The NRC is committed to the promotion of language instruction in the Less Commonly Taught Languages (LCTLS) at UC Berkeley. In 2010-11, the Center funded four LCTL courses: Intermediate Finnish in the Department of Scandinavian Studies, Beginning Catalan in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, and Beginning and Advanced Dutch in the Department of German.
Each year the NRC awards travel grants to UC Berkeley foreign Language instructors for the acquisition of new information and training in language pedagogy, second-language acquisition, and applied linguistics. The competition is open to lecturers, tenure-track, and tenured faculty at UC Berkeley. For information and application guidelines click here. In October 2010, Seda Chavdarian, Senior Lecturer in the French Department, received an award to participate in the Rocky Mountain Modern Languages Convention with a paper on Simone de Beauvoir. Please click here to read more about the conference.
The NRC contributes Title VI funding each year to the Berkeley Language Center (BLC) in support of its mission to promote the learning and teaching of foreign and heritage languages on the Berkeley campus. NRC funds are directed towards lecture enrichment programs and professional development workshops that provide European language instructors with opportunities to learn of new developments in language pedagogy, assessment, sociolinguistics and second language acquisition theory. In 2011 Title VI funds supported lectures on such topics as hybrid language learners, language and culture in Italian documentaries, Turkish/German English spoken by youth in Berlin, and teaching Italian through theater. In May 2011 the NRC partnered with other Title VI Centers and the BLC to organize a workshop for language instructors designed to identify common pedagogical issues that manifest themselves across the different languages. These will be addressed in Title VI-funded professional development workshops in the remaining years of the current grant cycle.
