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PROPOSAL TO CONTINUE FUNDING OF THE UNIVERSITY OF HAWAII NATIONAL

FOREIGN LANGUAGE RESOURCE CENTER (NFLRC), 2006-2010, UNDER THE

LANGUAGE RESOURCE CENTERS PROGRAM

CFDA No. 84.229A

PROGRAM NARRATIVE

1. PLAN OF OPERATION 2

1.1. Organization of the Center 3

1.2. Description of Research and Materials Development Projects 5

1.2.1. Language Documentation 6

1.2.2. Foreign Language Program Evaluation 10

1.2.3. Distance Education for Languages of Asia and the Pacific 12

1.2.4. Pragmatics and Second Language Learning 17

1.2.5. Professional Development for Southeast Asian Language Teachers 18

1.2.6. CHILDES/SLA-Web 18

1.2.7. Dissemination of Research Results and Materials 19

2. QUALITY OF KEY PERSONNEL 23

2.1. NFLRC Staff 23

2.2. Project Teams 25

2.3. NFLRC Advisory Board 30

3. ADEQUACY OF RESOURCES 31

4. NEED AND POTENTIAL IMPACT 36

5. LIKELIHOOD OF ACHIEVING RESULTS 39

6. FINAL FORM OF RESULTS 40

7. EVALUATION PLAN 41

8. BUDGET AND COST-EFFECTIVENESS 43

9. PRIORITIES 46

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PROGRAM NARRATIVE

1. PLAN OF OPERATION

The University of Hawaii (UH), a state land-grant Carnegie I research institution with

outstanding faculty resources in second language acquisition and the languages of Asia and the

Pacific, requests four years of funding to continue the National Foreign Language Resource

Center (NFLRC) as a Title VI Language Resource Center for the period 2006-2010. The

university seeks this funding in consideration of the scope of language programs at the

University of Hawaii, its rich experience in language teaching and second language acquisition

research, the quality of the faculty and graduate programs on which the projects proposed in this

application depend, and the successful record of its National Foreign Language Resource Center

(NFLRC) during the sixteen years it has been in operation. The goal of the NFLRC is to respond

to the need to expand the nation’s capacity for teaching and learning foreign languages

effectively through research and materials development projects that focus primarily on the less

commonly taught languages of Asia and the Pacific. The primary intended audience for most

NFLRC endeavors is language teachers and applied linguists directly concerned with these

languages. However, all of the projects proposed are intended to have implications for the

teaching and learning of all languages, and the results of these projects will be disseminated

through publications, summer institutes, and other mechanisms to the larger educational

community. The NFLRC will also conduct outreach to governmental agencies, language and

area studies centers, and others concerned with strengthening the nation’s capacity in this field.

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1.1. Organization of the Center

The NFLRC will continue to be housed in the College of Languages, Linguistics, and Literature

(LLL), taking advantage of the existing administrative structure and the expertise of existing

personnel.

The Director is the overall administrative head of the NFLRC. The Director is ex-officio

a member of the Advisory Board and of the Steering Committee. Dr. Richard Schmidt, Professor

of Second Language Studies at the University, is the Director of the National Foreign Language

Resource Center.

The Associate Director aids the director in the programs of the NFLRC, has primary

responsibilities with respect to materials development and teacher education, and serves as

Director while the Director is absent or on leave. The Associate Center Director and the Director

are jointly responsible for Summer Institutes. Dr. David Hiple, Director of the Language

Learning Center, is the NFLRC Associate Director.

The NFLRC Consultant advises the Director and Associate Director on all projects,

serves as co-editor of the journal Language Learning & Technology, conducts NFLRC

workshops, and maintains a number of websites linked to the NFLRC site. Dr. Irene Thompson,

Professor Emerita of George Washington University, is the NFLRC Consultant.

The Program Coordinator is responsible for the day-to-day management of the NFLRC

office and coordination, support services and reporting for all NFLRC projects. Mr. Jim K.

Yoshioka, an Educational Specialist, is the Program Coordinator.

The Publications Manager is responsible for the preparation of manuscripts for

publication and the publication and dissemination of NFLRC products in all formats. The

Publications Manager is Dr. Deborah Masterson.

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Mr. Stephen Tschudi, Instructor in Technology for Foreign Language Education in the

College of LLL, as well as an instructor of Chinese, plays a key role in all NFLRC distance

education and multimedia projects, and Mr. John Standal, an Information Technology Specialist,

provides technology support for these and other NFLRC projects.

A National Advisory Board determines the priorities of the NFLRC and is responsible for

the evaluation of the Center. The national Advisory Board will meet annually in Honolulu in

January, to carry out formative and summative evaluations of the Center and its programs. The

Advisory Board is selected from nationally known experts in areas relevant to Center activities.

The following individuals have been invited to form the national Advisory Board for the period

2006-2010 and have accepted that responsibility:

• Robert J. Bickner, Professor of Thai Language & Literature and Language

Director, Southeast Asian Studies Summer Institute (SEASSI), University of Wisconsin -

Madison

• Mary Hammond, Dean of Education Programs, East-West Center

• Frederick H. Jackson, Coordinator, Interagency Language Roundtable, Foreign

Service Institute, US Department of State

• Madeline K. Spring, Associate Professor of Chinese Language and Literature,

University of Colorado – Boulder and Academic Director of the Chinese K-16 Flagship

Initiative (NSEP), University of Oregon and Portland Public Schools

• Elvira Swender, Director of Professional Programs, American Council on the

Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL)

A local Steering Committee --made up of the Director, the Associate Director, the

NFLRC Consultant, and all project heads-- assists the Director in implementing projects,

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gathering information to ensure that each project is on schedule, and determines dissemination

priorities. The Steering Committee also takes appropriate steps to ensure that provisions are

made for equal access to NFLRC programs by members of groups that have been traditionally

underrepresented, including members of racial or ethnic minorities, women, the handicapped,

and the elderly (see GEPA attachment to this application for more detail).

1.2. Description of Research and Materials Development Projects

In deciding which of many deserving projects ought to be pursued during the 2006-2010 funding

cycle, NFLRC staff have used the following criteria:

• All projects should address the overall mandate of improving the learning and

teaching of foreign languages in the US, especially those that are less commonly-taught

(the LCTLs) and should include the types of activities specified in Section 669.3 of the

Language Resource Centers Program authorizing language;

• Projects should represent new initiatives, while building strategically on work that

has been completed during prior grant cycles;

• While focusing primarily on the languages of Asia and the Pacific, whenever

possible projects should have broader implications for the teaching and learning of all

languages;

• Projects should include advanced educational technology in all cases where this is

appropriate;

• Research and materials development should be integrated with teacher training;

• Each project should include plans for dissemination of research findings,

instructional materials, tests, and other products to the broadest possible audience of

potential users;

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• Each project should include an evaluation component for each project, compatible

with GEPRA and EELIAS reporting requirements; and

• Whenever possible, projects should include linkages with other Title VI programs

including NRCs, CIBERs, other Language Resource Centers, and Title VI IRS-funded

studies in order to ensure maximum effectiveness and leverage for all projects.

The projects proposed in this application are grouped under four general themes: (1)

Language Documentation, a project to enhance the nation’s capacity to learn and teach very

uncommonly taught (or, in some cases, virtually never taught) languages that are seriously

under-documented in terms of such basics as dictionaries and reference grammars; (2) Distance

Education projects for languages of Asia and the Pacific, including online certificate courses and

language cafés; (3) Foreign Language Program Evaluation, a project designed to raise the

awareness of FL educators about the evaluation demands that face them and produce

immediately useful strategies to meet those demands; and (4) Dissemination of research results

and materials nationally through conferences, workshops, summer institutes for professional

development, a vigorous publications division, and sponsorship of three on-line journals.

1.2.1. Language Documentation

Project Director: Kenneth Rehg

Partners: the three UH NRCs (for East Asia, Southeast Asia, and Pacific Islands), the University

of Minnesota LRC (Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition), and the Indiana

University LRC (Center for Languages of the Central Asian Region)

By some estimates, there are roughly 6,900 languages currently spoken on earth,

approximately half of which are spoken in the countries of Asia and the Pacific, more than 700 in

Indonesia alone for example (www.ethnologue.com). If the minimum that is needed for any

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kind of effective language learning or teaching is a dictionary and a reference grammar, then

most of the world’s languages must be called “undocumented,” or at the very least under-

documented. To take the Philippines as one example, Filipino (also known as Tagalog),

Cebuano (also known as Visayan or Bisayan), and Ilokano are well documented, but another half

dozen languages can claim between 300,000 and one million speakers each but are under-

documented by any standard. These include Maguindanao, Maranao, Masbatenyo, Yakan, and

Tausug (there are no entries for any of these in the language materials database maintained by

UCLA), the last two of which are spoken in areas where the Abu Sayyaf terrorist organization

operated for years, in addition to parts of Malaysia and Indonesia. Other languages that have

been critically important to the US in recent years and which were under-documented at the time

they became important for security reasons include Somali and the languages of Afghanistan.

Language documentation is of course also an issue for scholars who need to conduct research in

countries where often only the national language is well documented, as well as for the NRCs

that support such scholars.

Scores of dictionaries, grammars, and textbooks for languages taught at UH have been

produced through research at the UH Department of Linguistics, which has a special focus on the

languages of the vast Austronesian family. UH offers a language documentation specialization or

track within the MA in Linguistics, and a high percentage of its doctoral students engage in

language documentation work in Asia or the Pacific region. In late 2003, graduate students in

the department initiated a project to train native speakers of undocumented or under-documented

languages to document their own languages. Participants in the program spend a term attending

classes on language documentation techniques and issues and are paired with graduate students

with whom they design and carry out projects. Two years later, two dozen previously under-

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documented languages of the world have received much needed attention, and the effort has seen

the winning of three awards: the Jacob Peace Memorial Award, the NAFSA "Partnership in

Excellence Award," and first prize in the 2005 Small Business Plan Competition organized by

the UH College of Business. The languages that have been included in the language

documentation project to date are the following: Balinese, Cham, Chuukese, Ema, Fataluku,

Ilokano, Javanese, Kalmyk, Kemak (Russia), Keres, Kerinci, Konkani, Lamaholot, Lungtu,

Makasae Fatumaka, Makasae Osoroa, Minangkabau, Lirat (Xinjiang, China), Okinawan,

Pingilapese, Selayar, Tibetan (Lhasa), Tibetan (Tsetang), Tiwa, Truku, Waima'a

(http://www.ling.hawaii.edu/%7Euhdoc/index.html).

The language documentation project has been supported since its inception by the

NFLRC and the UH NRCs for Southeast Asia, East Asia, and the Pacific Islands, primarily by

providing modest stipends to the native speaking participants who are the focus of the project. In

addition, one set of instructional materials (for Pingilapese, a Pacific island language) has been

disseminated by the NFLRC and another for Kemak (East Timor) is in preparation. In

preparation for the pending grant cycle 2006-2010, all of the Title VI centers have been meeting

regularly to plan an articulated effort to increase its impact nationally and internationally. The

three UH NRCs will each concentrate their support on the languages of their region by

continuing to provide stipends to student informants. The NFLRC will take the lead in

supporting a major effort to enhance the capacity for language documentation. The major steps

that are planned are as follows:

• Fall 2005: Establishment of a UH Language Documentation and Conservation Advisory

Council, consisting of faculty, students, and department chairs of Linguistics and Second

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Language Studies, a member of the UH Board of Regents, and the directors of the NFLRC and

the three NRCs at the university.

• Spring 2006: Host a small working conference to survey documentation activities at key

institutions, make plans to establish an e-journal for language documentation, plan an

international conference (2008) and workshop (2010), and possibly to create an international

association that will act as the sponsor of subsequent activities.

• 2006-07: Launch an online refereed journal for language documentation, to be supported

by the NFLRC, that will deal with such topics as the goals of documentary linguistics, assessing

ethnolinguistic vitality, problems of data collection, orthography design, reference grammar

design, lexicography, literacy, archiving, and ethical issues.

• 2007-2008: Host an international conference on language documentation.

• 2009-2010: Host a summer institute to disseminate what has been learned to individuals

and teams from other institutions in the US.

In addition to the UH NRCs, our partners in this project include the University of

Minnesota LRC and the Indiana University LRC. Minnesota has agreed to send Louis Janus,

who directs their LCTL project, to participate in planning meetings, organize a colloquium on

“pedagogical issues in learning and teaching un(der)-documented languages” as part of the 2008

international conference, and to offer a course or course-module on teaching LCTLs in the 2010

Summer Institute. Indiana will send one or more persons to participate in the 2008 conference

and will share information from its own research projects on some of the less documented

languages of Central Asia.

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1.2.2. Foreign Language Program Evaluation

Project Director: John Norris

Partners: the MLA Association of Departments of Foreign Languages (ADFL), the UH East

Asia NRC, and the Ohio State LRC in collaboration with the East Asian NRCs at Cornell, the

University of Washington, Duke University, and the University of California - Berkeley

College and university foreign language (FL) programs are asked to engage in evaluation

of many kinds and for many reasons, such as traditional program reviews and more recent

accreditation pressures to assess student learning outcomes. In addition, particular programs have

unique needs – as an example, the assessment of student proficiency to evaluate foreign language

programs has just been announced as a Title VI NRC competitive priority for FY 2006. Often,

however, evaluation within FL programs is perceived as an onerous bureaucratic task that is

imposed from the outside. Distinctions between student assessment and program evaluation are

poorly understood, as are the links between evaluation and the improvement of curriculum and

instruction. This project is designed to help FL educators build their capacities to engage in

evaluation for understanding, improving, and ensuring FL program quality across colleges and

universities in the US.

The project is divided into three phases. Phase 1 focuses on identifying the primary uses

and demands for evaluation in US college FL programs and on appraising current capacities to

meet such demands. In Phase 2 the research team will develop strategies and resources, such as

self-study modules, evaluation instrument templates, and workshops on evaluation procedures,

that will be made available on the project web site in conjunction with a searchable database. In

Phase 3 the developed strategies and resources will be field-tested, evaluated, and revised, via

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implementation in and close collaboration with five representative foreign language program

sites.

This project is supported by a Title VI International Research and Studies (IRS) grant

(2005-08), which supports the research and development aspects of the project. The NFLRC

will carry the primary responsibility for disseminating results, in the following ways:

• By hosting the project website on the NFLRC server and providing technical

support as needed;

• By co-sponsoring the annual Summer Seminar of the ADFL, to be held at UH in

June 2007, with a major strand of the conference dedicated to foreign language program

evaluation;

• By conducting the Foreign Language Program Evaluation Summer Institute in

2007, a workshop that will be held immediately preceding or following the ADFL

conference. It is anticipated that a number of ADFL conference participants (typically

heads of departments of the more commonly taught languages) will also participate in the

workshop, but our outreach efforts for the workshop will target educators from across the

US who represent less commonly-taught languages;

• By providing graduate assistant support to maintain the website and continue the

development projects planned for the project in years 3 (2008-09) and 4 (2009-10) of the

grant cycle, following the conclusion of the IRS grant; and

• By publishing and disseminating all results from the project. It is anticipated that

this will include traditional media products such as technical reports and monographs as

well as electronic publications.

An additional benefit of this project is that it will address the competitive priority that has

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been set for Title VI NRCs, to carry out “activities designed to demonstrate the quality of the

center's or program's language instruction through the measurement of student proficiency in the

less and least commonly taught languages.” Although proficiency testing of students and

program evaluation are not the same (the latter being the broader construct), the NFLRC will

support this NRC priority by publicizing the summer institute on program evaluation to NRC

directors and encouraging their participation. NFLRC staff have met and will continue to meet

and work closely with the directors of the three UH NRCs (East Asia, Southeast Asia, Pacific

Islands) and their faculty in order to plan and implement proficiency testing mechanisms for

those languages. John Norris, Director of this Project, has agreed to act as a consultant on

program evaluation for the Ohio State University LRC, acting as coordinator of a collaborative

project to develop unified reporting procedures for East Asian languages in collaboration with

four East Asian NRCs. The Japanese language program at UH has also been chosen to be one of

the five demonstration programs for the implementation of evaluation strategies.

1.2.3. Distance Education for Languages of Asia and the Pacific

Project Director: David Hiple

The UH NFLRC has carried out a series of interrelated distance education and distributed

learning projects since 1993. In the 2002-2006 grant cycle, the center conducted a major project

on distance distributed learning of Chinese at minority-serving institutions and hosted a variety

of distance-related workshops and institutes, including a symposium in 2004, and an on-line

summer institute in 2005. For the 2006-2010 funding cycle, three projects are proposed under

this theme:

• On-line Certificate Courses in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean

• On-line Cafés for Heritage Learners of Filipino, Japanese, and Samoan

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• Southeast Asian Language Courses and On-line Modules

On-line Certificate Courses in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean

Partners: UH NRC for East Asia, UH CIBER

In the 2002-2006 grant cycle, NFLRC-supported distance education projects have

generated prototype models for teaching languages via 1) integrated formats featuring on-line

Web- and off-line CD-mediated instruction, 2) distributed formats integrating on-line as well as

face-to-face instruction, and 3) exclusively Web-delivered instruction. As a result, credit-bearing

introductory- to advanced-level East Asian language courses (100-400 level) utilizing these

multiple formats are now offered by UH. With regard to advanced (300-400) level courses, the

NFLRC has fostered the development of five advanced on-line courses, three in Chinese and one

each in Japanese and Korean.

This distance education project proposed for the next funding cycle (2006-2010) will

enable students and government and civilian personnel to earn the UH advanced certificate in

Chinese, Japanese, and Korean entirely on line. In partnership with the UH East Asia NRC, the

NFLRC will support the upgrading of eight advanced certificate courses, two in Chinese, four in

Japanese, and two in Korean, to an on-line format so that by the end of the grant cycle, it will be

possible to earn UH certificates in Chinese and Japanese entirely on line. The completion of the

complement of on-line certificate courses in Korean will be realized after the 2006-2010 grant

period. The NFLRC will support the development of four courses, two each in Chinese and

Japanese, and the UH East Asia NRC will support the upgrade of four courses in Japanese and

Korean (with additional support from the UH CIBER for a business-oriented course in Korean).

The four-year course upgrade schedule and funding source appear below:

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NFLRC NRC2006-2007 Chinese 442 Japanese 3082007-2008 Chinese 470 Japanese 3152008-2009 Japanese 407B Korean 3072009-2010 Japanese 425 Korean 470

The Chinese certificate has been targeted for completion because the largest number of

UH intensive language courses conducted for the military in the last five years has been in

Chinese and three on-line Chinese courses (CHN 331, 332, 441) have already been completed.

The Japanese certificate has been targeted for completion second, since it is the most commonly

taught East Asian language both in the US and at UH. The Korean certificate has been targeted

for completion soon after the next four-year grant period. One on-line certificate course in

Japanese (JPN 332) and one in Korean (KOR 332) have already been completed.

The project will be directed by David Hiple, Director of the Language Learning Center at

UH and Associate Director of the NFLRC; he has led a series of interrelated distance education

projects carried out by the centers since 1995. The development of the course Web sites will be

coordinated by Stephen Tschudi, who doubles as Instructor of Chinese and Instructor of

Technology in Foreign Language Education at UH. One UH faculty member per course has also

been identified to realize the on-line conversion. One graduate student will be recruited to assist

in the conversion of each course, 20-hours per week for an academic year. There is no shortage

of talented information technology graduate students at UH, and many of them are native- or

high-level speakers of the project languages.

On-line Cafés for Heritage Learners of Filipino, Japanese, and Samoan

Partners: UH NRCs for Southeast Asia, East Asia, and Pacific Islands

The virtual equivalent of the neighborhood coffee house, the on-line café is a place for

people to gather for conversation and social interaction. The UH NFLRC has been developing a

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prototype on-line café for language learning for several years. This distance education project

will enable heritage students of Filipino, Japanese, and Samoan to come together on line with

students having similar profiles at distant locations.

On-line cafés will be created in three target heritage languages using BRIX courseware, a

dynamic Web courseware system featuring a 3-tier client/server model using on-line database

connectivity and employing widely available Web technologies including client-side scripting

and streaming media. Members of each café will dialogue on line with peers and facilitators

(instructors) in a learning community via forums or threaded discussions. The cafés will feature a

social area for free chat, a discussion area for instructor-guided interaction, a grammar clinic for

focus on form, and a gallery for sharing pictures of school and community as well as other

graphics. The three heritage cafés will each have a distinct sub-theme.

Filipino Community Café. Advanced Filipino language students at UH will meet

Filipino heritage students in the University of California system in an on-line Community Café.

UC participation will be coordinated through the office of the Consortium for Language

Learning and Teaching at UC Davis. The Community Café will create a venue for students to

share ideas and experiences on outreach initiatives in local communities in Hawaii and

California.

Japanese Culture Café. Advanced Japanese language students at Aiea High School in

Honolulu will meet English language students at Tezukayama Gakuin Izumigaoka High School

in Osaka, Japan, in an on-line Culture Café. The café format will be based on the well-regarded

MIT Cultura model funded by NEH. This project allows students not only to improve their target

language skills but also to compare and contrast their cultural values with the values of the target

culture participants.

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Samoan Pathways Café. Advanced Samoan language students at UH will meet Samoan

language students at American Samoa Community College in Pago Pago and Samoan language

students at Farrington High School in Honolulu in an on-line Pathways Café. The content focus

of the Pathways Café will be to facilitate articulation from high school and community college to

university. Samoan heritage students are significantly underrepresented at institutions of higher

education in the US, and this café project is intended to “demystify” the university experience for

high school and community college students by allowing them to be exposed to and mentored by

successful Samoan language students at UH.

Teams from each café site will assemble for a one-week NFLRC workshop at UH in the

summer of 2008 to define café content rubrics and operationalize their respective cafés and

discuss other pedagogical considerations. The cafés will be housed on an NFLRC server. In

summer 2010 the NFLRC will convene an international CMC (computer mediated

communication) Symposium in which the three culture cafés will be showcased.

This heritage café project will be co-sponsored by the three NRCs at UH. The Southeast

Asia NRC will co-sponsor the Filipino Community Café. The East Asia NRC will co-sponsor the

Japanese Culture Café, and the Pacific Island NRC will co-sponsor the Samoan Pathways Café.

Southeast Asian Language Courses and On-line Modules

Partners: UH NRC for Southeast Asia and UH CIBER.

In addition to the major course development projects described above, the NFLRC will

also provide pedagogical and some technical support for Southeast Asian language online

courses for Filipino, Indonesian, Thai and Ilokano that were originally initiated as NFLRC-

sponsored projects and now have independent IRS funding, as well as for a new online course

module for Indonesian for business that will be sponsored and largely funded by the UH CIBER.

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In addition to the major projects for language documentation, program evaluation, and

distance education described above, all of which include research, materials development,

publication, and teacher training, several additional projects are planned, which are “minor” only

in the sense that they do not include all of the above-mentioned components:

• Pragmatics and Second Language Learning

• Professional Development for Southeast Asian Language Teachers

• CHILDES/SLA-Web

1.2.4. Pragmatics and Second Language Learning

Project Director: Gabriele Kasper

Partner: UH NRC for East Asia

The NFLRC has carried out numerous research projects during the decade and a half of

its existence concerning the pragmatic aspects of second language use and learning, the most

recent of these (in the 2002-2006 grant cycle) an investigation of Conversation Analysis as an

approach to SLA research. During the current four year cycle, the NFLRC does not propose to

undertake any new research but will carry out several major dissemination activities, including:

• Hosting the International Pragmatics and Language Learning (IPLL) conference,

the best known conference in this field, in 2007 (Organizers: Gabriele Kasper, NFLRC;

Dina Yoshimi, UH NRC, Hanh Nguyen, Hawaii Pacific University; Jim Yoshioka,

NFLRC);

• Publishing the proceedings of both the 2005 IPLL conference proceedings

(Kathleen Bardovi-Harlig, Editor) and the 2007 conference proceedings (Gabriele

Kasper, Editor); and

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• Initiating a new monograph series, Pragmatics & Interaction (Gabriele Kasper,

Series Editor), the first volume of which is expected to be a collection of research studies

on the pragmatics of Vietnamese as a native and target language (Hanh Nguyen, Carsten

Roever, and Gabriele Kasper, Co-Editors) as a companion to the earlier successful

collections of studies on the pragmatics of Chinese and Japanese as native and target

languages.

1.2.5. Professional Development for Southeast Asian Language Teachers

Project Directors: David Hiple and Stephen Tschudi

Partners: UH NRC for Southeast Asia, San Diego State LRC

While almost all NFLRC projects have professional development aspects incorporated

into them, three projects are planned that will specifically address the professional development

needs of teachers of Southeast Asian Languages:

• Sponsorship of the International Filipino Language Teaching Conference in 2008

(Organizers: Ruth Mabanglo, Teresita Ramos)

• Co-sponsorship (with CSEAS) of the Spring 2009 Southeast Asia Language

Technology Conference; and

• The development of a 3-credit language teaching methodology course to be

offered by distance to teachers of Filipino in California schools.

1.2.6.CHILDES/SLA-Web

Project Director: Lourdes Ortega

Partners: the University of Oregon LRC, also supported by a Title VI IRS grant, in

collaboration with the LRCs at Michigan State University and the University of Minnesota.

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This project has two parts. Part one is a project initiated by the University of Oregon and

funded by a Title VI IRS grant to make data from the over 30,000 students who have taken

STAMP proficiency tests in Spanish, Japanese, French, and German available in computer

format to SLA researchers. Lourdes Ortega of the NFLRC will join Susan Gass (MSU), Elaine

Tarone (Minnesota), and Jacquelyn Schachter (Oregon) in using these data to ask basic questions

about learner profiles that have never been asked before with such large numbers of learners –

the data will be contributed to the CHILDES database in the CHAT format. Part two of the

project involves contribution to the CHILDES database of a second large corpus collected under

an earlier NFLRC project on syntactic complexity in oral narrative (Japanese, Spanish, German).

The goal of the project is to produce an NFLRC technical report that will provide a model for

how CHILDES programs and tools can be used on L2 learner corpora to investigate varied

research questions, as well as making the four-language syntactic complexity corpus publicly

available to the international SLA research community.

1.2.7. Dissemination of Research Results and Materials

Results from all projects undertaken by the NFLRC will be disseminated to the widest audience

possible. The primary vehicles for dissemination are the NFLRC publications division and

NFLRC-hosted conferences, symposia, workshops, and annual summer institutes for

professional development.

NFLRC PUBLICATIONS

The NFLRC includes a vigorous publications program – to the best of our knowledge, we are the

only LRC that has a full-time publications manager. Research results will be disseminated

through two monograph series, the existing NFLRC Technical Reports Series (26 titles to data)

and a new series to be initiated, Pragmatics and Interaction. Language teaching materials are

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published in a wide variety of formats, ranging from small scale manuals produced in-house (for

materials with a small or highly specialized potential audience) to high quality textbooks with

accompanying tapes, CDs or DVDs. Increasingly, the NFLRC emphasizes electronic publication

of both research results and materials, including not only the maintenance of an extensive

website with dynamic content but also several linked websites, such as the Multimedia Language

Learning Software Evaluation project.

Electronic Journals. If funded, the NFLRC will continue its sponsorship of Language Learning

& Technology (LLT) and Reading in a Foreign Language, two refereed online journals for

second and foreign language educators, and will inaugurate a third, Language Documentation

(tentative title), which will be part of the Language Documentation Project described above.

Language Learning & Technology

Editors: Irene Thompson and Dorothy Chunn

Partner: CLEAR, the Michigan State LRC

Language Learning & Technology (LLT) was launched by the UH NFLRC in 1996, with

UH assuming responsibility for editorial control and content of the journal and the Michigan

State University LRC (CLEAR) assuming responsibility as co-sponsor for production, including

maintenance of a Web server. LLT has become one of the most respected journals in the field of

foreign language education and the preferred venue for publication by authors specializing in the

applications of technology in language learning and teaching. NFLRC and CLEAR have agreed

to continue their sponsorship under the same arrangement for the next four years, with Hawaii

again responsible for content and Michigan State responsible for production.

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Reading in a Foreign Language

Editors: Richard Day and Thom Hudson

Reading in a Foreign Language (RFL) was founded in 1983 at the University of Aston,

England, as a print journal and moved to Hawaii in 2002 as an online refereed journal under the

co-editorship of Richard R. Day and Thom Hudson, both of the Department of Second Language

Studies at UH. RFL has established itself as an excellent source for the latest developments in

the field, including improving standards for foreign language reading.

Language Documentation (tentative title)

Editors: to be announced

This new online journal, like the others sponsored by NFLRC, will be peer-reviewed and

available free on-line, but readers will be invited to become subscribers (providing readership

data) in return for early notification of issues. The journal will deal with such topics related to

language documentation as the goals of documentary linguistics, assessing ethnolinguistic

vitality, problems of data collection, orthography design, reference grammar design,

lexicography, literacy, archiving, and ethical issues.

CONFERENCES, SYMPOSIA, WORKSHOPS, AND SUMMER INSTITUTES

UH has offered NFLRC Summer Institutes for Professional Development since 1991. They have

earned a solid reputation for providing training in teaching methodologies, testing, materials

development, and technology-based FL education. The following events have been planned:

• March 26-28, 2007, International Pragmatics and Language Learning Conference,

Co-chairs: Gabriele Kasper (NFLRC), Dina Yoshimi (NRC for East Asia), Hanh Nguyen

(HPU), & Jim Yoshioka (NFLRC).

• June, 2007, Association of Departments of Foreign Languages Summer Seminar

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• June, 2007, Foreign Language Program Evaluation Summer Institute. S.I.

Director: John Norris.

• 2008, Filipino International Language Conference. Organizers: Ruth Mabanglo

and Teresita Ramos.

• Spring, 2008, Language Documentation Conference. Organizers: Kenneth Rehg,

Richard Schmidt, and Jim Yoshioka.

• Summer, 2008, Online Café Summer Institute. S.I. Director: David Hiple.

• Spring, 2009, Southeast Asia Language Technology Conference. Organizers:

Barbara Andaya (CSEAS Director) and David Hiple (NFLRC).

• Summer, 2009, Cultural Diversity and Language Education Conference (CDALE

-2). Organizers: Kathryn Davis and Jim Yoshioka. As part of its 2002-2006 Heritage

Language project, the NFLRC, in cooperation with the UH Center for Second Language

Research (CSLR), organized the first Cultural Diversity and Language Education

(CDALE) Conference in 2004. The conference was a notable success. The NFLRC will

host the 2nd Cultural Diversity and Language Education Conference in 2009, again in

cooperation with CSLR. Like the original CDALE Conference, the second one will

focus on theories, policies, and practices associated with cultural and language diversity

in educational contexts, including heritage language issues and language policy.

• Summer 2009, Online Summer Institute for Non-native Teachers of Japanese and

Chinese. SI Directors: David Hiple and Stephen Tschudi.

• Summer, 2010, Language Documentation Summer Institute. SI Director:

Kenneth Rehg.

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2. QUALITY OF KEY PERSONNEL

Resumes for all staff and project personnel are presented in Other Attachments, and our remarks

here are brief concerning the professional staff of the NFLRC and university faculty affiliated

with the Center.

2.1. NFLRC Staff

RICHARD SCHMIDT, NFLRC Director, has occupied this position since 1994. He has

been at UH since 1976 and is a full professor in the Department of Second Language Studies.

Following completion of his doctorate in linguistics (specializing in Arabic linguistics), he has

spent his career engaged in the training of foreign language teachers, including teacher training

projects in Japan, Thailand, Brazil, Spain, and Egypt. His research publications concern the

social aspects of second language acquisition, cognitive processes, the development of fluency in

foreign language learning, and motivation. He was chair of the Council of Directors of the

NFLRCs for two years and president of the American Association for Applied Linguistics

(AAAL), 2003-04. He serves on numerous editorial and advisory boards (including the National

Advisory Board for the National Middle East Language Resource Center at BYU).

DAVID HIPLE, Associate NFLRC Director since 1992, has over thirty years of

experience in language teaching, testing, and teacher training. He has secured and managed

numerous federal and private foundation grants and contracts to conduct materials development

and teacher training projects in a variety of uncommonly taught languages, including Chinese,

Filipino, Indonesian, Korean, and Vietnamese. He is also Director of the UH Language Learning

Center (LLC). He has been an external evaluator of the Southeast Asian Studies Summer

Institute (SEASSI), and he conducted an evaluation of the Consortium for the Teaching of

Indonesian and Malay (COTIM) summer study abroad program in Sulawesi, Indonesia, and the

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Advanced Khmer Program (ASK) in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Dr. Hiple is also a tester trainer

for the Peace Corps and has trained oral interviewers in the field in such diverse countries as

Krygystan, Turkmenistan, Russia, Samoa, Lesotho, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, and Thailand.

JIM YOSHIOKA, NFLRC Program Coordinator since 1999 organizes and administers

professional development programs for second and foreign language educators including

national and international conferences and symposia, NFLRC summer institutes, and the

College’s various professional development series. He served as conference chair of the 4th

Pacific Second Language Research Forum (PacSLRF) in 2001, associate chair of the annual

AAAL Conference in 2003, and organizing chair of the Cultural Diversity and Language

Education Conference in 2004. He is currently serving as local chair for the 2006 Computer

Assisted Language Instruction Consortium (CALICO) annual symposium.

STEPHEN TSCHUDI, Instructor in Technology for Foreign Language Education,

studied and worked in Beijing for four years. He worked for several years on grant-funded

projects to develop models for effective foreign language pedagogy in the interactive television

(ITV) medium, offering workshops nationwide to help educators make the shift to ITV.

Recently, his focus has been on developing Web-based language courses. Mr. Tschudi has

received national and international recognition for his frequent workshops and conference

presentations and locally was awarded the Hawaii Association of Language Teachers (HALT)

Excellence in Teaching Award in 2000. He served on the national Board of Directors of the

Chinese Language Teachers’ Association (2001-04).

DEBORAH MASTERSON, Publications Specialist, has been with the NFLRC since its

inception in 1989. In addition to a Ph.D. in linguistics, experience as a computational linguist on

a bi-directional translation program for English and Korean, and her own published work in

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language teaching and linguistics, she brings to the position of publications specialist extensive

training in design, technical writing and editing, and desktop and Internet publishing, offering

numerous workshops to train both language educators and students in such helpful techniques.

Dr. Masterson gives NFLRC publications and materials a distinctive thematic look that never

fails to bring special attention to the Center.

IRENE THOMPSON, NFLRC Consultant, is Professor Emerita at George Washington

University, where she taught for many years and served as chair of the Department of Slavic

Languages, in addition to teaching at the Foreign Service Institute. In her capacity as NFLRC

Consultant, Dr. Thompson serves as Co-editor of the online refereed journal Language Teaching

and Technology and provides guidance on both technologically oriented and pedagogically

focused Center projects. Recently, she was the developer of the Languages of the World website

(http://www.nvtc.gov/lotw/) and the NFLRC Multimedia Language Learning Software Database

(http://www.nflrc.hawaii.edu/NetWorks/NW31/).

2.2. Project Teams

LANGUAGE DOCUMENTATION PROJECT

KENNETH REHG is Associate Professor in Linguistics at UH and will head the project

on language documentation. Dr. Rehg is currently the coordinator of the Department of

Linguistics' MA track in Language Documentation and Conservation. Well known for his

descriptive work on the languages of Micronesia, he is also recognized for his expertise in the

areas of vernacular language education, bilingual education, orthography design, and

lexicography. He is an expert on Pohnpeian, having developed a dictionary, a reference

grammar, and language learning materials for the Micronesian language. He has received the

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UH Presidential Citation for Meritorious Teaching and currently also serves as the managing

editor for the refereed journal Oceanic Linguistics.

VICTORIA ANDERSON is Assistant Professor in Linguistics at UH and is actively

involved in phonetic research on languages of Asia and the Pacific. She has also conducted

fieldwork on Australian aboriginal languages. Before joining UH, Anderson served as consultant

to a number of private corporations, including Apple Computer, where she worked on text-to-

speech synthesis systems. At UH, she founded and co-developed the College of LLL’s Language

Analysis and Experimentation (LAE) Labs, which currently support more than 100 faculty and

student researchers, including those documenting the structures of languages.

YUKO OTSUKA is an Assistant Professor in Linguistics at UH. She is an authority on

the languages of Polynesia and is currently writing a textbook on the languages of this region.

Her current projects include a pedagogical grammar of Tongan. She is also active in promoting

the maintenance and teaching of Polynesian and other Pacific languages.

ROBERT BLUST, Chair of the Department of Linguistics at UH, is the world's foremost

authority on the Austronesian language family. He has carried out extensive linguistic

fieldwork in Sarawak, the Admiralty Islands, and Taiwan, as well as with speakers of individual

languages from Sumatra, Sulawesi, eastern Indonesia, western Micronesia, and mainland

Southeast Asia (for a total of 97 Austronesian languages). He is widely published in the fields of

Austronesian linguistics, anthropology, folklore, and cultural history.

FOREIGN LANGUAGE PROGRAM EVALUATION PROJECT

JOHN NORRIS is an Assistant Professor in Second Language Studies at UH who

focuses his research on program evaluation, instructional effectiveness, and the improvement of

assessment practices in language education. He has consulted extensively with second and

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foreign language programs in the US and abroad, including the Georgetown University German

Department and Northern Arizona University. An article based on his collaborative research

with Lourdes Ortega, entitled “Effectiveness of L2 instruction: A research synthesis and

quantitative meta-analysis” was awarded both the ACTFL-MLJ Paul Pimsleur award and the

TESOL Distinguished Research award in 2001.

DISTANCE EDUCATION PROJECTS

RUTH MABANGLO is Professor and Coordinator of the Filipino and Philippine

Literature Program in the Department of Hawaiian and Indo-Pacific Languages & Literatures at

UH. Her literary works have garnered high profile awards, including the Philippine National

Book Award for Poetry and the Carlos Palanca Memorial Award. In addition, Dr. Mabanglo has

authored numerous Filipino language textbooks and teaching materials in a variety of formats

(text, video, Web), including two with the NFLRC. In 1996, she received the UH Presidential

Citation for Meritorious Teaching, and she continues to promote Filipino language, culture, and

literature with both heritage and non-heritage language students alike.

ROBERT BLAKE is Professor in the Department of Spanish & Classics at the University

of California at Davis and also serves as director of the UC Consortium for Language Learning

and Teaching, a system-wide initiative designed to make the most effective use of the UC’s vast

linguistic resources and expertise and foster collaboration among and across language programs

at the UC campuses with an eye to increasing student access to language study.

CINDY WONG is a Japanese teacher at Aiea High School in Aiea, Hawaii and recipient

of the 2005 Hawaii Association of Language Teachers Excellence in Teaching Award. She has

taught all levels of Japanese for the past 14 years and is actively involved with providing

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opportunities to interact with Japanese language and culture both inside and outside the

classroom.

JOHN MAYER is Assistant Professor and Coordinator of the Samoan Language and

Culture Program in the Department of Hawaiian & Indo-Pacific Languages & Literatures at UH

and is the leading scholar of Samoan language in the US. A collaborator with the NFLRC since

its inception, he served as director for the 2002 and 2004 International Samoan Language

Conferences.

ULI KOZOK is Associate Professor of Indonesian in the Department of Hawaiian &

Indo-Pacific Languages & Literatures at UH. Dr. Kozok’s main research interests comprise the

oral literatures of Sumatra and Sumatran philology. Dr. Kozok recently re-discovered and

confirmed the existence of the oldest known Malay manuscript (The Tanjung Tanah Code of

Law), dating back to the 14th century. Dr. Kozok is an active member of the International

Council for Malay Language, COTSEAL, and COTIM and has actively collaborated with the

NFLRC to develop materials and online courses for Indonesian and provide professional

development opportunities for teachers of Indonesian.

LANGUAGE LEARNING & TECHNOLOGY

DOROTHY CHUN is Professor of German and Applied Linguistics in the Department of

Germanic, Slavic & Semitic Studies at the UC Santa Barbara. Her areas of research involve

second language acquisition, intonation, computer-mediated communication for language

learning, and learning and teaching with digital media. Dr. Chun has published and presented

widely on her research. In 2006 alone, she will be an invited plenary speaker for the annual

AAAL Conference and the CALICO annual symposium, which the NFLRC will be hosting.

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READING IN A FOREIGN LANGUAGE

RICHARD DAY and THOM HUDSON, the co-editors of Reading in a Foreign

Language, are both well qualified for this position. Dr. Day, Professor of Second Language

Studies, is the author and editor of numerous articles and books on second language reading and

teacher development. His most recent books include Extensive Reading Activities for Teaching

Language and Extensive Reading in the Second Language Classroom, both co-authored with

Julian Bamford. He was also editor of New Ways in Teaching Reading, a collection of activities

for and by reading teachers. Dr. Hudson, Associate Professor of Second Language Studies, has

focused his research on second language reading, second language testing, English for Specific

Purposes, and program development.

PRAGMATICS AND L2 LEARNING

GABRIELE KASPER, Professor of Second Language Studies, has a well-established

research and publication record in the areas of foreign and second language discourse and

pragmatics, including co-authored and edited books, countless journal articles, and two special

issues of Studies in Second Language Acquisition. She is a frequently invited plenary speaker

for international conferences and has served on the editorial board of many journals.

CULTURAL DIVERSITY & LANGUAGE EDUCATION

KATHRYN DAVIS is Director of the Center for Second Language Research (CSLR).

She specializes in qualitative research, bilingualism, biliteracy, and language/educational policy

and planning and is a frequent presenter at conferences such as AAAL, AERA, and AAA. She

has published several books and co-edited special issues for TESOL Quarterly and Anthropology

& Education Quarterly. Previously, Dr. Davis edited the NFLRC book Foreign Language

Teaching and Language Minority Education and has directed four previous NFLRC projects.

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CHILDES/SLA WEB PROJECT

LOURDES ORTEGA is Assistant Professor of Second Language Studies at UH and will

head the Childes/SLA Web Project, a collaborative effort with CASLS, CARLA, and CLEAR.

Dr. Ortega specializes in second language acquisition and has long-standing interests in foreign

language education, second language writing, and research methods in applied linguistics,

particularly research synthesis and meta-analysis. She is a member of the editorial boards of

Applied Linguistics, Language Learning & Technology, The Modern Language Journal, and

TESOL Quarterly. She was co-recipient in 2001 of the TESOL Distinguished Research and the

MLJ/ACTFL Paul Pimsleur awards and is a frequent conference presenter.

2.3. NFLRC Advisory Board (2006-2010)

ROBERT BICKNER is Professor of Thai Language and Literature in the Department of

Languages & Cultures of Asia at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Language Director

of SEASSI, which supervises intensive program of instruction in Southeast Asian languages.

MARY HAMMOND is Dean of Education Programs at the East-West Center, providing

oversight to the planning and management of its student programs and policies. She has over 14

years of experience in managing and promoting university and international training programs,

cultivating and fostering world-wide institutional partnerships in the process.

FREDERICK JACKSON is Language Training Supervisor for the Foreign Service

Institute (FSI), where he oversees, directs, and manages all aspects of intensive language training

programs for a variety of critical languages. He coordinates the annual Interagency Language

Roundtable (ILR) and has served as past president of both NCOLCTL and COTSEAL.

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MADELINE SPRING is Associate Professor of Chinese at the University of Colorado,

Boulder and Academic Director for the NSEP grant for K-16 Chinese Pipeline Flagship Project

through the University of Oregon LRC and Portland Public Schools.

ELVIRA SWENDER is the Director of Professional Programs at ACTFL (American

Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages) and manages its Oral Proficiency Testing

Program, as well as the ACTFL/DLI “100 Languages in 100 Days” project.

3. ADEQUACY OF RESOURCES

The University of Hawaii – The Language Center of the Pacific

The University of Hawaii (UH) is a state land-grant institution located in Honolulu, a major U.S.

city with a population of one million. Hawaii is the language center of the Pacific. What Hawaii

offers is not only its strategic location but, more importantly, its people, 28.9% of whom speak a

language other than English at home (http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/15/15003.html) and

whose cultures and values combine the best of the East and the West. There are other centers of

Asian and Pacific learning, but no other can offer the knowledge, competencies, and the cross-

cultural sensitivities born of a completely multicultural society. 78% of the students at UH are

non-Caucasian, and Filipino, Japanese, and Chinese Americans account for 42% of the student

body. Hawaii is renowned as a Pacific educational center; for example, the East-West Center

attracts scholars from all over the US and the Pacific region who come together to study, conduct

research, and work at UH.

One sign of Hawaii’s international scope is UH’s foreign language program. UH’s main

campus has one of the most extensive foreign language curriculums in the United States. It offers

instruction regularly in 30 languages, and the expertise of the faculty makes it possible to offer

approximately 40 others as needed. Approximately 5,000 students take one or more language

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courses in a typical semester. It has the largest enrollments in the US in East Asian languages as

well as the nation’s largest enrollments and the largest number of course offerings in the

languages of Southeast Asia and the Pacific. The University also provides extensive instruction

in the major European languages.

Scores of dictionaries, grammars, and textbooks for the languages taught at UH have

been produced through research at the University. The faculty has been especially active in

developing new language materials in Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, Ilokano, Filipino,

Hawaiian, Samoan, and ESL. UH’s language programs have received national attention. In

addition to the centrally important NFLRC grant, significant additional external support has been

obtained since the early 1990s from Title VI (International Research and Studies Program),

FIPSE (Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education), NSEP (National Security

Education Program), NSA (National Security Agency), and the federal Office of Research and

Development. Recent grants have supported projects in materials development in Chinese,

Filipino, Khmer (Cambodian), Korean, Indonesian, Korean, Thai, and Vietnamese; technology-

based projects to deliver language instruction via distance education mediums including

interactive television and the Internet; and a project to develop an assessment model for

evaluating foreign language multimedia software. The University also provides language

instruction for the Department of Defense.

The UH College of Languages, Linguistics, and Literature

The emphasis on foreign language teaching within the University is reflected in its structure. The

organization of the College of Languages, Linguistics, and Literature (LLL) facilitates

interchange among the language departments, so that the pedagogical innovations and research

findings in one language area are shared with other areas. The College also currently houses one

33

of two NSEP national “Flagship” programs in Korean, with the goal of bringing learners of

languages critical to national security to significantly higher levels of proficiency than has

traditionally been possible through study at US colleges and universities.

The College of Languages, Linguistics and Literature houses the following academic units:

• The Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures (EALL), which undertakes

many projects with both the East Asia NRC and the NFLRC, is the largest department of its kind

in the country and offers a curriculum unparalleled in its breadth, depth, and variety of courses in

Mandarin Chinese, Cantonese, Japanese, Okinawan, and Korean. The Department offers BA,

MA, and Ph.D. degrees in Japanese, Chinese, and Korean. The Department has had an average

annual enrollment of approximately 3,500 over the past 10 years. These languages are widely

spoken in the state and are part of the cultural heritage of a considerable segment of the

population. Faculty in this department include many of the foremost scholars of Japanese,

Chinese, and Korean in the nation.

• The Department of Hawaiian and Indo-Pacific Languages and Literatures (HIPLL)

provides an opportunity without parallel elsewhere in the country for students to acquire an in-

depth knowledge of the languages and cultures of that part of the world that encompasses more

than 25 percent of the Earth's population and an unusual diversity of peoples. The coverage of

the languages of this region is unique in the US: this is the only department in the country to

offer every national language of Southeast Asia. Language offerings include Arabic, Cambodian

(Khmer), Chamorro, Filipino, Hawaiian, Ilokano, Indonesian, Maori, Samoan, Sanskrit, Tahitian,

Thai, Tongan, and Vietnamese. Specialists in this department in Ilokano, Filipino (Tagalog),

Tahitian, and Samoan are nationally known as leaders in their field and have been responsible for

most of the textbooks and other instructional materials developed for these languages in the US.

34

• The Department of Languages and Literatures of Europe and the Americas (LLEA)

provides comprehensive four year undergraduate programs in French, German, Spanish, Russian,

and Classics (Greek, Latin). Undergraduate certificates (minors) and MA programs are also

available in these languages. Two year sequences are offered in Hebrew, Italian, and Portuguese.

• The Department of Linguistics was founded in 1963 as an active research and teaching

unit dedicated to the scientific study of language. In carrying out this mission, the department has

a special focus on the languages of the vast Austronesian family and the languages of East Asia.

In addition, the department is committed to addressing the threat to human linguistic and cultural

diversity that comes from language endangerment and language loss. At the graduate level, the

MA in linguistics offers a thorough introduction to the subject matter and skills of the discipline.

The PhD program provides full professional training for careers in research and teaching.

• The Department of Second Language Studies (SLS), originally established as the

Department of English as a Second Language, is internationally known for its research in second

language acquisition. Its highly selective master’s program in ESL is recognized worldwide for

its excellence. The interdisciplinary PhD program in Second Language Acquisition is widely

viewed as the leading such program in the US. Members of the graduate faculty publish widely,

serve on the editorial boards of the major journals and leading presses in the field, and are

frequent plenary speakers at national and international conferences.

In addition to the academic departments, other units serve the College’s language

teaching and research mission:

• The Center for Second Language Research (CSLR) engages in research, curriculum

development, and teacher training projects in the area of second language education, focusing on

35

the teaching and learning of heritage languages. CSLR holds a Career Ladder grant to promote

academic success and foster heritage/foreign language abilities among K-16 heritage speakers.

• The Language Analysis and Experimentation (LAE) Labs facilitate research on the

articulation, acoustics, and perception of speech, and the processing of sentences and discourse.

Resources used by faculty and students include audio and video recording hardware, acoustic

analysis software, articulatory measurement devices, eye-tracking equipment, large language

corpora, tools for building computational models of linguistic and cognitive behavior, and

experiment design and analysis software.

• The Language Learning Center (LLC) provides technical support services to enhance

language teaching and learning in the College. The Center facilitates research and development

projects and the implementation of innovative language teaching methods and approaches. LLC's

Multimedia Computer Labs consist of a Macintosh Lab, a PC Lab, and a Digital Language Lab

configured specifically for language audio listening and voice recording. A Faculty Development

Lab facilitates faculty projects to integrate technology into teaching. Through consultation,

training, and support, LLC staff enables faculty to enrich their course delivery through

technology-enhanced instruction. LLC supports language laboratories, a multi-purpose media

room, viewing rooms, and a variety of audio-visual equipment available for check out.

In 2004 the UH Language Learning Center (LLC) entered into an agreement with

ACTFL to act as a critical language training and materials development center for ACTFL's "100

Days – 100 Languages" project. In 2002 the Defense Language Institute (DLI) contracted with

ACTFL to provide tester training and support for DLI and other government agencies. The

objective of this project is to build national capacity in critical uncommonly taught languages.

36

The LLC in cooperation with the NFLRC serves as a training and materials development site for

the project, providing expertise and technology support to ACTFL and DLI in this initiative.

UH is also home to three Title VI NRCs and a CIBER.

• The East Asian NRC (NRCEA, Robert Huey, Director) coordinates the activities of 128

faculty members affiliated with East Asian Languages and Literatures and the centers for

Chinese, Japanese, and Korean studies.

• The Center for Southeast Asian Studies (CSEAS, Barbara Andaya, Director) coordinates

and supports many of the resources at UH related to Southeast Asian studies. It sponsors lectures

and seminars, arranges faculty exchanges, publishes an occasional paper series and a journal, and

provides outreach to the public school system and community organizations. CSEAS coordinates

FLAS fellowships, and administers the Fulbright-Hays Advanced Filipino Abroad and Advanced

Study of Khmer summer language programs.

• The Center for Pacific Island Studies (CPIS, David Hanlon, Director) represents the

largest aggregation of Pacific scholars in the world and is the only NRC in the nation which

focuses on the 21 nations and territories of the Pacific. The Center offers BA and MA degrees

and a Graduate Certificate, awards FLAS fellowships, has secured external sources of support

such as from the Ford Foundation and NEH, and is the world’s leading publisher in Pacific

island studies.

• The Center for International Business Education and Research (CIBER, Shirley Daniel,

Director) is located within the College of Business Administration.

4. NEED AND POTENTIAL IMPACT

The US has a vital need to ensure that a good percentage of the world’s languages are taught

somewhere in the US, taught well, and learned by some Americans to an advanced level, as an

37

essential factor in national security readiness. However, adequate resources (including

commercial sources for materials) exist in the US for only the most commonly taught languages.

For the remaining languages of the world, the national capacity to ensure that such languages are

effectively learned ranges from nearly adequate (for languages that are taught at a dozen or more

universities, to learners numbering in the thousands) to inadequate (languages taught at only a

few universities, to students numbering perhaps a few hundred nationally) to virtually

nonexistent (for the rarely-if-ever-taught languages).

For both the commonly and less commonly taught languages, the most consistently

expressed needs are for teacher training and professional development and materials

development, including the need to incorporate technological advances into foreign language

teaching. For many LCTLs, trained teachers are rare, and those who are properly trained find it

difficult to secure employment. On the other hand, it must also be noted that there are teachers of

less commonly taught languages who are among the best teachers of any language, anywhere

(including teachers who make sophisticated use of technology), and there are universities where

there is a critical mass of teachers and learners of LCTLs that can serve as a national resource.

UH is one such center, specifically for the languages of Asia and the Pacific.

All of the projects proposed in this application represent an attempt to respond to these

general needs. Two of the major projects proposed in this application respond to specific needs

and will have an impact on the teaching and learning of these languages:

Language Documentation. The current edition of Ethnologue lists 6,912 living

languages. Of that total, more than 52% are spoken in Asia (2,269) and the Pacific (1,310).

Based upon a survey conducted at UH several years ago, it was determined that among the 501

Austronesian languages spoken in Oceania, only 79 have a grammar and only 83 have a

38

dictionary. That is, substantially fewer than 20% of the languages of Oceania have even the most

basic literacy documents. The situation in other regions of Asia and the Pacific is even worse.

At recent Linguistic Society of America summer institutes, fieldwork and documentation

courses have been oversubscribed, and significant amounts of funding have been made available

for language documentation by such sources as the School for Oriental Studies at the University

of London (which funds the dissertation research of a number of doctoral students at this

university), the Volkswagon Foundation, and the National Science Funding. These organizations

are typically interested in the conservation and documentation of endangered languages, while

ours concerns the capacity to teach and learn such languages, but there is a large area of overlap.

Distance Education projects. UH expertise and depth in Asian languages has long been

recognized by the US government, and military and other government personnel are regularly

sent to UH to receive intensive, advanced-level instruction. For example, in the past five years

UH has conducted over 20 short, intensive 300- and 400-level courses in Asian languages on a

contractual basis for military personnel. Now that certificate-approved courses in East Asian

languages have begun to be offered on line, UH is increasingly urged by government students, in

particular, to make an entire certificate program available on line so that they may continue their

language study from a distance. When certificate programs are available on line, government

students will be able to earn a certificate whether posted in the field in Seoul or Okinawa, or at

the China desk in Washington, DC. Of course, non-government students throughout the US will

also be able to pursue an advanced certificate on-line; such a certificate might be particularly

attractive to the increasing number of US heritage learners and learners returning from advanced

study abroad programs.

39

5. LIKELIHOOD OF ACHIEVING RESULTS

The NFLRC at UH has a proven record of achieving significant results. This application

continues the existing administrative structure and builds upon projects completed in previous

funding cycles. For each of the projects outlined in this application, goals and objectives have

been identified that are specific, detailed, and ambitious but achievable. In addition, the

groundwork has been laid for each specific project:

• The Department of Second Language Studies regularly offers graduate courses every

semester in the areas directly related to NFLRC projects. The NFLRC project heads who teach

these courses are recognized scholars in this field, and a large cadre of advanced graduate

students who are concentrating in these areas is available as a result.

• The Department of Linguistics at UH has a 40 year history of excellence in

documenting the languages of Asia and the Pacific. At present, it is one of only two universities

in the United States to offer a graduate program in language documentation. (MIT has a much

smaller program, while UC Berkeley has plans for such a program in the near future.)

• The NFLRC has successfully carried out major projects in foreign language assessment

in previous grant cycles, including the development of tests of pragmatic competence, the

development of computer-based tests for LCTLs, and issues in foreign language placement.

• The NFLRC has been conducting projects in the area of distance education since 1993.

In association with the UH Language Learning Center (LLC), the NFLRC has conducted a series

of cumulative projects focused on interactive television and online learning, and at this time

more than 25 NFLRC-sponsored language courses are offered entirely or partly on line. The

NFLRC/LLC research and development team has a long history and a successful track record,

and UH/NFLRC is today a recognized leader in distance-delivered language education.

40

• The publications team at the NFLRC is experienced and has shown itself to be

productive, having produced to date 26 books (Technical Reports series); 49 sets of teaching

materials for Chinese, Hawaiian, Indonesian, Japanese, Khmer, Korean, Manchu, Russian,

Samoan, Spanish, Tagalog (Filipino), and Vietnamese, including printed texts, audio and

videotapes, CD-ROMs, and DVDs; 37 research reports; and 49 publications published

electronically.

6. FINAL FORM OF RESULTS

The products resulting from the projects outlined in this proposal fall into three categories:

people, research reports and language teaching materials, and outreach activities.

People. Approximately 1,000 educators will be directly trained through participation in the

annual summer institutes for professional development and other workshops, symposia and

conferences.

Products. The UH NFLRC is unique among the existing LRCs in having a full-time professional

publications manager and support staff devoted exclusively to the publication and dissemination

of research results, instructional materials, tests, and other materials produced by the NFLRC to

the foreign language profession.

The following list of specific products is the minimum that will be produced and includes

only those items specifically promised under each project area:

• A large corpus of learner language data, contributed to the CHILDES databank and made

available to all researchers

• A technical report (monograph) on the use of corpus linguistics in language learning and

teaching, including a series of small scale studies

• A new publication series, Pragmatics and Interaction.

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• Complete curricula for all online courses proposed in this application

• One or more technical reports on issues in foreign language program evaluation

• Four volumes (12 issues) of the online journal Language Learning & Technology

• Four volumes (8 issues) of the online journal Reading in a Foreign Language

• Four volumes (8 issues) of the new online journal Language Documentation

Outreach. The NFLRC distributes a twice-yearly newsletter and NFLRC staff and affiliated

faculty are active in presenting results of activities at national and international conferences

(averaging between 50 and 75 per year during the past two grant cycles). As indicated

throughout this proposal, the impact of NFLRC projects will be greatly enhanced by partnerships

that have been established with national professional associations, NRCs, and other institutions

and programs supported by Title VI programs.

7. EVALUATION PLAN

Project evaluation is considered a high priority aspect of each project described in this

application, which we view as a fundamental component of effective language resource center

work. Indeed, evaluation of foreign language program evaluations is one of the major projects

proposed in this application. This project aims to raise the awareness of FL educators about the

actual concrete evaluation demands that face them, provide a basis for increasing the capacity of

FL educators to engage in useful evaluation practices, and produce immediately useful strategies

and resources for helping FL educators meet evaluation demands. In doing so, the project will

contribute a model approach to building capacities for evaluating, improving, and ensuring the

quality of FL educational programs. Another indication of the central importance to be given to

evaluation in the 2006-2010 grant cycle is the fact that two of our national advisory board

members (Frederick Jackson and Elvira Swender) represent organizations (Interagency

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Language Roundtable ILR/FSI and ACTFL, respectively) that have been among the driving

forces for the development of foreign language assessment measures that can be used as

standardized measures across many contexts.

The national Advisory Board is charged with carrying out a supervisory function providing for

the overall evaluation of NFLRC activities, including both formative (ongoing improvement) and

summative (accountability) evaluation activities. Prior to each annual meeting of the Advisory

Board (to be held in the second week of January each year), each project director will gather data

and provide a written report concerning (a) the goals and objectives of the past year, (b) the

extent which these were accomplished on schedule, and (c) what the goals and objectives of the

project will be for the following year. At the end of each such meeting, the Advisory Board will

produce a written report summarizing both areas of strength and areas where improvement is

recommended. The substance of these reports and all statistics gathered will be transmitted

annually as part of the EELIAS reporting system for LRCs. In addition, in order to provide

appropriate information both to the board and to the U.S. Department of Education regarding the

effectiveness and impact of NFLRC projects, the following types of evaluation will be carried

out:

• All workshops and summer institutes will be individually evaluated. Summer institutes

will usually have an external evaluator, while short workshops will be evaluated using a simple

evaluation questionnaire.

• All major publications (technical reports and other monographs) will be externally

reviewed by well-established scholars before publication. (This has been the case for NFLRC

technical reports since 2002.)

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• All manuscripts submitted to any of the NFLRC-sponsored journals (Language Learning

& Technology, Reading in a Foreign Language, Language Documentation) are subject to blind

peer review. The review process and editorial policies are the responsibility of the editors of

those journals, but full data on all aspects of the journals are transmitted to both the NFLRC

Advisory Board and the appropriate editorial board.

• All manuscripts and language teaching materials submitted from external sources to the

NFLRC for possible publication will be externally reviewed.

• All project directors and other affiliated faculty will be encouraged to submit the

findings, results, and products from NFLRC projects to refereed journals and other publication

outlets that include peer review.

In all cases, although qualitative data will also be sought and reported, the emphasis will

be on objective and quantifiable data that can be used to demonstrate program impact. As a

further example of the attention to evaluation typical of this LRC, readers of this proposal are

invited to view the most recent report to the editorial board of Language Learning & Technology

(http://nflrc.hawaii.edu/llt/board_report/2005/) which reports such data as publications schedules,

subscriptions (numbers by year and by languages taught), readership (hits and downloads by

dates and articles), submissions (by type, dates, countries, and ratios of submissions to

acceptances and eventual publication), plus full reviewer statistics.

8. BUDGET AND COST-EFFECTIVENESS

The experience gained during the years that the NFLRC has been in operation has made it

possible to devise a budget that is cost-effective. The substantial contribution of UH is evident in

the budget and is possible because of the position of the NFLRC within the College of LLL,

strong support by the Dean, and long-term commitments on the part of faculty who have made

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NFLRC projects the focus of their research activities. In addition, several key aspects of the

internal organization and plan of operation of the NFLRC contribute to its cost-effectiveness:

• The administrative structure of the NFLRC is in place. The Center Director, Associate

Director and Associate Director are both fully on University salary for 11 months; federal

funding is requested for an additional one month salary during what would otherwise be an off-

duty period (normally July).

• The Center’s publications effort is partly self-supporting. Modest charges for publications

help support additional dissemination efforts, especially with respect to the least commonly

taught languages, for which there is essentially no commercial market.

• Participants in the annual summer institutes receive stipends that only partially offset

their expenses.

• The NFLRC coordinates some projects that are independently funded and builds upon

works carried out through other sources of support.

• Proposed activities do not duplicate those of other LRCs. As detailed in Section 9

(“Priorities”), every effort has been made to collaborate with Title VI NRCs (in Hawaii and

elsewhere), the UH CIBER, other LRCs, and IRS grantees and to coordinate our budget requests

in order to maximize impact through leveraging while avoiding duplication.

The budget (at the end of this application) is presented in a form that makes its

relationship to the body of the proposal evident. Funds are requested to provide support for staff

salaries (full support for the Program Coordinator and the Publications Specialist, smaller

contributions towards the salaries of the Instructor for Technology and the IT Specialist), as well

as graduate research assistants (typically PhD students or advanced MA students) who will serve

as the editorial assistants for the three on-line journals. Research assistants are also to be

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assigned to major projects, which are supported in some cases by lecturer-releases that allow

faculty members to devote adequate time to their projects. It should be noted that the steady

increase in the requested budget across the four year funding cycle does not represent an increase

in planned activity, but merely takes into account salary increases already stipulated by collective

bargaining agreements or reasonable guesstimates when such agreements have not yet been

concluded (for Year Four, for example).

Funding is also requested for summer institutes, workshops, symposia, and conferences,

in the form of overload for faculty workshop facilitators and conference organizers, graduate

students who will serve as institute or conference assistance and stipends for workshop

participants, and plenary and featured speakers in symposia and conferences. The amount

budgeted for such events, $140,000, is inadequate to fund 10 major events (with participants

ranging from 20 for intensive workshops to 300 for major conferences), but the amounts listed

here will be supplemented by a total of $87,500 included in the budgets of the three NRCs at

UH.

Funds are requested for travel to Hawaii (by the national Advisory Board) and from

Hawaii to the continental US by NFLRC staff in order to present results at national conferences.

Travel funding (one conference trip per year) is also requested for the editors of each of the

NFLRC-sponsored journals, as well as the editor of the Pragmatics & Interaction monograph

series. Language Learning & Technology has two co-editors, and conference travel expenses

will be cost-shared between the NFLRC and CLEAR (the Michigan State University LRC.).

No equipment is requested. A modest supplies budget is requested, in which the major

expenditures are to be for the rental of conference space for summer institute workshops and

conferences and publication costs for producing monographs and language teaching materials.

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(NOTE: Regarding budget, the University of Hawaii is committed to the projects proposed in

this grant but will not be doing any cost-sharing or matching.)

9. PRIORITIES

No absolute or competitive priorities have been identified for this competition, but three

invitational priorities have been specified. The activities proposed in this application address all

three invitational priorities, as follows (and as indicated in the table at the end of this section):

Invitational Priority 1: Centers that focus on languages spoken in the following world regions:

Africa, Inner Asia, Middle East, South Asia, or Southeast Asia.

The goal of the NFLRC is to pursue projects that have implications for the teaching and

learning of all languages while focusing specifically on areas where this institution has its

greatest strengths, the languages of Asia and the Pacific Rim. We do not focus exclusively on

Southeast Asia, but a very high percentage of our energies and resources are focused on that

world region. The following projects focus exclusively on the languages of Southeast Asia: 1)

pedagogical and technical support for already existing online courses in Filipino, Thai, Khmer,

Indonesian; 2) development of a new online module on Indonesian for business; 3) sponsorship

of the Filipino International Language Conference (2008); 4) sponsorship of the Southeast Asian

Language Technology Conference (2009); and 5) development of an online language teaching

methodology course (taught in Filipino) for teachers of Filipino. The following projects in this

proposal have a strong but not exclusive focus on the languages of Southeast Asia: Language

Documentation (especially the undocumented and under-documented languages of Indonesia and

the Philippines), and the Cultural Diversity in Language Education Conference, especially the

heritage language strand.

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Invitational Priority 2: Research conducted on new and improved methods for teaching foreign

languages, including the use of technology and the dissemination of the research results.

The NFLRC at UH has a solid history of conducting and disseminating research on the

teaching of languages, the results of which have been published in refereed journals as well as

our own peer-reviewed monograph series (NFLRC Technical Reports), and it is probably fair to

say that of all the LRCs, this one has had the reputation of being the one that has most strongly

focused on research. All of the projects in this proposal that concern online and distance

education courses support this objective. The three online journals proposed in this application

will all disseminate peer-reviewed research, and a new research monographs series, Pragmatics

and Interaction, is being initiated. All of the conferences and symposia and most of the

workshops planned for 2006-2010 also support the priority of conducting or disseminating

research: the International Pragmatics in Language Learning Conference (2007), the

International Filipino Language Teaching Conference (2008), the Language Documentation &

Conservation Conference (2008), the Southeast Asia Language Technology Conference (2009),

the Language Documentation Summer Institute (2010), and the Symposium on Computer

Mediated Communication (2010).

Invitational Priority 3: Collaboration with Title VI National Resource Centers, Language

Resource Centers, Centers for International Business Education, and American Overseas

Research Centers in conducting development and dissemination activities with the objective of

increasing the nation’s capacity to produce Americans with advanced proficiency in the less and

least commonly taught languages and an understanding of the societies in which these languages

are spoken.

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Virtually every activity proposed in this application represents a collaboration between

the NFLRC and one or more partners, the result of several years of very close cooperation

among potential partners to identify areas of common ground, where resources can be pooled in

a substantive way to maximize leverage and impact and eliminate overlap and duplication of

effort. One of the collaborations described in this proposal, shared responsibility with the

Michigan State LRC for the journal Language Learning & Technology, has been in existence as

a good working partnership for the past seven years. Most of the others are new. As shown in

the table below, our partners include seven NRCs, the UH CIBER, seven LRCs, and a number of

non-Title VI partners.

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PROJECT Priority 1 Priority 2 Priority 3 Partners

Language Documentation X X X NRCEA

CSEAS

CPIS

CARLA

CeLCAR

Foreign Language Program

Evaluation

X ADFL

NRCEANEALRC

IRS

Distance Education: certificate

courses in Chinese, Japanese,

Korean

X X NRCEA

CIBER

Distance Education: online

language cafés for Samoan,

Filipino, Japanese

X X X CSEAS

CPIS

NRCEA

Southeast Asian online courses,

including Business Indonesian

X X X CSEAS

CIBER

Language Learning &

Technology

X X CLEAR

Reading in a Foreign Language X

Pragmatics & L2 Learning X X NRCEA

Professional Development for

Southeast Asian Language

Teachers

X X X CSEAS

LARC

Cultural Diversity & Language

Education Conference

X X NRCEA

NHLRC

CHILDES/SLA-Web X CASLSCARLA

CLEAR

ACRONYMS

ADFL: Association of Departments of Foreign Languages

CARLA: Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition (University of Minnesota LRC)

CASLS: Center for Applied Second Language Studies (University of Oregon LRC)

CeLCAR: Center for Languages of the Central Asian Region (Indiana University LRC)

CIBER: Center for International Education and Research (University of Hawaii CIBER)CLEAR: Center for Language Acquisition Research (Michigan State University LRC)

CPIS: Center for Pacific Islands Studies (University of Hawaii NRC for Pacific Islands)

CSEAS: Center for Southeast Asian Studies (University of Hawaii NRC for SE Asia)

IRS: International Research & Studies (Title VI) grant for program evaluation project (J. Norris, P.I.)

LARC: Language Acquisition Resource Center (San Diego State University LRC)

NEALRC: National East Asian Language Resource Center (Ohio State University LRC), acting as coordinator of a

collaborative project on evaluation in East Asian languages with participation by the East Asian NRCs at Cornell,

the University of Washington, Duke University, and the University of California - Berkeley

NHLRC: National Heritage Language Resource Center (proposed new LRC, UCLA and the University of California

Consortium for Language Learning & Teaching)

NRCEA: University of Hawaii NRC for East Asia