Final Performance Report 1996-2000
Less Commonly Taught Languages (LCTL)

Led by Professor Nancy Stenson and Dr. Louis Janus, the LCTL Project continued to offer services and products to enhance the teaching and learning of LCTLs around the nation. The main areas of this project’s activities were:

• Development, maintenance and dissemination of information concerning availability of LCTL course offerings and other general resource information about LCTLs;
  
  
• Support for professional development opportunities created specifically for LCTL teachers.
  
  
• Development and dissemination of authentic, royalty-free pictures and native speaker voice recordings, with suggestions for curricular material development; and
  
  
• Sponsorship of eight email lists for LCTL teachers.

Development, maintenance, and dissemination of information about LCTLs
The database of LCTL offerings remains the most popular section within the CARLA website serving hundreds of interested users daily. During the third year of the grant (1998-1999), project members upgraded the service, allowing people to search for offerings by state or by language or both. For example, someone looking for Hindi instruction in New York could find out that there are 13 local colleges and universities that offer courses in that language.

The LCTL project expanded In addition to the main academic year LCTL database, the database was expanded to include a searchable listing for summer courses, acting as the official website for the Big Ten Universities' Committee on Institutional Cooperation summer course offerings. The database is also searchable by language and state, and lists whether a program has a study-abroad component. A third database, added during this time, lists K-12 LCTL programs with listings for programs in 27 languages in 44 states. The database expansion also grew in terms of the number of records listed. The main academic year database currently represents more than 300 LCTLs at more than 3,000. The K-12 database has over 2,100 individual records, and the summer university listed 261 LCTL language courses for summer 2000. In addition to work on its own database, the LCTL project was subcontracted by the UCLA Language Materials Project (LMP) to provide complete information on the availability of instruction in the 100 languages in the UCLA Language Materials Project database.

To encourage general interest in Less Commonly Taught Languages, the LCTL project continued to offer an information resource for the public, consisting of a listing of over 90 volunteer specialists in 65 various languages, who have indicated a willingness to answer on-line questions about their areas of expertise. While it is impossible to quantify or categorize requests to the Experts List because they go straight to the individuals, a local volunteer reports receiving several requests per week for information of various sorts, and the number has been steadily increasing. The web page itself received an average of 25 visits a day during the reporting period. Outside of the website offerings, the LCTL project is perceived nationally as a major source of information for the public and the LCTL teaching profession, handling several letters and phone calls a week. Requests range from the alphabets various LCTL use, to meanings and translations of words. Each request was answered where possible, and where specific details of a particular language are involved, suggestions are given for other sources of information.

Professional Development for LCTL Teachers
Throughout the third year of the grant the LCTL project continued its active and highly visible professional development opportunities for LCTL teachers. The first annual summer institute on LCTL material development was led by Professor Bill Johnston, Professor Nancy Stenson, and Dr. Louis Janus and was attended by 20 participants from around the country. A second institute was offered during the extension year from July 17-21, 2000 which included instructors of Japanese, Russian, Dakota, and Finnish. In addition, the LCTL project members have presented workshops at local colleges as well at national conferences.

Development of Sharable Resources for LCTL Teachers: The Virtual Picture Album and Virtual Audio Video Archives
The goal of developing and disseminating authentic, royalty-free pictures and native speaker voice recordings, with suggestions for curricular material development was attained through the LCTL ProjectÕs Virtual Picture Album and Virtual Audio Video Archives. During the third year of the grant, the resources available through the VPA and VAVA grew considerably. By the end of the reporting period, the VPA offered sharable, royalty-free pictures for teachers to use in their class activities from India, Israel, Ireland, Norway, Poland, China, and Tunisia. By the end of the third year of the grant in August 1999, the Virtual Audio Video Archives had authentic voice recordings in five LCTLs (distribution shown below). Several sample class activities using both pictures and audio files were developed in Norwegian, Polish and Arabic.

Sponsorship of electronic lists for LCTL teachers
The LCTL project continued to maintain 7 Internet mailing lists, with the goal of encouraging cooperation and communication among LCTL teachers and added an eighth for Korean instructors during the extension period. The total number of subscribers to these lists was 939 at the end of the reporting period.

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