LANGUAGE LEARNING CENTER FACT SHEET

Technology brings students closer to the sights and sounds of a new language and culture. The Language Learning Center provides interactive multimedia and computing resources to facilitate authentic language and cultural learning at the University of Washington. We integrate technology into the language classroom, and we support every language program on campus through our events, research, and testing, as well as audio, video, software, and other resources.

VISIT CENTER'S WEBSITE

INSTRUCTION

The Language Learning Center (LLC) serves more than 6,500 students annually. Our multimedia and technological resources enhance the language learning process, helping students develop language proficiency and satisfy University language requirements.

For language instructors, we support the integration of technology into language courses and make language learning more exciting, current, and relevant, by creating and providing access to resources that increase linguistic and cultural proficiency.

FACILITIES AND SERVICES

The LLC is a state-of-the-art facility housed in the lower level of historic Denny Hall. The center is home to two technology-enhanced active learning classrooms, one multimedia classroom, a multi-lingual multimedia computer lab, an active learning video conferencing room, a media production studio, a media conversion editing and archiving suite, various tools to enable the online delivery of multimedia, as well as foreign and legacy format media conversion equipment. Our facilities are used in a variety of ways to enhance language learning. Instructors bring their students to our technology-enhanced classrooms for pair and small group communication practice, interactive listening exercises, and oral exams. Our self-study audio/visual labs are used by many language students. Our multilingual staff prepares and produces audio and video materials for use in language courses.

The LLC helps to provide proficiency and placement testing for many language programs, including for students who can demonstrate speaking and writing proficiency in a language not taught at the UW, in order to help satisfy the language exit requirement.

We create software specific to world language study including games, quizzes, assessment, and online practice. We provide workshops for instructors and students on new technology for enhancing language teaching and learning. We also support novel research projects related to the interface of technology with language acquisition and learning.

UW Units Served Include:

American Ethnic Studies
Asian Languages and Literature
Cinema & Media Studies
Classics
College of Education
English
French and Italian Studies
German Studies
International & English Language Programs
Jackson School of International Studies
Linguistics
Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures
Scandinavian Studies
Slavic Languages and Literatures
Spanish and Portuguese Studies
UW Professional & Continuing Education

LANGUAGES SUPPORTED

Akkadian
American Sign Language
Amharinya
Arabic
Aramaic
Bengali
Bosnian
Bulgarian
Chinese
Croatian
Czech
Danish
English
Estonian
Finnish
French
German
Greek (Ancient & Modern)
Hebrew
Hindi
Icelandic
Indonesian
Inuktitut
Italian
Japanese
Kazakh
Khmer
Kirghiz
Kiswahili
Klamath
Korean
Krio
Latin
Latvian
Lithuanian
Lushootseed
Makah
Mongolian
Navaho
Norwegian
Persian
Polish
Portuguese
Romanian
Russian
Sahaptin
Salish
Sanskrit
Serbian
Slovak
Spanish
Swedish
Tagalog
Tajik
Tamang
Tamil
Thai
Tibetan
Tigrinya
Turkish
Uyghur
Ukrainian
Urdu
Uzbek
Vietnamese
Yakkha

LLC also supports work in Linguistics.

INITIATIVES

The LLC tailors technology to the needs of UW students and instructors. We have developed a variety of interactive audio, video, satellite, and application resources for UW language courses (as well as self-study). These include:

on-site active, archival, and online recordings of authentic culture and language content in more than 90 languages;
more than 200 gigabytes of audio and video online streaming language learning and culture resources;
textbooks and online dictionaries for less-commonly taught languages.

Among the many projects related to language education that the LLC manages or supports is a longitudinal research project, Mapping and Enhancing Language Learning (MELL), with the UW Center for Global Studies (GCS), Center for European Studies (CES), East Asia Center (EAC), the Ellison Center for Russian, East European and Central Asian Studies (REECAS), South Asia Center, Center for Southeast Asia and its Diasporas, Washington State Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI), Washington State Coalition for International Education, and Washington Association for Language Teaching (WAFLT) to research world language teaching trends in Washington state.

The LLC is also engaged in active development of the Folk Linguistics Online Mapping (FLOM) application for researching language variation and attitudes, and the Toolkit for Open Architecture Language Curricula (TOALC) which supports collaborative and iterative development of language curricula. Other projects include Culture and Linguistics for Cybersecurity (CLCS); Using music for teaching less-commonly taught languages and cultures; Vocabot; and Languages Without Borders.

The LLC utilizes cloud-based servers to deliver streaming media to the UW community. The center also supports Moodle, a learning management system that is particularly suited for language learning, and works with faculty to develop fully online and hybrid courses.

The Center conducts research on how to improve student success and awareness when it comes to language learning opportunities on campus. This includes co-chairing the Linguistic Bias Working Group.

The center also researches student and faculty perspectives on language technologies built using machine learning algorithms (generally termed “AI”), while also providing support for research using such language technologies and support for culturally informed language data curation practices.

Events held for students include workshops on careers for language students, language fairs and conversation groups. Events for faculty and students include workshops and meetings on language learning and related topics. These include quarterly language pedagogy circles (in partnership with faculty in the Spanish and Portuguese Studies and French and Italian Studies) and language educator summits (in partnership with the University of Oregon’s Yamada Learning Center).

A recent initiative is a pilot for a new course where students can study languages that are not currently taught at UW for credit. The program uses the Facilitated Interdependent Language Learning method.

OUTREACH

The LLC participates in a variety of collaborative partnerships:

STARTALK: The LLC conducts summer combined student and teacher programs. The programs are funded through the National Security Agency. Our STARTALK student program is conducted totally in the target language using STEM content. The teacher program introduces teachers to current pedagogical models and best practices.
GenCyber: The LLC conducts summer student programs. The programs are funded through the National Security Agency. Our GenCyber student program is conducted totally in the target language using cybersecurity content.
Language immersion programs: With the Seattle Public Schools, the LLC and the UW language immersion committee support language immersion programs in Seattle’s international schools by assisting with technology, conducting research, and hosting workshops on heritage languages.
Indigenous language education efforts: The LLC is honored to be able to work with our neighboring communities and Indigenous nations to support efforts to educate the next generation of Indigenous language speakers. Some projects include application development, online course development and hosting, resource archiving and distribution, as well as training with new Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) technologies.
World language teaching: Partnering with the Washington State Coalition for International Education, the LLC contributes to workshops on world language teaching as well as assessment and early language learning.

The LLC maintains memberships in:

American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages (AATSEEL)
American Council on the Teaching (of) Languages (ACTFL)
American Translators Association (ATA)
Computer- Assisted Language Instruction Consortium (CALICO)
International Association for Language Learning Technologies (IALLT)
Northwest Association for Language Learning Technologies (NWALL)
Northwest Translators and Interpreters Society (NOTIS)
Pacific Northwest Council for Languages (PNCFL)
Satellite Communications for Learning Association (SCOLA)
Slavic East European Teachers Association of Washington (SEETAW)
Washington Association for Language Teaching (WAFLT)
Washington State Court Interpreters and Translators Society (WITS)