Announcements

CARLA Summer Institutes

Early Bird Registration Deadline • May 31, 2008

Are you looking for a stimulating professional development opportunity this summer? Do you want to tap into the knowledge of some of the field's most amazing professionals? Would you like to network with teachers from all across the world and get energized for next year?

If you said "yes" to any or all  of those questions, you won't want to miss the CARLA summer institutes this year. CARLA has been offering summer institutes since 1996 and we regularly receive high praise from teachers just like you:

• It was enriching, even exhilarating, to spend a week working with such knowledgeable and generous instructors and such interesting and motivated peers.  Thank you!
• This institute has been one of the best professional development experiences I've had.  Not only did I come away with something I can actually use in my classroom, but I completely revised my thought process of how and why I teach. 
• This is the most updated workshop about the teaching of foreign language that I've ever attended.
• My brain hurts from everything I learned, but I feel like I'm part of the 21st century now!

CARLA's internationally-known program reflects the center's commitment to link research and theory with practical applications for the classroom. Each institute is highly interactive and includes discussion, theory-building, hands-on activities, and plenty of networking opportunities.

So don't miss your chance!! The deadline for "early bird" discounted registration is fast approaching.  The cost of each summer institute is $400; but if you register by May 31, 2008 the cost is only $350. Registration is strong for all of the institutes and a few are full or nearly full so don't delay.

The institutes offered this year are:

• Immersion 101: An Introduction to Immersion Teaching for Chinese and Japanese
• Using Technology in Second Language Teaching—full!
• Developing Materials for Less Commonly Taught Languages (LCTLs)
• Meeting the Challenges of Immersion Education:
       "How well do students speak the immersion language?"
• Focusing on Learner Language: Second Language Acquisition Basics for Teachers
• Improving Language Learning:
  Styles- and Strategies-Based Instruction
• Content-Based Language Instruction and Curriculum Development
• Immersion 101: An Introduction to Immersion Teaching—both sessions nearly full!
• Developing Assessments for the Second Language Classroom
• Culture as the Core in the Second Language Classroom
• Language and Culture in Sync:
       Teaching the Pragmatics of a Second Language

More information and registration forms are available on the CARLA website at: http://www.carla.umn.edu/institutes. To request a print brochure email the CARLA office at: carla@umn.edu.

Immersion Education Conference 2008
Registration Now Open

Immersion Education:

Pathways to Bilingualism & Beyond

October 16–18, 2008
Crowne Plaza Riverfront Hotel
St. Paul, Minnesota

Keynote Address

Immersion Education: Intercultural Competence for Tomorrow's Global Citizen
Myriam Met, National Foreign Language Center, University of Maryland

Plenary Speakers

Program Development and Evaluation
Fred Genesee, McGill University
Policy and Advocacy
Philip Hoare, Hong Kong Institute of Education
Culture and Identity
Kauanoe Kamana and William H."Pila" Wilson, University of Hawai'i
Immersion Pedagogy
Roy Lyster, McGill University

Language immersion education has emerged as a uniquely constituted, highly effective program model for launching students on the road to bilingualism and intercultural competence. Within the immersion program framework, discrete pathways address a variety of needs and program audiences that exist around the world. They include one-way foreign language immersion, two-way bilingual immersion, and indigenous immersion. While each program branch targets distinct socio-cultural contexts and educational needs, the root path is the same.

Under the leadership of two national centers in the U.S., CARLA at the University of Minnesota and the Center for Applied Linguistics, this conference brings these immersion pathways together to engage in meaningful dialogue and professional exchange across languages, levels, learner audiences, program models and sociopolitical contexts.

It Pays to Register Early!!

The cost of the conference is only $200 if you register by September 15, 2008*: Includes the Thursday evening plenary and reception, lunch on Friday and Saturday, and all conference materials.

*ACIE members receive an additional discount.  (After Sept. 15, 2008 the regular registration fee of $250 will apply.  Late registration after Oct. 10, 2008 will be $300.)

And There is More...

This event also offers—for an additional fee—a set of optional school visits prior to the conference on Wednesday, October 15 and a host of optional pre-conference workshops on Thursday, October 16 that are sure to be popular—most of them sold out at the 2004 conference so sign up early.

For more information and to register see: http://www.carla.umn.edu/conferences/immersion2008/index.html

Program Updates

Stipends for Teachers of Less Commonly Taught Languages

The University National Resource Centers––the Consortium for the Study of the Asias (CSA), the European Studies Consortium (ESC) and the Institute for Global Studies (IGS)––support the improvement of instruction of Less Commonly Taught Languages (LCTLs), by offering a limited number of stipends for LCTL teachers to help defray the cost of attending any of the CARLA summer institutes.

The selected recipients this year include both K-12 teachers and post-secondary instructors.  They teach a wide variety of languages:

Wakako Sera, Japanese (Enloe Magnet High School, Raleigh, No. Carolina)
Seungja Choi, Korean (Yale University)
Shaheen Parveen, Hindi/Urdu (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill)
Thu-Ba Nguyen H., Vietnamese (UCLA Asian Languages & Cultures)
Jiao Li, Chinese (XinXing Academy, Hopkins, MN)
Maureen Wu, Chinese (Breck School, Hopkins, MN)

Ariann Stern-Gottschalk, Russian (Arizona State University)
Dianna Murphy, Russian (University of Wisconsin, Madison)
Alice McLean, Portuguese (University of Chicago)
Valorie Stavem Arrowsmith, Swedish (St Croix River Ed. District, Rush City, MN)

Todd Lynum, Chinese (Willmar Public Schools, Willmar, MN)
Catherine Chang, Chinese (Shattuck-St. Mary's School, Faribault, MN)
Deborah Liu, Chinese (Glenwood Elementary School, Chapel Hill, NC)
Zura Dotton, Chechen (University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ)
Josephine Auyeung, Chinese (Mankato Area Public Schools, MN)
Quiyu Ouyang, Chinese (Glenwood Elementary School, Chapel Hill, NC)

The National Resources Centers are, like CARLA, funded by Title VI funds from the U.S. Department of Education.  The centers offer this stipend program as one of their many initiatives to improve instruction for less commonly taught languages by making it possible for some LCTL teachers to attend the CARLA summer institute program.  Over the years this partnership has served teachers from across the country who specialize in a wide variety of languages from some of the more common LCTLs like Arabic, Chinese, and Japanese to very less commonly taught languages such as Aymara, Bosnian, and Tagalog.

CARLA Publications

American Council on Immersion Education Newsletter

The May issue of the American Council on Immersion Education (ACIE) Newsletter typically treats a special topic and this year is no different. The theme this spring is Mandarin immersion education. Look for the following articles in the newsletter which has just been published and distributed to ACIE members.

• The Bridge: From Research to Practice - Using Stories to Promote Children’s Mandarin Language Development in Kindergarten
• Points for Parents - Amazing Grace: A Parent Reflects on Her Daughter’s Kindergarten Year in Chinese Immersion
• Best Practices - First Spanish, Then Chinese: Expanding Elementary Language Learning Opportunities
• School Profile - An Experiment with Early Immersion in China
• Immersion 101 - Reflections on Administering an Elementary School Mandarin Immersion Program

Become an ACIE member today to get the newsletter!!  Details available on the web: http://www.carla.umn.edu/immersion/ACIE.html

There are two levels of membership – individual and institutional.

The individual membership - $25 for one year, $45 for two years – includes:

• A 1-year subscription to the ACIE Newsletter, the only publication in the United States to address issues specifically related to immersion education. It is published in November, February and May;
• A discount coupon for $25 off any of the 2008 summer immersion institutes and a $25 fee discount for the CARLA-CAL Immersion Conference.

The institutional membership - $200 for one year, $350 for two years – includes:

• Twenty copies of each issue of the ACIE Newsletter.
• Five discount coupons for $50 off any of the 2008 summer immersion institutes OR five discount coupons for $50 off the CARLA-CAL Immersion Conference to be convened in the fall of 2008.

And don’t forget the ACIE Archives: Ten years worth of archived ACIE articles, perfect for staff development readings and discussion, are available on the immersion pages of the CARLA website. See: http://www.carla.umn.edu/immersion/acie/index.html.