After final exams and through the break, I was engaged in writing a grant proposal to the Department of Education under the IRS program for the development of pedagogic materials to support language instruction in the least commonly taught languages. Our proposal calls for the further development of the Library of Foreign Language Film Clips, extending our collection from 6000 clips to approximately 11,000, especially in languages not yet represented in the library.
Although funding is a long shot, nevertheless I wanted to draw your attention to one of the provisions in the proposal. If funded in full, the grant would fund 6 lecturers at 1/3 salary (i.e., one course release) to participate in the cutting and tagging of clips, and to meet as a group biweekly to discuss strategies for the integration of clips into the language curriculum. If we are funded, the BLC will issue a call for letters of interest in participating in the project. Given the fact that we won’t hear about the award until late spring or early summer, at which time lecturers teaching loads for the fall may be mostly determined, we might need to run the project in the spring of 2011. To be continued…