Language Mentors International (LMI) presents "Characteristics of Language Immersion in  STARTALK Student Programs," a study to discover the elements of effective practices in STARTALK programs that prepare learners for 21st-century skills. The study targeted institutions that offer STARTALK summer programs in Arabic, Persian, Urdu, and Hindi languages to middle school, high school and college students. The study was funded by the U.S. Department of Education International Research and Studies grant (P017A200034).

This OER is a culmination of conversations, pedagogical practices, and ways of being together that developed as a collaboration between co-authors Borbala Gaspar (bgaspar@arizona.edu) and Chantelle Warner (warnerc@arizona.edu) and the engaged group of students who took part in a year-long series of extracurricular gatherings, which served as an exploratory space for the ideas shared in this handbook. The poetry club evolved from the authors’ shared desire to create a space adjacent to the classrooms in their language programs (Italian and German respectively) where students could explore the aesthetic and affective endeavor of language learning, rooted in the human capacity for exploring alternative ways of making sense of themselves, the world, and their experiences within it.
This handbook is intended as a resource for educators who wish to develop a similar extracurricular club or who are looking for inspiration for their classrooms. In the first chapter of the handbook, we introduce you to the background of the project and the current discussions of well-being in higher education. Part two provides an overview of the conceptual underpinnings of multilingual making and poetic play as ways of engaging with language and language learning. Core concepts and principles are outlined, emphasizing the significance of living together in and through languages, and the role of multilingual making when learning a new language. The handbook explores various forms of poetic play, such as collage, response artwork to poetry, clay work and visual representation of poems. It delves into core principles for establishing a multilingual poetry club offering guidance on creating and sustaining such a club. Sample activities illustrate each example including collage, mixed media, limericks, and remarks from the authors and creators of the artworks. Additional resources such as blackout poetry and other ideas that could potentially further engage club members in creative expression are included as well. Finally, this book concludes with reflections and additional resources for educators interested in promoting multilingualism and creativity through poetry.
After reading this handbook, you will be able to…
Identify the key factors that students indicate as influencing their sense of belonging;
Define and discuss key concepts and terms related to playful poetry and living literacies approach, and relate them to other discussions in the field of second language teaching and learning;
Explore the forms and functions of multimodality and living literacies in the examples;
Reflect on how to apply these ideas into your context.

This edited volume highlights how institutions, programs, and less commonly taught language (LCTL) instructors can collaborate and think across institutional boundaries, bringing together voices representing different approaches to LCTL sharing to highlight affordances and challenges across institutions in this collection of essays. Sharing Less Commonly Taught Languages in Higher Education showcases how innovation and reform can make LCTL programs and courses more attractive to students whose interests and needs might be overlooked in traditional language programs. The volume focuses on how institutions, programs, and LCTL instructors can work together, collaborating and thinking across institutional boundaries to explore innovative solutions for offering a wider range of languages and levels.

With challenges including instructor isolation, difficulty in offering advanced courses or sustaining course sequences, and minimal availability of pedagogical materials compared to commonly taught languages to overcome, this collection is a vital resource for language educators and language program administrators.

The VAVA is a collecion of royalty-free audio and video files for teachers to use in their own creative exercises. We have also developed a small number of sample exercises that utilize material from the VAVA. The LCTL Project encourages teachers of all LCTLs to cooperate in developing new VAVA exercises using audio or video materials. Individual exercises might be very simple listening practice, or they might be more complex, integrating sounds, video clips into reading, writing, speaking and listening activities for students.The VAVA currently contains audio for the following languages: Arabic (Tunisa), Chinese (Mainland and Taiwan), Hebrew, Norwegian, Polish.