This is a companion to the white paper The Teachers We Need: Transforming World Language Education in the United States. The guide includes resources to support educators in implementing effective world language education and transforming the world language teacher supply system to meet twenty-first century needs.
This article examines high school graduation policies in all fifty states and the District of Columbia in order to assess the status of world language study in K–12 education. The article concludes that world language education is not prioritized in state-level policies, and it recommends initiatives at the federal level to improve the state of world language education in the United States.
A current project investigates the language activities of heritage language learners, as distinct from second language learners, who participate in STARTALK summer learning experiences. The project addresses commonalities and differences across these groups as they relate to their study of their language and their use of world languages beyond their STARTALK experience.
Data come from a 2014 survey of U.S. employers in the government, for-profit, and not-for-profit sectors, in 49 states and DC.
Some of these results are reported in: “The demand for multilingual human capital in the U.S. labor market,” by Damari, Rivers, Brecht, Gardner, Pulupa, and Robinson (2017), published in Foreign Language Annals.
This article presents the findings of a 2014 survey of US employers on their requirements for multilingual employees. It identifies the employment sectors that were most likely to value multilingual workers, and it describes which skill sets were most coveted in conjunction with foreign language ability. The study also explains that even though a vast majority of employers wanted employees who can communicate effectively with people of different linguistic and cultural backgrounds, only 10 percent of responding employers reported requiring foreign-language skills in hiring.
This paper compares the attitudes of heritage language learners and second language learners regarding language learning. One finding discussed in the paper is that heritage learners were less motivated than second language learners to study languages, and they were less likely to think that learning a language would yield personal or professional benefits.
Performing well on assessments like the Defense Language Proficiency Test can demonstrate your language skills and lead to professional advancement. Get ready for high-stakes exams with Assessment Objects from the NFLC. Assessment Objects consist of authentic audio or written passages in a target language, accompanied by three multiple-choice or constructed-response comprehension questions per passage. Each set of three passages takes about 45 minutes to complete. Detailed feedback explains why each answer choice is correct or incorrect to guide you to greater proficiency.
If you want language learning that goes beyond what is commonly taught in the classroom and want to encounter authentic materials from all corners of the globe, the National Foreign Language Center has something for you. Beginners can use our Lectia mobile app to begin their language journey. Upper-level students will find a wealth of videos, texts, and activities to help them learn more than one hundred languages.
Thematic Units are sets of seven in-depth lessons on a common theme. Each lesson is based on an authentic audio, video, or written passage and takes about 60 minutes to complete. Lessons are sequenced to increase in difficulty and include comprehension, linguistic, and synthesizing activities. Support components include a transcript, a translation, cultural and linguistic notes, and a glossary.
Video Learning Objects explore language and culture through short segments from contemporary films and television dramas. Each lesson takes about 45 minutes to complete and includes comprehension, cultural, and linguistic activities in English. Support components include a transcript, a translation, cultural and linguistic notes, captions, and a glossary.