Editorial by Stacie Nevadomski Berdan, the author of “Get Ahead by Going Abroad” and an upcoming book on “Raising Global Children.”
Posted September 15, 2009 in the Huffington Post at http://www.huffingtonpost.com
Go to article “No More Cuts! Keep Foreign Languages in Schools”
The Foreign Language Assistance Program (FLAP) funds foreign language instruction in elementary and secondary schools under Title V of the No Child Left Behind Act (2001). FLAP provides 3-year grants to states and local school districts to establish, improve, or expand innovative kindergarten through grade twelve modal programs.
The following Local Education Agencies received a 2009 Foreign Language Assistance Program (FLAP) grant:
Advancing in Russian Through Through Narration by Aneta Pavlenko and Victoria Driagina is a new CALPER publication for teachers of Russian. The book focuses on two important aspects of advanced language proficiency, namely narrative and conceptual proficiency.
Narrative proficiency refers to the ability to tell narratives that are similar to those of native speakers of Russian. Conceptual proficiency refers to the ability of making the same conceptual distinctions as native speakers of Russian do.
The authors’ discussion singles out five areas of Russian language knowledge central to the acquisition of narrative and conceptual proficiency. These are “tense and aspect,” “the use of verbs of motion,” “aspects of narrative structure,”, “emotion vocabulary,” and “identity terms.”
The book is available on a CD in PDF format. More information is available at Advancing in Russian Through Narration.
NAFSA: Association of International Educators announced the 2009 recipients of the Paul Simon Award for Campus Internationalization. The institutions are: Boston University, Connecticut College, Pacific Lutheran University, Portland State University, and the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities.
The colleges will be featured in the NAFSA report “Internationalizing the Campus 2009″, to be published in the fall.
On May 7, 2009, U.S. Senator Daniel K. Akaka (D-HI) reintroduced the National Foreign Language Coordination Act, with Senators Thad Cochran (R-MS), Christopher J. Dodd (D-CT), and Richard Durbin (D-IL) as cosponsors. The bill would create a National Foreign Language Coordination Council, directed by a National Language Advisor appointed by the President to develop and oversee the implementation of a foreign language strategy.
Beginning in fall 2009, incoming students accepted to the School of Arts and Sciences at Rutgers University will have to take four semesters of a foreign language. The language requirement is a new requirement for honors students. Read the article by Justin Hoffer in The Daily Targum.
Foreign Language Assistance Program: The U.S. Department of Education’s Foreign Language Assistance Program (FLAP) provides grants to local and state education agencies for innovative model programs providing for the establishment, improvement, or expansion of foreign language study for elementary and secondary school students. Federal Registry announcement for Local Education Agencies and for State Education Agencies.
Young Children have advantage, but linguists say lessons benefit all.
by Valerie Strauss, The Washington Post, February 16, 2009
Read the article
Duke University
Asian and Middle Eastern Studies Department
February 20, 2009: “Computer-mediated Interaction and the New Frontiers of Language Learning”
Presenter: Steven L. Thorne
National Standards for Korean Task Force Meeting
University of Rhode Island
February 27-28, 2009
Task Force Member: Susan Strauss
Chinese Language Teachers Association of California
Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA,
March 7, 2009: “Discourse and Corpus Approaches to Chinese Language Teaching: The CALPER Project and Beyond”
Presenter: Hongyin Tao
URL: http://www.cltac.org
Critical and Intercultural Theory and Language Pedagogy Symposium
University of California, Irvine
March 7, 2009: “Critical issues in language use and development.”
Presenter: Steven L. Thorne
Confucius Institute at San Francisco State University
San Francisco, CA
March 8: “Chinese Language Use and Language Teaching in the Context of Globalization”
Presenter: Hongyin Tao
URL: http://www.sfsu/edu/~ci/index.html
CALICO Conference
Arizona State University
March 10+11: Pre-Conference Workshop: “Automatic Analysis of Learner Language (AALL’09): From a Better Understanding of Annotation Needs to the Development and Standardization of Annotation Schemes”
Presenters: Detmar Meurers and Xiaofei Lu
March 12: “Corpus Linguistic Approaches to the Analysis of Formulaic Sequences in L2-Spanish Computer-Mediated Learner Language Use”
Presenters: Steven L. Thorne, Aziz Yuldashev, Julieta Fernandez
March 13: “Second Language Acquisition Theories, Technologies, and Language Learning”
Presenter: Steven. L. Thorne
March 13: “Developing Technology-Mediated Language Awareness Through Bridging Activities”
Presenters: Steven L. Thorne and Jonathon Reinhardt
URL: http://www.calico.org
American Association for Applied Linguistics
Denver, CO
March 21: Colloquium: “Applying Cognitive Linguistics to Second Language Learning: Experimental Evidence”
Presenter: Susan Strauss
March 21: “The Social Life of Private Speech”
Presenters: Steven L. Thorne and Fee Steinbach Kohler
March 22: “Group Dynamic Assessment in the L2 Classroom”
Presenter: Matthew E. Poehner
March 23: Colloquium: “Alternative Approaches to Second Language Acquisition”
Paper: “Sociocultural Theory and Educational Praxis: A Dialectical Perspective on L2 Development”
Presenter: James P. Lantolf
March 23: “Profiling English in the real world: what learners and teachers can tell us about what they know”
Presenters: Michael McCarthy and Nick Saville
URL: http://www.aaal.org
Southeastern Association of Teachers of Japanese
Wake Forest University, Salem, NC
March 23: “[Speaking vs. Conversing: Reconsideration of the Current State of Foreign Language Education from the Perspective of Conversation Analysis]”
Presenter: Junko Mori
URL: http://www.wfu.edu/eal/SEATJ2009/
University of Texas, Austin
Texas Language Technology Center
March 27, 2009: “Semiotic flows, bricolage, and critical language awareness.”
Presenter: Steven L. Thorne
URL: http://tltc.la.utexas.edu/tltc/events/lecture_series.html
Mündliche Kompetenz im Unterricht amerikanischer High-Schools: Theorie, Praxis, Evaluierung und Didaktik (MUTPED), June 13-July 11, Leipzig.
For high school teachers and graduate students planning on a career in K-12 teaching to improve German language skills, teaching methods, and assessment strategies. The deadline has been extended to February 23, 2009.
For more information: http://www.aatg.org/content/view/443/34/
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