Grant establishes African language instruction center

A new, first-of-its-kind national resource center devoted to the teaching of African languages will open this fall on campus.

The National African Languages Resource Center will be established under an almost-$900,000 grant from the United States Department of Education. Under the auspices of UW–Madison’s Department of African Languages and Literature, the center will tap the expertise of a national pool of scholars and teachers of African languages from Arabic to Zulu.

See also: CD-ROM broadens student experience in Yoruba class (4/7/97)

Center director Antonia Y. Schleicher, associate professor of African languages and literature, notes that UW–Madison has the only department of African languages and literature in the nation, making the campus an excellent location for the resource center.

“The university clearly has a commitment to research in, and the teaching and learning of, African languages,” she says.

Specifically, the new center will offer systematic teacher training, conduct research on the status of African language teaching and learning in the United States, and collect and distribute instructional materials to both teachers and members of the general public.

The grant begins Sept. 1 and will last through Aug. 31, 2002. In that time, Schleicher hopes to establish and strengthen relationships with people from all sectors interested in African languages.

“We hope the center will put UW–Madison on the map in terms of African language instruction as well as the teaching of other less-commonly-taught languages,” she says.

The ultimate goal is to make instruction, either on-site or electronic, more readily available, Schleicher says. To that end, “we plan to develop web-based materials, CD-ROMs and texts to make these languages accessible to the public,” she says.

At UW–Madison, the 37-year-old Department of African Languages and Literature currently teaches Yoruba, Swahili, Arabic and Hausa. Schleicher says the center will work with the department to make instruction in other African languages available to students on a regular basis.