Dear BLC community,
The year 2024-2025 witnessed both significant milestones and challenges at the Berkeley Language Center. It was a year of celebration, as the BLC family gathered to commemorate the Center’s 30 year history with reflections on its origins, followed by former director and founder Claire Kramsch’s 90th birthday. It was also a time of loss, as the Center witnessed the departure of beloved language instructors and marked the provisional end of its long running BLC Fellows Program
At the Center, we focused on continuing our legacy of supporting instructional excellence and the creative endeavors of language instructors. Kimberly Vinall and Emily Hellmich continued to lead the Language & AI initiative, and, in conjunction with the Townsend Center working group co-leader Kayla van Kooten, hosted the second annual Language & AI conference. This year’s conference incorporated student perspectives, concluding with an undergraduate poster session. We assisted Daniel Hoffmann, lecturer and First-Year Language Coordinator in French, in his launching of the Open Classroom Week, designed to facilitate exchange among seasoned and new language teachers at Berkeley. We continued to expand and build out instructor resources related to course delivery formats, in addition to introducing new classroom technology and Zoom classroom enhancements. And we continued our tradition of sponsoring a rich array of visiting scholars in talks, panels and roundtables on the latest in pedagogical research and practice.
A second emerging focus consists of expanding our engagement with UC Berkeley undergraduates, spreading the word about the doors opened through studying language. Postdoctoral Fellow Rosa Norton, who joined the BLC team in Fall ‘24, led a website redesign geared toward improving student interfaces. The new Pathways features a wealth of information and profiles related to language study on campus. Norton also spearheaded the creation of an Undergraduate Advisory Council, charged with contributing to elevating the BLC’s visibility as a campus hub for language learners. We now have a thriving Instagram page, which you can check out here! This all adds to preexisting programs like the annual Words in Action multilingual performance, led by Italian instructor Annamaria Bellezza, and the Exploring the Boundaries of Translation competition, co-sponsored by the Found in Translation working group.
With this Year in Review, we provide a snapshot of some of these programs and events and more.
BLC Initiatives
Language and AI
Over the past year, we published multiple Open Educational Resources on the BLC website tied to the US Department of Education International Research Studies (IRS) grant project titled Translating Machine Translation for Language Education to Promote Language Learning, Critical Digital Literacies, and Global Citizenship. Specifically, we published: 18 activity templates; guides to machine translation and other online tools; and an annotated bibliography of key research and pedagogy around machine translation. Throughout the past year, many of the activities were also adapted into instructional materials in eight languages and piloted with students. These instructional materials will be published this summer.
For Emily Hellmich (BLC Associate Director) and Kimberly Vinall (BLC Executive Director), this project represents the continuation of a multiphase research program that has explored instructor beliefs about MT and student use of MT. The larger goal of this work is to develop critical approaches to using MT and generative AI tools to support language and culture learning and the development of digital literacy skills. In recognition of their work, their 2024 article, co-written with Wen Wen (SUNY Oneonta), "Investigating L2 writers’ uses of machine translation and other online tools," published in Foreign Language Annals, has been nominated for the prestigious ACTFL/NFMLTA/MLJ Paul Pimsleur Award for Research in World Language Education
Conference--Language and AI: Generating Interdisciplinarity Connections and Possibilities
The BLC and the Language AI Working Group, co-founded by Emily Hellmich, Kayla van Kooten (Graduate Student, Department of German), and Kimberly Vinall, organized a second annual conferencein February to generate connections across the UC Berkeley community around machine learning and language/culture study. The topic of this conference was the impact of AI on language, literature & culture study, and literature & culture teaching today. The conference began with a keynote by Dr. Rodney Jones (University of Reading); the conference proceeded with panels of UC Berkeley instructors and students as well as a poster session featuring undergraduate researchers.
BLC Event Series
The 2024 fall event series kicked off with a roundtable featuring seven guests whose work across the US focuses on expanding and bolstering the vitality and reach of language programs within university settings. As language instructors and program administrators, they shared ideas and experiences relevant to fostering greater community and expanding the depth and relevance of language instruction across their campuses. This roundtable was followed by an October talk by University of British Columbia’s Ron Darvin. Focused on generative AI and digital literacies, Darvin drew attention in particular to the potential inequalities accompanying shifts in classroom dynamics and the importance of fostering digital literacy through ongoing discussions and exchanges between instructors and students. David Gramling, also from University of British Columbia, led a post-election workshop on the possible futures of language learning in a US political context increasingly bent on institutionalizing monolingualism. And Aron Aji from The University of Iowa ended the semester series with a talk on translation as immersive practice in world language classrooms, challenging pedagogical frameworks that would posit translation as antithetical to Communicative Language Teaching.
BLC leaders Kimberly Vinall and Emily Hellmich opened Spring 2025 with a co-presentation of their research findings on the theory and practice of AI technologies in language instruction. Rodney Jones from the University of Reading delivered a stimulating keynote presentation for the second annual Language, Literature & Culture Study in an Age of AI Conference. Considering problems of language and creativity from a posthumanist framework, Jones offered models meant to help students think critically about their participation in human-machine loops. Finally, Yale’s Fernando Rubio offered both a theoretical and empirical grounding to support blended learning delivery formats as well as a four-phase framework instructors might draw on in developing blended courses. We wish to thank all our featured speakers for the animated discussions they fostered and the generous sharing of their research.
Rodney Jones
BLC Fellows
The BLC sponsored seven Berkeley Language Center Fellows this year. Their work in Russian, French, Chinese, Scandinavian languages, Ladino, Arabic, and Hindi had in common a focus on effective pedagogical practices, with emphases ranging from gender inclusive practices, at-home language nesting strategies, grammar and lexicality, teaching across shared languages, and redesigning syllabi to make language learning more immediately responsive to student realities.
In the fall, Zijing Fan, Graduate Student in East Asian Languages & Cultures, developed lesson plans focused on pragmatic engagement with contemporary Chinese cultural production and everyday life. Jennifer Kaplan, Graduate Student in the Department of French, developed a portfolio of exercises and framing materials meant to support instructors in incorporating gender-inclusive language in their teaching of French. Elena Leonenko, Graduate Student in Slavic Languages & Literatures, focused her semester project on a lexical approach to teaching Russian across all levels of the language. And John Prusynski, Lecturer in Scandinavian Studies, prepared for a course engaging speakers of four Scandinavian languages with the intention of drawing on learners’ prior expertise in expanding their understanding of the workings of neighboring languages.
In the spring, Nathalie Khankan, Lecturer in Middle Eastern Languages & Cultures, explored the possibilities of engaging with Arabic students on the level of sound and affect, making room for grief and inconsolable loss in their learning of the language against the setting of ongoing Palestinian death. Julia Peck, Graduate Student in the Department of Linguistics, expanded both physical and web materials in a larger project aiming to revitalize the learning of Ladino (or Judeo-Spanish) through a focus on at-home language nesting. And Nora Koa, Lecturer in South & Southeast Asian Studies, focused on the affordances and challenges of grammar instruction among heritage speakers of Hindi.
Congratulations to all for your work that will surely have a significant impact in language and culture classrooms at UC Berkeley and beyond!
Undergraduate Programming
BLC Postdoctoral Fellow Rosa Norton has focused her work in part on building out the Center’s undergraduate engagement and outreach. To this end, the website now features a “Pathways” for students which directs them to information about language clubs on campus, language majors and minors, and courses designed with heritage speakers in mind. It also profiles students’ experiences with language and study abroad, and will soon also feature career-related pathways related to studying language and culture.
In January 2025, the inaugural cohort of the Undergraduate Advisory Council was formed. Charged with making the BLC more visible as a hub for language study and interest among undergraduates on campus, the Council—Chloe Durham, Krista Drako, Claire Lee, Lauren Chong and Lar Tabakian—launched a publicity campaign centered on a BLC Instagram page. Featuring a Word of the Week series, instructor profiles, introductions to the BLC team, and posts addressing common misconceptions about language study, the IG account registered thousands of views in its first few months. In addition, in April the Council hosted its first undergraduate social mixer, celebrating Words in Action participants as well as inviting fellow language enthusiasts to gather and meet.
Plans for the fall include continued publicity and promotion through IG as well as a more extended series of undergraduate social mixers. The Council will also be assisting in Golden Bear Orientation outreach.
Exploring the Boundaries of Translation Contest
The BLC and the Found in Translation (FIT) working group sponsored the fourth annual Exploring the Boundaries of Translation undergraduate contest, designed to open spaces of reflection on language and its use. Winners included Lucy Eunhyul Kim, whose Korean word was 눈치, "nunchi"; Joshua Rezneck, whose Mandarin word was 缘分,"yuánfèn”; and Sungmin Kim, whose Korean word was 답답하다, "dap-dap-ha-da". You can read more about why they considered these words to be untranslatable here
Undergraduate Research Apprenticeship Program: ChatGPT Research
For the fourth year in a row, the BLC hosted an Undergraduate Research Apprenticeship Program. Three undergraduate researchers, Zara Brandt, Shuqi (Mickey) Chen, and Madelyn Sparks, together with mentors Emily Hellmich and Kimberly Vinall, published a full-length manuscript (“ChatGPT in Language Education: Centering Learner Voices”) to a special issue of the journal Technology in Language Teaching & Learning. The article focused on a year-long collaborative research project, namely a survey of undergraduate UC Berkeley language learners (n=175) and their use (or non use) of generative AI for language learning. In addition, the undergraduate researchers supported the Language & AI conference and the larger Language & AI initiative at the BLC. It was a true pleasure to work with these researchers over two years, and we celebrated their graduation in May!
Words in Action: 11th Performance!
This spring marked the 11th performance of Words in Action (WIA), a multilingual and multicultural student performance directed and produced by Annamaria Bellezza. Audience turnout for this year was exceptionally high, perhaps owing to a shift from its usual Friday scheduling to Wednesday evening. Students from courses in Arabic, Armenian, Cantonese, Catalan, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Persian, Punjabi, Russian, Spanish, Tamil, Telugu and Ukrainian performed, in addition to the Fei Tian Chinese dance troupe.
Visiting Researchers
The BLC hosted Lei (Lucy) Sun (Professor, School of Foreign Studies, China University of Political Science and Law) and Yuyao Xiao (PhD candidate in Applied Linguistics at University College Cork, Ireland) as visiting researchers. Lucy’s research focuses on L2 acquisition from social and psychological perspectives as she works towards promoting the language and literacy skills of EFL learners. Yuyao is in the final stages of completing her dissertation project that focuses on the social experiences of Chinese sojourners in Ireland.
Found in Translation Working Group
Co-coordinators Vesna Rodic and Michael Arrigo of the Found in Translation working group hosted a series of five talks in the 2024-25 academic year. The first, Language Learners as Digital Citizens, featured Marie-Josée Hamel of the University of Ottawa, who presented on the affordances of digital platforms and the eLANG Citizen initiative. In Building Reflective Learners, pedagogical director at Université Catholique de Lyon Elise Cantiran shared work advocating for the power of self-assessment in strengthening learner autonomy. Carlos Yebra López of California State University–Fullerton gave a talk on his new book, Ladino on the Internet, focused on language revitalization efforts that are realized online. The University of Washington’s Maya Angela Smith explored the challenges of translating song lyrics from the standpoint of emotional resonances and pop conventions in We’ll Sail on the Sun. And in Connecting Across Generations, Carolin Fuchs from Northeastern University presented findings on engaging older adults studying German through virtual exchange.
Berkeley World Language Project (BWLP)
Contributed by BWLP Co-Director Nancy Salsig
What a great year! In 2024-25, we held two 5-day professional development workshop series for teachers of World Languages. These workshops centered on critical topics including Social-Emotional Learning, Global Competence, the UN Sustainable Goals, Social Justice, and the new California World Languages Standards and Framework.
Our participants were amazing! They created communication-based lessons and units, embedding strategies for developing linguistic proficiency in supportive settings. They also focused on incorporating culturally authentic resources to promote active student engagement.
The workshops offered in 2024-25 were:Strand A: Designing Lessons for Real World CompetenceStrand C: Designing Thematic Units: “Caribbean Quest"
We also supported local schools and districts in our service area. Our workshop for World Language teachers at Redwood High School was a huge success! We are looking forward to more site-based workshops in the future.
We are proud of the BWLP Team, made up of teacher-leaders who consistently present relevant engaging workshops to meet the needs of our participants. Our Co-Director, Don Doehla, has decided to retire. We will miss him, but we are grateful for his many years of dedication to the Berkeley World Language Project and the entire language profession. We are currently interviewing for a new Co-Director.
Registration for our interactive 2024-2025 workshops will be available soon! For more information check our website
Other Milestones
Justin Davidson (Department of Spanish & Portuguese) was awarded the Chancellor's Award for Advancing Institutional Excellence and Equity. The Korean Language Program held its Korean Literature Essay contestNikolaus Euba and students from German 102A marked the 20th performance of the German Cabaret
Former and current BLC directors, staff, Fellows, and instructors gathered in Ishi Court on April 24 to commemorate the Center’s 30 year history. In addition to giving longtime community members the opportunity to reunite and catch up, the event featured speeches, games and a focus on the artifacts and memorabilia associated with three decades of language instruction, research and programming at UC Berkeley.
Shortly after, on May 9, the annual BLC picnic celebrated founder and former director Claire Kramsch’s 90th birthday. Surrounded by former students and colleagues, Kramsch looked back on her vital decades at UC Berkeley and the work she and her compatriots accomplished in advancing language instruction, multiculturalism and multilingualism, and community on campus.
Concluding Reflections
As we wrap up a year in which we celebrated the BLC’s 30 year history, we continue to work hard on expanding supportive programming for language pedagogy and research at UC Berkeley and beyond, as well as articulating and defending the significance of teaching world languages and cultures. As we head into the summer and begin program planning for AY 2025-2026, feel free to contact us or stop by our offices in Dwinelle Hall if you have ideas and suggestions. In the meantime, thank you for being part of this special community and we wish you all a restorative summer.
And finally, a special note of acknowledgement to the entire BLC team of Orlando, Keith, Elle, Arely, Vanessa and Alexis for all of their work. We wish graduating seniors Arely and Alexis the best of luck and thank them for all their contributions to the BLC community. Thank you!
Best,
The BLC team