have all praised the CD as a means to accomplish important tasks, efficiently and productively. We invite everyone to join us in exploring the enormous potential of this CD, which includes the most up-to-date ideas, as well as rewarding trips down memory lane!

Room E Language Mini-Lessons II: Culture

Presenters: Nasir Rahmani, Zaki Ahmad, and Rafi Alnoor, Foreign Service Institute

1430-1500 Teaching Culture: Bringing the snake and the snake-charmer into the classroom

Through a series of spiraling activities (moving from simple to complex) participants will be acquainted with the pedagogical principles behind cultural instruction in the foreign language classroom. Hands-on activities will introduce some cultural norms and traditions of various target language cultures. Emphasis will be placed on notions of time, the significance of body parts and gestures, types of food, forms of address, holidays and some birth/ death and marriage rituals.

Room F Technology III

Decipher: a web-based reading tool that allows one to copy and paste any text into a textbox and receive a clickable version of the text. Decipher combines text-to-speech (pronunciation of any word), electronic dictionary definitions, a word list of individual words in the text, and concordances in various corpora of ones choice. Learners can select words of their choice in the text and the program produces a list of the words with audio and translation equivalents in English. All levels of proficiency. Reading, vocabulary. Currently available in Arabic.

Presenters: Dr. Lea Christiansen and Treavor Jungerman, Intelligence Language Institute

This Multi Media Demonstration will showcase the different on-line language and culture resources in the SEASite Tagalog website. Resources included in this site are the following; Beginning and Intermediate Language Lessons, Modules for language and K-12 mainstream teachers, Cultural Information, Interactive Discussion On-line Forum and other On-line Language Tools in learning and teaching Tagalog. Sample activities will be demonstrated.

Gateway is a database on a CD of approximately 2000 language learning and testing web sites. The database is searchable by language, proficiency level, skill (reading, speaking, listening, vocabulary, grammar), and content type (text, audio, video, test). It provides easy integration of Internet in classroom instruction and homework assignments. The sites have been selected and rated by our language instructors on features such as content, author, pop-ups, updates. The Gateway is updated as needed.

Presenters: Dr. Lea Christiansen and Treavor Jungerman, Intelligence Language Institute

Room G Testing and Assessment

The Continuing Training and Testing Division is responsible for testing training of FSI testing staff at FSI Washington and overseas field schools. In order to provide continuing refresher training to all FSI testing staff, Continuing Training and Testing created the Interactive Testing Training Program, an online training tool. This demo intends to show how technology assisted Continuing Training and Testing in bridging FSI Washington and the field schools by delivering testing training wherever such training was needed.

The likelihood that learners will attain higher-level proficiency in intermediate or advanced language courses is improved when teachers understand what those learners can and cannot do well and are able to tailor the instruction accordingly. This presentation explores diagnostic assessment techniques in use at the Defense Language Institute including administering a three-skill interview, developing learner profiles and generating customized learning plans.

A view of ILR language levels that concentrates on linguistic structures facilitating the factual characteristics of level 2 as well as those forming the basis for the expression of hypothesis and sausion of level 3 and beyond. The presentation will suggest ways to identify the structures that typify these respective functions and which students need to master in order to achieve the professional level required by government language positions.

This presentation provides an original approach to formulating and shaping prelude and task instructions on ILR-based principles in OPI elicitation.

Room H Teaching LCTLs

Learning a new alphabet can sometimes make students really nervous. There are more than two-dozen totally new shapes that need to be memorized—and the Arabic alphabet is even written in an unfamiliar direction, right to left. This demonstration will show an approach that is enjoyable and effective. Students are taught memory tricks so they learn in less than 30 minutes to recognize the shapes of the letters, the sounds of the letters and their alphabetic order.

The instructor will demonstrate how to teach a new script. Participants will observe and practice writing individual letters in the Hindi script and eventually be writing entire words. The approach demonstrated can be applied to other languages using non-Roman script.

The traditional uni- versus multidirectional approach to teaching unprefixed verbs of motion (UVM) is logical yet not very efficient and somewhat vague. Because this approach has led to infamous struggles among students trying to learn these verbs; we need to come up with new approaches to teaching UVMs, especially in the first stages of learning. The suggested approach provides students with specific and consistent tools for overcoming the challenges of learning UVMs.

1430-1455 Using Chinese Film to Advance Four Language Modalities and Communicative Functions

The presenter will demonstrate a Chinese film course that she developed and delivered to a group of ILR Level 3 students with positive response in increasing overall language proficiency. The presenter will demonstrate her principles for developing a film course as well as the activities or tasks that can be adopted to maximize students' utilization of four language modalities and communicative functions, including Interpretational, Interpersonal, Presentational, and Imaginative.

Dr. James P. Lantolf, Director, Center for Language Acquisition, Center for Advanced Language Proficiency Education and Research (CALPER), Pennsylvania State University

Poster Sessions, Demonstrations and Displays

Hawaii Language Resource Center Language Learning and Technology, An On-line Reference Journal.

Using the Web in Your Classroom: Culture, Movies and Language

Presenter: Dragana McFadden, Titan Corp.

Resources Available from the National Language Resource Centers

The American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages

Highlights from the Center for Advanced Study of Language

Teaching and Learning to Translate Using Web-based Thematic Tagalog Lessons and on-line Translation Tools

Presenter: Rhodalyne Gallo-Crail, NIU

Distance Language Learning: Hands-on Courseware.

Presenter: Josh Saunders, FSI

Host Country Familiarization through Post Language Training Programs

Presenters: Ildiko Cossich and Rachel McCune, FSI

Conversion Training Course from Spanish to Portuguese, FSI

“Immersion of the Month” for FSI Korean Classes

Presenter: Sara So-Yoon Kim, FSI

Building Advanced Skills Inside and Outside the Classroom

Presenter: Branka Bogetic, FSI

Educational Technology Demonstration: The Interactive Testing Training Program (ITTP)

Presenter: Jinpeng Zhu, FSI

Using World-wide Television and Radio as a Teaching Aid

Presenter: David Decker, SCOLA

Language Training, Anytime, Anywhere, Virtual Foreign Language Training Center

Presenter: Mona Carpenter

Chinese Distance Education at FSI: Survival Language and Intermediate Advanced Reading Maintenance

Presenters: Herbert Chang and Huijuan Xu, FSI

Integrating Language and Culture

Presenters: Anika Ahmed, Shabbir Gilani, Tasnim Razi, Ibraz Tassawar, and Shella James, FSI

Language Learning Solutions, Center for Applied Second Language Studies (CASLS) at the University of Oregon

INTERAGENCY LANGUAGE ROUNDTABLE SHOWCASE: PREPARING FOR THE GLOBAL LANGUAGE CHALLENGE

Sponsored by the National Cryptologic School and Hosted by Howard Community College

July 29, 2005

Morning Plenary Session: Auditorium