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The Five College Center for the Study of World Languages (FCCSWL) coordinates the study of the least commonly taught languages for the Five College consortium. The consortium, known as Five Colleges, Incorporated, includes Amherst College, Hampshire College, Mount Holyoke College, Smith College and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. The Center also developes materials and curricula for language learning with an emphasis on the least commonly taught languages and on more commonly taught languages as spoken in Africa, Asia, and the Americas.
The Center coordinates the Five College Supervised Independent Language Program (FCSILP) which offers independent study courses in nineteen languages: Bulgarian, Croatian (Serbo-Croatian), Czech, Dari (Afghan Farsi), Modern Greek, Hungarian, Indonesian, Norwegian, Persian (Iranian Farsi), Romanian, Serbian (Serbo-Croatian), Slovak, Thai, Twi (Ghana), Turkish, Turkmen, Urdu (Pakistan), Vietnamese, Wolof (Senegal), Yoruba (Nigeria). .
The FCSILP program is supplemented by the Five College Mentored Language Program. The mentored language courses combine independent study with small group conversation sessions and individual tutorials. For current and future mentored course offerings see: Mentored Arabic, Mentored Hindi, and Mentored Swahili.
The Center's materials development projects are housed on the LangMedia web site at: http://langmedia.fivecolleges.edu. These projects were funded by the Booth-Ferris Foundation, the Charles E. Culpeper Foundation, the Korea Research Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the National Security Education Program, and the Fund for the Improvement of Post-Secondary Education of the United States Department of Education. The projects include authentic video and audio recorded by international students from the consortium's five campuses while in their home countries. The site currently includes video and audio in twenty-five languages.
The Center's Director is Elizabeth H.D. Mazzocco, Ph.D. , Professor of Italian at the University of Massachusetts. The Associate Director and Technology Coordinator is Amy Wordelman, Ph.D. The Center's staff includes Kerry O'Keefe, web writer/editor and FCSILP assistant, and Maggie Malone, bookkeeper and coordinator of special projects. In addition, over 50 students from the Five Colleges work for the Center every year as native speaking conversation partners for FCSILP and as native speaking or technical assistants for the Center's materials and curricular development projects. The Center also contracts with a large number of professional language experts from around the country for help with its development projects and as examiners for FCSILP.
The Five College Center for the Study of World Languages was founded as the Five College Foreign Language Resource Center in 1987 with the help of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. It originally served as the research and development center for Five College foreign language and literature faculty. As technology support for faculty on the individual campuses expanded, the Center turned its attention to creating the supervised independent language program (FCSILP) in order to offer the least commonly taught languages to interested students. A paucity of available materials in the least commonly taught languages led the Center to begin its own curricular and materials development projects. Current and past efforts are housed on the LangMedia website.
In 2000, the FCSILP was a finalist in the American Council on Education - USA Group Foundation awards program on Academic Excellence and Cost Management in International Programs. In recognition of the Center's changing focus from "resources" to "development," it was renamed in 2002 to the Five College Center for the Study of World Languages in order to better reflect its leadership in the teaching of less-commonly taught languages and in the ground-breaking use of technology in language study.
Five College Supervised Independent Language Program
Five College Mentored Language Courses
Language and International Opportunities Web
LangMedia: The Five College Foreign Language Media Archive
Five College International and Regional Studies
Five College Language Departments
Language Resources on the Web
© 2002 Five College Center for the Study of World Languages and Five Colleges, Incorporated.
Five Colleges, Incorporated is the consortium of Amherst College, Hampshire College, Mount Holyoke College, Smith College and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.