Language Research and Policy Organizations
American Association of University Supervisors and Coordinators of Foreign Language Programs (AAUSC)
AAUSC is a professional organization that strengthens foreign language and second language instruction in the United States by developing programs for teaching assistants, teaching fellows, associate instructors, or their equivalents; promoting research in second language acquisition and on the preparation and supervision of teaching assistants; and establishing a forum for exchanging ideas, experiences, and materials among those concerned with language program direction.American Translators Association (ATA)
ATA is a professional association founded to advance the translation and interpreting professions and foster the professional development of individual translators and interpreters. Its 10,000 members in more than 90 countries include translators, interpreters, teachers, project managers, web and software developers, language company owners, hospitals, universities, and government agencies.Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL)
The ACL is an international scientific and professional society that helps people working on problems involving language and computation through its sponsored conferences, publications, and special interest groups.Association of Departments of Foreign Languages (ADFL)
ADFL is a central resource for the language and literature community in the United States and Canada. It addresses the professional concerns of administrators from nearly 1,000 foreign language departments at two and four year colleges and universities by putting department chairs in touch with experienced peers and providing professional development to help departmental leaders work more effectively. It provides a forum for collegial exchange about important issues through its summer seminars, journal, and website. Members are kept informed about legislation that affects the field.Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition (CARLA)
CARLA is one of the U.S. Department of Education's Title VI National Language Resource Centers, whose role is to improve the nation's capacity to teach and learn foreign languages effectively. It accomplishes this by hosting a website that contains general information on the Less Commonly Taught Languages (LCTL) project at the University of Minnesota, as well as project-related resources including a database, listservs, and links to other tools and reference materials. The database features a search capability that allows users to search and find out where LCTLs are taught.Center for Advanced Study of Language (CASL)
CASL is a research institute at the University of Maryland. It conducts research in language and national security. Its research is interdisciplinary, bringing together people from the government, academia, and the public. Its research advances areas of knowledge and serves the needs of the intelligence community and the nation. A database maintained by CASL, LinguaVista, is an academic program finder for high-level learners of LCTLs.Center for Applied Linguistics (CAL)
CAL is a private, non-profit organization dedicated to applying research and information about language and culture to foreign language education.International Association of Language Learning Technology (IALLT)
IALLT is a professional organization whose members provide leadership in the development, integration, evaluation and management of instructional technology for the teaching and learning of language, literature, and culture.International Language Testing Association (ILTA)
ILTA is a web resource that promotes the improvement of language testing throughout the world by providing a reference guide to language testing related resources on the Internet.Joint National Committee for Languages & National Council for Languages and International Studies (JNCL-NCLIS)
JNCL is an entirely member-funded nonprofit education policy association that promotes public awareness of language issues through its annual Delegate Assembly in Washington, D.C. NCLIS is a nonprofit trade association that serves as an "action arm" for the language and international education community by translating professional priorities into national policy.UCLA Language Materials Project (LMP)
UCLA-LMP is a project funded by the U.S. Department of Education that offers a web accessible database. The database contains more than 11,000 citations covering over 900 languages and provides bibliographic references for language teaching materials for the LCTLs. It also contains linguistic profiles, including geographical distributions of the language and a three to four-page description of key dialects, grammatical features, and a historical background.Library of Congress
The Library of Congress is the nation's oldest federal cultural institution and allows the user to search and browse the Library's index and non-catalog file (e.g., for records for federal legislation, audio, and foreign law), using a variety of tools. Some of the records have direct links to digitized materials.LingNet
LingNet is provided as a service of the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center. It offers its members a variety of tools and materials, including discussion forums, software libraries, reading material and mailing lists.Modern Language Association (MLA)
MLA is an academic association that provides opportunities for its members to share their scholarly findings and teaching experiences with colleagues and to discuss trends in the academy. It also regularly publishes a handbook for writers of research papers. MLA members host an annual convention and other meetings, work with related organizations, and sustain one of the finest publishing programs in the humanities. For over 100 years, members have worked to strengthen the study and teaching of language and literature.National Clearinghouse for English Language Acquisition (NCELA)
NCELA is funded by the U.S. Department of Education and operated by George Washington University. It provides information to help state and local school districts to improve academic standards, including those in foreign language programs.National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH)
NEH is an independent grant-making agency of the U.S. government dedicated to supporting research, education, and public programs in the humanities.National Security Education Program (NSEP)
NSEP is a major federal initiative designed to build a broader and more qualified pool of U.S. citizens with foreign language and international skills that focuses on the critical languages and cultures of Asia, Africa, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Latin America. Participants are involved in innovative, intensive, and long-term programs designed to provide meaningful opportunities to gain significant competencies in these languages and cultures.National Virtual Translation Center (NVTC)
NVTC is an interagency element with a small but diverse office staff that comes from different government agencies, academia, and industry and provides expertise and experience in a variety of fields and organizations. It creates a virtual information sharing architecture that connects the translation tasks, language resources, and linguists anywhere in the United States of America; identifies and uses translation resources from the federal government, academia, and private industry; and supports continued development and fielding of proven Human Language Technologies (HLT), designed to help process and exploit foreign language data.SCOLA
SCOLA is a non-profit educational organization that receives and re-transmits television programming from around the world in native languages. It also provides other language learning content via its website.Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL)
SIL International (originally known as Summer Institute of Linguistics) is a faith-based organization that studies, documents, and assists in developing the world's lesser-known languages. Its website contains information on the study of minority languages and cultures. It contains information in the following academic domains: linguistics, anthropology, translation literacy, language learning, and computing.U.S. Department of Education (USED)
USED is a government department that was created in 1980 by combining several federal agencies. It focuses on a full-range of educational topics including: establishing policies on federal financial aid for education, and distributing as well as monitoring those funds; collecting data on America's schools and disseminating research, focusing national attention on key educational issues; and prohibiting discrimination and ensuring equal access to education.
