National Foreign Language Center

All about language programs, courses, websites and other learning resources
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IronMike
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National Foreign Language Center

Postby IronMike » Sun Oct 15, 2017 7:37 am

I just subscribed to the National Foreign Language Center's portal. I discovered this place with the help of @mcthulhu when I was asking about passage rating.

In the NFLC's own words...

The National Foreign Language Center (NFLC) is dedicated to promoting a language-competent society by developing and disseminating information that informs policy makers. The mission of the NFLC is to improve the capacity of the U.S. to communicate in languages other than English. We implement that mission through intensive and innovative strategic planning and development with globalized institutions, organizations, and enterprises throughout the United States.


Their portal is filled with lessons for dozens of languages (and dialects, esp. Arabic) ranging from Russian to Tongan, Albanian to Wolof. You can drill down in your search based on the proficiency you want to work on (Listening or Reading), the level you want to work on (based on ILR or ACTFL standards), the topic and the objective. For Russian alone there are over 240 lessons!

I checked out one Russian reading assessment and it is reminiscent of not only Joint Language University and some other DLI products, but also similar to the DLPT, which I'll be taking again in December.

The subscription costs $5 a month and can be cancelled anytime (no, I don't get anything for "advertising" for them and I'm not affiliated with them in any way). I figured I'd give it a go at least up until my DLPT, and then maybe stay on.
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Daristani
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Re: National Foreign Language Center

Postby Daristani » Sat Oct 21, 2017 6:07 pm

Thanks very much for this, IronMike; the site seems to have a lot if materials for languages that don't seem to attract that many learners, and for which materials are thus often limited. (I'm looking at languages like Balochi, Pashto, Turkmen, etc.) In this regard, it reminds me somewhat of the US Defense Department's main focus in recent years, and causes me to wonder whether it's somehow affiliated with the Gloss site.

In any event, I'll think I'll sign up for it, since it's just these languages that interest me the most. And the cost, at only five dollars per month, is certainly more reasonable than Glossika...
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Zegpoddle
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Re: National Foreign Language Center

Postby Zegpoddle » Tue Jan 08, 2019 7:53 am

Adding a new reply to a very old post:

Here is another way to access materials whose development was funded by the U.S. government: the home page of the U.S. National Foreign Language Resource Centers:

http://www.nflrc.org/

Click on “Meet the LRCs” for a list of 16 different centers, all based at U.S. universities, that focus on different languages and regions. Not all of the centers have information or materials for language learners, but some do, especially for less-commonly-studied languages. Here is some of what I found:

http://bookshelf.nealrc.org/
East Asian Bookshelf
Database of published textbooks and teaching materials in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean

http://nflrc.hawaii.edu/publications/teaching-materials/
List of language-learning materials published by the National Foreign Language Resource Center at the University of Hawaii

http://calper.la.psu.edu/language_teaching_and_learning_materials
Links to various sites and downloads for Korean, Russian, and some other languages

http://iub.edu/~celcar/language.php
Language materials developed by the Center for Languages of the Central Asian Region at Indiana University Bloomington

http://slaviccenters.duke.edu/projects
Duke University Center for Slavic, Eurasian and East European Studies
Learning materials and modules for (mostly) Russian, Ukrainian, and Uzbek

https://nealrc.osu.edu/materials
National East Asian Languages Resource Center at the Ohio State University
Links to some sites containing learning materials for Chinese, Japanese, Korean

http://www.coerll.utexas.edu/coerll/materials/language-learning-materials
Center for Open Educational Resources & Language Learning at Univ. of Texas–Austin
Huge site with free learning resources for many languages
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Chung
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Re: National Foreign Language Center - freely available now

Postby Chung » Wed Jan 26, 2022 9:45 pm

Just an update to IronMike's initial post: NFLC's treasury of DLI GLOSS-like material for reading and listening practice is now available to anyone without charge or time limit after having registered with a name and email address.

There's plenty of stuff in Arabic (including material that's not in MSA), Dari/Farsi, French, Hindi/Urdu, Korean, Pashto, Russian and Turkish, along with a respectable amount for Hebrew, Japanese, Mandarin, Portuguese, Punjabi, Spanish and Swahili, and even some stuff associated with "non-hotspots" for US foreign policy in the form of Danish, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian and Polish assessments/assignments.

Note that the site uses HTTP rather than HTTPS so it should work in Chrome but probably not in Firefox.
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