Home Projects
By grant cycle

PEBBLES

A curated collection of projects developed and implemented by world language professionals. 

Online Language Pedagogy

Check out our many resources for online language teaching

Summer Institutes for Professional Development

NFLRC has carried out summer institutes since 1991, providing training and professional development for K-16 language educators on conten...

Interested in Blended Learning?

Explore the potential of blended learning

Project-Based Language Learning

Fall 2019: Short course on High-Leverage Teaching Practices (HLTPs) & PBLL | Browse PBLL resources and events sponsored by the NFLRC.

Foreign Language Outcomes Assessment and Program Evaluation

Foreign language (FL) educators are asked to engage in evaluation of many kinds and for many reasons, such as traditional program reviews...

Dissemination: Conferences, Workshops, Publications

Results from all projects undertaken by the NFLRC will be disseminated to the widest audience possible. The primary vehicles for dissemin...

Online Learning Communities for Less Commonly Taught Languages

To address the LRC mandate for “the conduct and dissemination of research on new and improved methods for teaching foreign languages, inc...

Pragmatics and Second Language Learning

The NFLRC has carried out numerous research projects concerning the pragmatic aspects of second language use and learning, a number focusing on the investigatio

Online Certificate Courses in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean

This project to be carried out in the 2006-2010 funding cycle will enable students and government and civilian personnel to earn the UH a...

Language Documentation

By some estimates, there are roughly 6,900 languages currently spoken on earth, approximately half of which are spoken in the countries ...

Online Cafes for Heritage Learners of Chinese, Filipino, ...

The virtual equivalent of the neighborhood coffee house, the on-line cafe is a place for people to gather for conversation and social int...

CHILDES/SLA-Web

This project has two parts. Part one is a project initiated by the University of Oregon and funded by a Title VI IRS grant to make data ...

Foreign Language Program Evaluation

College and university foreign language (FL) programs are asked to engage in evaluation of many kinds and for many reasons, such as trad...

Teacher Training for Southeast Asian Languages

The University of Hawai`i has strong programs in Southeast Asian languages, all of which are LCTLs in the US. Building on UH's strengths...

Conversation Analysis as an Approach to Second Language ...

This project uses the analytical tools of Conversation Analysis (CA) to examine the learning activities afforded by different activities ...

Assessment Scales in Foreign Language Testing

project proposed but not funded or implementedThis testing project involves research into how assessment scales are developed and applied...

Issues in Placement

This testing project involves the development of a manual of best practices in placement in modern language programs. The focus is placed...

Heritage Language Education

NFLRC is cooperating with the University of Hawai`i Center for Second Language Research in supporting the development of heritage languag...

Continuation of the journal Language Learning & Technology ...

Language Learning & Technology is a refereed journal, published exclusively on the World Wide Web, which began publication in July 1997. ...

Interactive Web-Based Performance Tests

project proposed but not funded or implementedAn innovative aspect of the foreign language assessment project during the 1999–02 grant cy...

Corpus Linguistics for Language Teaching and Learning

Readily available collections of written or spoken language and easy-to-use analytical tools offer exciting possibilities for using the t...

Distance Education, Distributed Learning, and Introductory Language Instruction

The NFLRC has been carrying out a series of interrelated distance education projects since 1995. In the current grant cycle, a course she...

Reading in a Foreign Language

Reading in a Foreign Language is a refereed international journal of issues in foreign language reading and literacy, published twice yea...

Elicited Imitation as an Oral Proficiency Measure

This project will develop elicited imitation, sometimes referred to as "sentence repetition," as a standardized measurement instrument of...

Continuation of the journal Language Learning & Technology ...

A major initiative of the NFLRC during the 1996-1999 grant cyclewas the establishment of a new professional journal on technology andfo...

Task-based Language Teaching in Foreign Language Education

The purpose of this project is two-fold: (i) to design, implement, and evaluate a prototype task-based language teaching (TBLT) program f...

Computer-based Tests for Less Commonly Taught Languages

James Dean Brown ThomHudson The goal of this project is to develop computer-based tests (CBTs) for less commonly taught languages, with ...

Disseminating Technology-based Models for Distance Education in Critical ...

The University of Hawaiʻi and the UH NFLRC have a strong commitment to and significant experience in distance-education-delivered foreign...

Teaching the Pragmatics of Indonesian as a Foreign ...

The NFLRC will develop materials, activities, and strategies for teaching the pragmatics of Indonesian as a foreign language (IFL). The p...

Community-based Service Learning in Heritage Languages

This project focuses on Mandarin Chinese as a prototypical heritage language and brings ethnic undergraduate students and members of the ...

Drawing on Community Language Resources to Improve Foreign ...

The goal of this project is to capitalize on community language resources in developing programs and products to improve foreign language...

Summer Institutes for Professional Development (1999-2002)

The University of Hawai‘i has been offering summer institutes for professional development since 1991. These institutes have earned a sol...

Language Immersion

This initiative builds on a series of interrelated language immersion projects currently (see http://www.uatuahine.hawaii.edu/hana/Ittp/...

Reading Kanji

Professor Matsunaga carried out a study exploring the extent to which native speakers of Japanese associate kanji (Chinese characters) wi...

Action Research and the Preparation of Foreign Language ...

The teaching of foreign languages at the post-secondary level increasingly reflects an interest in developing communicative proficiency, ...

Performance and Portfolio Assessment

The purpose of this project is to develop alternative methods of language testing that will be appropriate for assessing communicative an...

Language Learning & Technology: Online Journal

Language Learning & Technology is a refereed journal, published exclusively on the World Wide Web, which began publication in July 1997. ...

Model Hawaiian Immersion Curriculum

Work is underway to establish a model program for developing Hawaiian language immersion materials . Joint cooperation with native speake...

East Asian Role Plays

A team consisting of David Hiple (NFLRC), Kyoko Hijirida (East Asian Languages & Literatures), Soo-ah Kim Yuen (East Asian Languages & Li...

Sociolinguistics and Cross-cultural Pragmatics

A recent review of studies on interlanguage pragmatics (Kasper & Schmidt, 1996) documented that pragmatic development in adult nonnative ...

Motivated Strategies for Foreign Language Learning and Teaching

This research project seeks to be integrative, bringing together a number of research strands within the field of foreign language learni...

Foreign Language Partnership

Rationale and Objectives:United States educational policies and public attitudes have often reflected a narrow view of language needs a...

Negative Feedback in Adult L2 Development

This project investigated the relative effectiveness of models and corrective recasts on adult learners' language development. Recasts ar...

Evaluative Criteria for Computer-Delivered Language Learning Systems

This NFLRC project will result in the development of evaluative criteria for the design, selection, and utilization of computer-delivered...

Pragmatic Development and the Instruction of Pragmatics in ...

Nonnative speakers' sociolinguistic and pragmatic competence has been a research focus of the University of Hawai‘i faculty for a number ...

Assessment of Cross-cultural Pragmatics

There are numerous existing methods for measuring grammatical and textual competence (syntax, vocabulary, cohesion, etc.), but no general...

Distance Education

Performance-based Multimedia Materials for Mandarin Chinese and Korean via an Integrated CD-ROM and World-Wide-Web Delivery FormatA new...

A Multi-Language Comparison of Syntactic Complexity Measures and ...

Joint project with the University of Melbourne and Kwansei Gakuin University, with the collaboration of the Center for Applied Linguistic...

Self-Instruction

Instruction to would-be learners, both serious and casual, in the uncommonly taught languages is often completely unavailable unless the ...

Explicit and Implicit Factors in Foreign Language Learning

Controversies concerning the relative contribution of explicit and implicit factors in foreign language learning have always been core is...

Computerized Testing Protocol for Mandarin Chinese

Professor Tao-Chung (Ted) Yao was hired at the University of Hawai‘i in 1995 to serve as the overall language program coordinator for the...

Second Language Development in Writing: Measures of Fluency, ...

In this project, we analyzed and compared the ways that fluency, accuracy, grammatical complexity, and lexical complexity have been measu...

Teacher Training via Interactive Television and Internet

This project explored the media of interactive television (ITV) and internet for teacher education. The context for the project was an in...

Hypermedia Kanji City

The Kanji City Project began as an exploration of hypertext and hypermedia as a new environment for language education and training. Trad...

Chinese Curriculum Project

This continuing research project involves development and refinement of a Mandarin Chinese curriculum for the first through fourth years ...

Korean Language and Culture Materials

For six weeks in July and August of 1993, nine American musicians, educators, and scholars participated in the first annual Summer Instit...

PBLL Curriculum Development

Curriculum development initiatives, including efforts to create new curriculum or redesign courses for Chinese, Hindi, Indonesian, Japanese, Persian, Portuguese

Intensive Summer Institutes

NFLRC has carried out summer institutes since 1991, providing training and professional development for K-16 language educators ...

Online Professional Development

The NFLRC will develop and conduct a series of 4 online professional development institutes ...

Dissemination

The primary NFLRC vehicles for dissemination are its publications division and NFLRC-hosted conferences, symposia, workshops, and ISIs ...

Design-Based Research

Design-based research (DBR) is an approach to research that is particularly suitable to improve processes ...