Title

NFLC Press Release Archive

PROJECT ACTIVITIES

Expand LangNet, the national system already under development for the sharing of high-quality resources supporting acquisition of linguistic and cultural competencies by Spanish-speakers.

Hold a national teleconference for faculty and other interested parities, accessible by downlinks across the U.S., on the teaching of Spanish to Spanish speakers.

Determine via a survey the need for and the availability of university-level programming in Spanish for Spanish speakers.

Create a series of core modules for faculty and students:

1. Orientation to Heritage Language Development for Spanish teachers with little experience with this subject: understanding multilingualism as a linguistic and socio-cultural phenomenon, evaluating the linguistic profile of students through a multi-factor analysis, finding and effectively utilizing a range of appropriate materials and activities appropriate to the students' profiles and linguistic goals.

2. Guide for teachers to the selection and use of materials for Spanish speakers with at least five detailed examples of possible lessons, with activities appropriate to a variety of types of Spanish-speaking students - to assure that the LangNet database will be of maximum utility to inexperienced teachers.

3. Introduction to the Latino cultures of the U.S., using the taxonomy of target cultural knowledge and understanding: auto-cultural (one's own culture), intra-cultural or pan-Latino, and intercultural (relationships between Latin cultures and other US and Latin American groups).

4. Guide to the selection and effective utilization of materials (parallel to Module 2) focused on Latin cultures in the U.S. and in the countries of their origin.

5. Guide to the most effective strategies for independent or self-managed learning of one's language and culture during one's lifetime, for Spanish-speakers and other speakers of minority or heritage languages. This unit will attempt to summarize what is known about development of language and cultural competencies outside a classroom, and to apply it to the particular goals of bilingual and bicultural individuals.

6. A virtual meeting place for Latino students who want to develop their expressive capabilities in Spanish, with exemplary models from the Latin communities: essays and oral interviews that recount the stories of U.S. Latinos or that share their creative works. It is hoped that this meeting place will be a locus amoenus for the development of personal identity and creativity through the Spanish language.

To get more information or provide input, contact Catherine Ingold at cwingold@nflc.org, tel. 202-637-8881 x 25.

PROJECT PARTICPANTS
(as of August, 2000 - others have been and will be invited as the project evolves):

Frances Aparicio, U. of Illinois-Chicago
Maria Elena Cepeda, U. of Michigan
Cecilia Colombí, U. California - Davis
Davydd Greenwood, Cornell University
John Gutierrez, U. of Mississippi
Catherine Ingold NFLC, U. of Maryland
Roberta Lavine, U. of Maryland
Joy Peyton, Center for Applied Linguistics
Ana Roca, Florida International University
Lynn Sandstedt, AATSP Executive Director, U. of Northern Colorado
Carmen Tesser, Chair of AATSP LangNet Editorial Board, University of Georgia
Guadalupe Valdés, Stanford University
José Angel Sainz, NFLC, U. of Maryland