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Guidelines and Priorities

These guidelines are 'generic'' in the sense that they attempt to specify what kinds of materials ought to be produced for any language, utilizing funding from the South Asia Language Resource Center (SALRC). Other language groups such as Hindi, Urdu, Tamil etc. have produced their own guidelines; these should be consulted for language groups that have not had the opportunity to produce their own guidelines.

1. Needs Assessment. Each South Asian language group has been asked to determine what the needs are for materials development in their language. From these other guidelines, there may be some overlap and sharing that can be done, e.g. Hindi-Urdu-Panjabi, Tamil-Malayalam/Telugu/Kannada, etc. so ideally we can come up with plans that can take advantage of templates devised for other groups/languages. We have now assessed what materials we need for what skills, what levels, what reference works (on-line dictionaries? grammars?) and need to keep in mind that nothing should fall through the cracks. Ideally the SALRC Pedagogical Materials Project will parcel out 'grant money' to various people to work on various projects who have consulted with their colleagues, and whose proposals fit the guidelines.

Levels, Skills, and Needs
	Speaking	Listening	Reading	Writing	Other
Elementary
Intermediate
Advanced
Superior
Other

2. Collaborative Work. It is strongly recommended that work on these materials, as with the needs assessment, be collaborative, so that we do not have the situation we had in the past where one person develops something and nobody else uses it, or feels that it doesn't meet their needs. We must work together collaboratively on materials so that everybody 'buys into' the project, has an investment in seeing it succeed, and people don't feel criticized, or get invested in seeing their own materials as 'better' than someone else's.

3. Web-based Focus. It being the 21st century, our materials need to be web-based and accessible on-line anywhere in the country or for that matter, the world. We will be serving learners not only at all of our centers, but at other sites where our languages are not taught, but where other learners, especially heritage learners, will want to have access. We will have to serve many different needs and levels and may be working with students and teachers without a lot of background. Some paper materials (e.g. dictionaries) and other types of storage (CD-ROM, video) can be involved, but the main focus has to be web-based.

4. Rehab Work. Some materials already in existence, some of which is very old stuff from the 60's and 70's, can be 'rehabilitated' by updating it. New methodologies and ways of thinking about language teaching can be applied, e.g. by providing pre-reading resources to materials already in existence. (For an idea of what is meant by this please have a look at we have done for some pre-existing Tamil materials at http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/plc/tamilweb/yukam/yukamcol.html.)

One idea that is highly desirable is collaborative graded readers: various people contribute a story that they have used in the past, with the notes, exercises, glossary etc. that they have already developed, and we combine them, merging the glossaries into an overall database, unifying the format for the exercises, developing new ones, developing pre-reading materials etc. (For an idea of the kinds of easy web-based exercises that are meant, see http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/plc/german/instrumente.html for an example of something developed for a class in German.) This can be updated constantly; we can see where gaps are (especially in the 'graded' aspect) and a truly collaborative reader can emerge. Image files can be added, sound files, video---and we get a modernized and updated product. Good older stories can be still used, while adding newer writing that has come out since.

5. Consultation. Each group has now more or less gathered in one place, at workshops at Penn in January and March 2003, and there will be more opportunities to consult at future times, such as at summer institutes (SASLI). Other groups could consult by email, by conference calls, or by other informal means, in order to come to some agreement.

6. Training. Many people need help in devising web-based materials, and it will require special training. We will definitely have to have workshops and even summer institutes where the people who are going to produce the materials learn how to use the resources that exist (such as DreamWeaver and other applications.) Some of this may have to take place at Penn, since the resources and people with expertise are here; some of it may be doable at the Wisconsin summer language institute as well.