New Strategic Development Project For Chinese Language Field

Tuesday, April 17, 2001

The Henry Luce Foundation has recently made an award to the National Council of Organization of Less Commonly Taught Languages (NCOLCTL) to fund a field-wide research and development program to strengthen Chinese language instruction in the US. The Luce Foundation grant will encompass a three-year period of time and will total $360,000.

The project, The Chinese Language Field Initiative, will be led by the Chinese Language Teachers Association (CLTA) and the Chinese Language Association of Secondary-Elementary Schools (CLASS). Administrative support will be provided by NCOLCTL and consultative expertise by the National Foreign Language Center. The initiative will strengthen the architecture of the Chinese language field at the post-secondary level, and ultimately in all instructional settings, by (1) enabling and sustaining field-based collaborative strategic planning, (2) performing critical research on the strengths and needs of the Chinese language field, and (3) developing a national collaborative mechanism for field and program development through resource sharing.

Acknowledging the Luce grant, Dr. Richard Brecht, NFLC Director, noted that "ChineseNet possesses the potential to become a genuine means of transforming the ways in which resources are distributed throughout the field of Chinese language pedagogy." Given the undeniable evidence of the role of China in global affairs and the resultant demands for American expertise in the Chinese language, The Chinese Language Field Initiative is expected to enhance significantly the strategic growth of the Chinese language field.