History

1950’s: Pre-BLC

The Language Lab, the precursor to the Berkeley Language Center, was closely connected to the Department of Linguistics in the Division of Social Sciences. It served three primary functions: 1) to provide a repository of audio recordings of graduate students’ field work (“The Language Archive”) and a separate archive of lectures by linguists (“The Linguistic Archive”); 2) to record and archive speeches by notable visitors to campus and by UCB faculty (“The Speech Archive”); 3) to work with textbook publishers to provide their analog audio materials to students, either through listening facilities in the Language Lab or through tape duplication sales directly to students. Many of the event recordings made during this time are still available in the Audio Archive of UC Berkeley Lectures and Events.

1994: The Founding of the Berkeley Language Center (BLC)

The founding of the BLC was the direct result of two formal processes. First, the Foreign Language Task Force, led by Claire Kramsch (Professor Emerita, German; BLC Director, 1994-2005), put forth a proposal for its creation in Spring 2023 with the following mission:

  • Centralize foreign language teaching resources, e.g., language learning technologies, language teaching library.

  • Enhance communication among various FL related programs.

  • Disseminate educational information through Newsletter, Brochures.

  • Provide pre- and in-service training for all language teachers on campus. In particular, integrate lecturers into the professional and intellectual life of the campus.

  • Establish guidelines for the evaluation, reappointment, and promotion of lecturers.

  • Conduct pedagogical research on the development and evaluation of instructional programs and materials, as well as on the testing of language proficiency. Support empirical and theoretical research on language acquisition processes.

  • Initiate a national conversation on the professionalization of foreign language educators through a bi-annual conference on the topic.

Foreign Language Center Task Force Members

  • Rutie Adler

  • Melinda Erickson

  • Richard Kern

  • Claire Kramsch (Chair)

  • Sze-Yun Liu

  • David Szanton

  • Guadalupe Valdes

The second process occurred around the same time as the Chairs of French, Italian, Spanish & Portuguese, Classics, German, Scandinavian, and Slavic convened to plan for their Departmental reorganization. They envisioned a dual role for the BLC:

“We believe that the Language Center will prove invaluable in two areas. First and foremost it should have a service function or the departments that house language programs. As a resource center for our departments, it can contribute to an improvement in the teaching of foreign languages and the training of foreign language teachers. Second, it should function as a research center for those faculty members who are conducting research in applied linguistics and second language acquisition.”

This “Berkeley model,” where the language center serves as an intellectual, pedagogical, and technological hub for language teaching but where language instructors remain in language departments, has served as a model for the creation of numerous language centers around the country, including at Princeton, Yale, Emory, Arizona, Northwestern, and Texas.

The Early Years: From Analog to Digital Technologies

The original Language Lab was incorporated into the BLC and renamed the Language Media Center and in 1996 Mark Kaiser was hired as Associate Director. The newly founded BLC was an amalgam of several functions. It was an audiolingual-based technology unit responsible for the distribution of analog materials while it began exploring digital technologies; a facility that supported archiving materials for the campus overall and the Department of Linguistics in particular; and a “teaching services” center founded to support the teaching and learning of world languages.

This transition from analog to digital technologies and the prioritization of support for language teaching impacted the BLC services, facilities, and programming. A shop, tape duplication facility, and rooms that previously housed tape carrels were transformed into classrooms with technology unavailable in general assignment classrooms. The BLC Fellowship Program was initiated to provide opportunities for lecturers and graduate students to engage in research in applied linguistics, second language acquisition, and world languages pedagogy. A program for lecturers to provide financial support for travel to conferences was created, giving opportunities to so many over the years to participate in broader discussions that feature research and practice at national and international scales.

These programs continue to have direct impacts on the vibrant language teaching and learning community on campus through innovative course designs and curricular models, from the teaching of texts (film, literature), to notions of competence (intercultural, symbolic), to social justice and language initiatives, and pedagogical models that center task-based, content-based, project-based, and performance-based teaching and learning.

2000-2010: The UC Consortium for Language Learning and Teaching

The UC Consortium for Language Learning and Teaching (UCCLLT) was created to “provide our students with an increased access to language study through a combination of the best classroom practices, distance learning, and EAP programs. The consortium will promote language study as a vital need for every UC student" (Robert Blake, founding director).

The UCCLLT had a major impact on language education in the UC system generally and specifically on BLC programming. It organized summer workshops for language faculty from the entire UC system, funded curricular development projects, organized biannual conferences, and helped to create the L2 Journal. The L2 Journal, founded by Claire Kramsch (General Editor, 2009-2023) and housed in the BLC since 2010, was one of the first open-access refereed journals for world languages educators. 

The BLC fully participated in UCCLLT activities, hosting a summer workshop on teaching with film and proposing two successful grants enabling Mark Kaiser, BLC Associate Director, to launch the Library of Foreign Language Film Clips (LFLFC, now called Lumière). During this same time period, there was a rapid increase in server-based projects such as the LFLFC, Berkeley Online Language Testing (BOLT), and a number of additional department-level projects.

During this time, Rick Kern assumed the position of faculty director of the BLC. In the Prospective View published in the Fall 2006 BLC Newsletter he highlights one of his goals as director, that of celebrating Berkeley’s “insistence on depth,” which, as he elaborates, in the case of the teaching of languages goes beyond an instrumental, skill-based approach, to include teaching “thinking abilities” as students in our language classrooms learn how to listen, how to think before speaking, and how to communicate in new ways as they come to experience the words, structures, and cultures of the new language.

Ongoing Programs and Community Building

Through the years, many of the BLC’s programs, including Events Series, the Fellowship Program, and the Travel Grants program, have continued to support ongoing professional development opportunities for lecturers. For many years, the BLC was able to host an Academic Coordinator, who facilitated additional activities such as lecturers meetings that served to create community around shared food and a passion for languages. 

BLC Academic Coordinators

•Karen Møller

•Rutie Adler

•Nelleke van Deusen-Scholl

•Jean Schultz

•Sonia S’hiri

•Lisa Little

•Sirpa Tuomainen

•Annamaria Bellezza

•Chika Shibahara

The BLC has also supported other instructor-led initiatives, including Words in Action, an annual multilingual and multicultural student performance directed and produced by Annamaria Bellezza (Italian Studies), which celebrated its 10th performance in spring 2024. 

The BLC has established a close working relationship with the Media Resources Center (the unit of the UCB Library supporting the video collection) through collaboration on development of Lumière and the work of providing all UCB faculty access to films and film clips for streaming. The BLC maintains strong connections with other centers across campus, including the GSI Teaching and Resource Center; the Center for African Studies; Institute of European Studies; the Center for Southeast Asian Studies, among others. 

Beyond the UCB community, the BLC has supported the teaching and learning of languages in the broader community. In 2013 the East Bay World Language Project moved from St. Mary’s College to the BLC. This state and federally funded outreach program for the professional development of teachers of foreign languages at the K-12 level conducts 5 workshops during the school year and a 5-day summer workshop, as well as workshops on site at schools in four counties. It was renamed the Berkeley World Language Project (BWLP) in 2017.

Photo of Past and Present BLC Leadership

New Directions: Language and AI

Under the new leadership of Executive Director Kimberly Vinall (2021-present) and Associate Director Emily Hellmich (2022-present) and with an Advisory Board representing community members from across campus, the BLC’s programs, initiatives, and resources continue to expand. Most significantly, given the impact of emerging technologies (e.g., neural machine translation, generative AI) and given their impact on language learning as well as on the humanities more broadly, language and AI are at the core of these new directions, including a 2023-2026 USDOE International Research and Studies grant.