Bridging the Gap

Abstract

As language requirements burgeon at the post-secondary level inattempts to create global citizens out of college graduates,universities nationwide have seen a sharp increase in languagecourse enrollments, especially in the Less Commonly TaughtLanguage (LCTL) courses (Furman, Goldberg, & Lusin, 2007).While this is a positive trend from an intellectual and culturalpoint-of-view, the sudden growth presents a unique set of problemsfor course implementation. There has been a current trend ofoffering language courses online to meet increasing demands forcommonly taught languages (CTLs) (e.g., Chenoweth, Ushida, &Murday, 2006; Sanders, 2005), but little has been written aboutonline offerings for LCTLs (c.f., Winke, Goertler, & Amuzie, 2010).To respond to the need for high-quality pedagogical materials forLCTLs and to compensate for the lack of face-to-face classroomsettings, the Center for the Study of International Languages andCultures (CSILC) at the University of South Florida (USF) hascreated lessons in Dari, Pashto, and Urdu for the Global LanguageOnline Support System website (GLOSS; gloss.dliflc.gov)supported by the Defense Language Institute Foreign LanguageCenter. This paper is an analysis of considerations that informedthe process and products of these modules. A discussion ofimplications and directions for further study concludes the paper.