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In this issue:

Ø NCOLCTL Conference

Ø Summer Institute

Ø Standards Workshop

Ø Pre-SCALI Workshop

Ø Material Development Camp

Ø ACAL Conference

Ø AASP Conference

Ø Staff Members Move On

NALRC Director receives volunteer award at NCOLCTL

For the 3^rd year, the NALRC hosted the annual conference of the National Council of Less Commonly Taught Languages (NCOLCTL) in Madison, WI. Since 2004, Antonia Schleicher has been the Executive Director of the organization and its secretariat has been housed in the offices of the NALRC.

This year’s conference, April 27-30, was a great success. Nearly 200 Less Commonly Taught Language (LCTL) professionals from around the U.S., the U.K., and China participated. The theme of the conference was “Expanding the LCTL Capabilities in the United States,” and this year’s key note speaker was Gail McGinn, the Department of Defense’s senior language authority. She

Schleicher and McGinn (right) at NCOLCTL conference

“Everything I’ve done for the less-commonly taught languages,” Schleicher said, “I’ve done it, not for any reward, but because I felt it needed to be done.”

That sentiment, that such work needs to be done, is evidently shared by a growing number of language professionals. This NCOLCTL conference consisted of 43 papers, 10 colloquia, and 5 plenary presentations. Thirteen exhibitors, representing developers of LCTL materials and agencies with LCTL interests, also attended the conference.

The NALRC looks forward to next year’s meeting, the Tenth Annual NCOLCTL Conference.

delivered a presentation on the need for expanding LCTL capabilities in U.S. government. At the end of Mrs. McGinn’s speech, she announced the surprise presentation of a Gold Level Presidential Volunteer Service Award to Antonia Schleicher for her many hours of ceaseless effort in the name of less- commonly taught languages.

NALRC Summer Institute continues to

inspire African language instructors

From Tuesday, May 30, through Friday, June 9, the NALRC hosted the 7^th annual Summer Institute for Teachers of African Languages. Eleven teachers of African languages from across the country attended this year’s institute, bringing the total number of teaching assistants, lecturers, instructors, and professors of African languages trained by the NALRC to 102.

The 2006 Instructors were Steve Timm and Joe Nosek, UW-Madison ESL teachers and practitioners of diverse pedagogical theories for the language classroom. During the first week of the Institute, Mr. Timm taught and modeled best practices for instruction in speaking, listening, reading, and writing skills. Mr. Nosek led the second week, presenting a variety of strategies for realizing vocabulary retention and providing meaningful assessment. The structure of the Institute focused on introducing participants to current theory and research-supported approaches, and then allowing the participants to plan and implement lessons using such approaches. Each lesson integrated speaking, listening, reading, and writing activities and the participants gained experience in formal and informal assessment of these skills.

This year’s group was highly energetic and motivated. The teaching styles of Mr. Timm and Mr. Nosek, as well as the classroom atmosphere they cultivated, engendered a spirit of camaraderie and inventiveness. Participants were free to attempt lesson plans that incorporated new or experimental teaching methods in a critical, yet receptive environment.

The NALRC Summer Institute is quickly rising to the top of the list for professional development opportunities in African language pedagogy. As Hannah Essein, an Akan-Twi instructor from Indiana University, explained, “The significance and importance of the intensive Summer Institute in African languages can never be overemphasized.”

African language instructors: Joscelyn Essegbey, Hannah Essien, Abdulwahid Mazrui, Ammina Kothari, Beatrice Bolger, Peter Muhati, Adeolu Ademoyo, Olubunmi Ashaolu, Oluseye Adesola, Bala Saho

Ongoing NALRC Projects

Please follow the links below to learn more about NALRC publications

Let’s Speak and Learners’ Reference Grammar

Textbooks

Multimedia

Brochures

Hint: Click on any picture for the full-size version.

Standards Developed for Yoruba, Swahili, and Zulu instruction		Pre-SCALI Workshop continues the process of standards development
Shortly after the end of the Spring semester, the NALRC convened a workshop on the campus of UW-Madison to develop standards for three major African languages: Swahili, Yoruba, and Zulu. The goal of the workshop was for leaders in the field of language pedagogy, representing three major African languages, to contribute standards for the teaching and learning of these particular African languages to the Standards for Foreign Language Learning in the 21^st Century. According to the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) Website, the Standards were first published in 1996 following “an unprecedented consensus among educators, business leaders, government, and the community on the definition and role of foreign language instruction in American education.” Though a variety of less-commonly taught languages are represented in the Standards, the	contributions by teachers of Swahili, Yoruba, and Zulu are the first contributions to the Standards concerning African languages. Each of the three African languages was represented by three to four experienced scholars who worked collaboratively in this process. Dr. Marjorie Tussing, professor of German at California State University, Fullerton, joined the workshop on its third day. Her experience with the development of standards and scenarios for German and many other languages was invaluable as the workshop participants wrote those for African languages. The product of the workshop’s labor, preliminary drafts of the standards for Swahili, Yoruba, and Zulu, will soon be completed and sent to other scholars for review. When the entire process is complete, the standards for Swahili, Yoruba, and Zulu will comprise the first three languages in Volume II of the Standards.	On June 15 and 16, Antonia Schleicher led a workshop for instructors at the Summer Cooperative African Language Institute (SCALI). The 2006 SCALI instructors convened on the campus of Indiana University, Bloomington, two working days before the beginning of SCALI to engage in professional development and prepare for the institute. Dr. Schleicher’s workshop, entitled “Workshop on Standards and the Implications for the Classroom” sought to inform practicing instructors of various African languages about the efforts to develop standards for African languages, as well as put those standards to use in actual classroom situations. On Thursday, June 15, Dr. Schleicher presented the key concepts of foreign language standards: what they are and are not, and discussed the ways that standards can be brought to life in the classroom. On Friday, June 16, the instructors began the day by giving demo lessons which	taught to specific standards. The workshop concluded with discussion and development of classroom scenarios that could be used to address other standards. The timing of this year’s SCALI Workshop for Instructors was advantageous for certain ongoing NALRC projects. Having just finished the first drafts of standards for Yoruba, Swahili, and Zulu, the African language teaching community was given the chance to put those standards to the test in the pre-SCALI Workshop. Also, by spreading the word of the effort to develop standards for African languages, and by encouraging instructors to develop classroom scenarios for addressing those standards, a greater number of minds were brought into the process of standards development. The NALRC hopes that instructors of other African languages will also become interested in developing standards.
Workshop Participants, Alwiya Omar, Leonce Rushubirwa, Katrina Thompson, Charles Bwenge, Akintunde Akinyemi, Akinloye Ojo, Antonia Folarin Schleicher, Audrey Mbeje, Sandra Sanneh, and Zoliswa Mali, with Dr. Tussing.		Dr. Schleicher leads the “Workshop on Standards and the Implications for the Classroom” for SCALI instructors prior to the beginning of the institute.

Advanced Level Swahili project also draws on the benefits of Standards Workshop

Awiya Omar, Antonia Schleicher, and Leonce Rushubirwa discuss the new Advanced Level Swahili textbook being developed.

While the NALRC was hosting the Standards Workshop and the Summer Institute, the Center was also hosting two scholars of Swahili who had come to Madison to develop an advanced level Swahili textbook for the Let’s Speak series.

Alwiya Omar, professor of Swahili at Indiana University, and Leonce Rushubirwa, professor of Swahili at the University of Kansas, lived and worked in Madison throughout the month of May to develop the new textbook. At the end of the month, they had completed a draft that will soon be sent to reviewers. The final version of the new advanced level Swahili textbook should be on shelves next year.

Professors Omar and Rushubirwa also participated in the Standards Workshop and, according to Omar, “Participating in the Standards Workshop has helped us a lot in the development of Tuwasiliane Kwa Kiswahili.”

She added, “We took into consideration the goals of the 5 Cs while developing exercises to go with the first three main sections presented in the book: texts, dialogues, and cultural notes. Knowing the standards for each of the goals enabled us to better formulate the questions that came before, during, and after the reading phases of these sections. The standards have also helped us in developing context based exercises to reinforce grammar and vocabulary.”

NALRC presence at ACAL

generates much discussion

NALRC showcases projects and process at AASP meeting

Representing the NALRC at the 37^th Annual Conference on African Linguistics (ACAL), April 7-9, at the University of Oregon in Eugene, were Dr. Antonia Schleicher and Matthew Brown.

The NALRC set up and maintained a booth in the conference reception room in Erb Memorial Union. There, a large number of conference attendees had access to the various NALRC materials. Many of the attendees had traveled from various nations around the world, including Burkina Faso, Ghana, The United Kingdom, Germany, Russia, and South Africa. Therefore, many had never seen the NALRC materials and were very excited by the different books, CD-ROMs, and brochures on display.

Most of the materials

taken to the conference were distributed.

In addition to the booth, Professor Schleicher gave a plenary presentation on “Writing African Language Grammars.” The presentation was well received and generated a great deal of conversation about the development of materials for African languages.

The combination of the NALRC booth and Professor Schleicher’s presentation seemed to make quite an impact on the conference attendees. The NALRC hopes that many more professionals in the field of African languages are aware of its materials, know why and how they are developed, and will help further the cause of teaching and studying African languages around the world.

Adedoyin Adenuga and Bezza Tesfaw Ayalew represented the NALRC at the Spring Meeting of the Association of African Studies Programs (AASP) held in the Bernstein Offit Building, April 6-8, 2006, in Washington DC.

The NALRC exhibition booth was the only exhibition at the meeting and, although most of the participants were familiar with the NALRC products, many attendees were still attracted to the colorful brochures and to the ever increasing number of resource materials offered. Since the November 2005 ASA conference, which most AASP participants had also attended, the NALRC has added two more publications to its display table: Let’s Speak Setswana and the Amharic Learners’

Reference Grammar.

On Wednesday, at 3:30 pm, Mr. Ayalew spoke about ongoing NALRC projects. A question was raised about how the NALRC chooses the languages for which it produces materials and it was elaborated to the audience that the results of African language enrollment surveys, the National Security Education Program (NSEP), e-LCTL language priority listings, and indications of needs of materials from other sources are the basis of the decision (besides the availability of competent scholars who can produce the materials).

The NALRC reception at AASP was generally warm, and NALRC staff received encouraging feedback about various NALRC efforts.

Dr. Schleicher gives a plenary presentation at ACAL.

Bezza Ayalew with the NALRC booth at AASP.

NALRC bids a fond farewell to two important staff members

The end of the 2006 Spring semester brought about the departure of two important members of the NALRC staff. Project Assistants Sookyung Park Cho and Bezza Tesfaw Ayalew have taken positions elsewhere to pursue other professional goals.

Mrs. Cho began working with the NALRC in 2002 when she arrived at UW to begin studies for a doctoral degree in Second Language Acquisition. During her tenure, she administered the NCOLCTL secretariat, managed NALRC accounting, and participated in the production of a number of publications. Due to her amazing ability to multi-task and learn new things, she participated, at some level, in nearly every NARLC activity. She is now teaching Korean at UW and writing her doctoral dissertation. After obtaining

her Ph.D., Mrs. Cho plans to return to Korea to teach English.

Mr. Ayalew’s affiliation with the NALRC began when he agreed to write an Amharic textbook for the Let’s Speak series. Since its publication, Let’s Speak Amharic has been very successful. Mr. Ayalew has since published the Amharic Learners’ Reference Grammar and an Audio CD companion for

Let’s Speak Amharic. In 2005, Mr. Ayalew enrolled as a Ph.D. student in the Department of African Languages and Literature at UW-Madison and took a position as a project assistant at the NALRC. During his time with the organization, Mr. Ayalew gathered research for the online Language Map, as well as for new brochures and a survey of U.S. African language enrollments. He also managed many NALRC accounting duties. Mr. Ayalew has been accepted to the Linguistics Department of the University of Illinois where he plans to pursue a doctoral degree in Semitic languages.

The staff of the NALRC has greatly appreciated the efforts of these two invaluable colleagues. We wish them the best of luck in all that they do.

The NALRC Staff

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