Archived Calendar Events

"Issues in Language Assessment: National, Local and Classroom-Based Challenges and Opportunities"

Friday, February 17, 3-4:30 2206 Jimenez

Margaret E. Malone (Ph.D., Applied Linguistics, Georgetown University) is Senior Testing Associate at the Center for Applied Linguistics. She directs projects on technology-mediated tests of oral proficiency in a number of languages. Before re-joining CAL in 2000, she directed language testing for Peace Corps-Worldwide, designed and delivered technical assistance to language programs in six U.S. states, and taught graduate level courses in language testing and teaching methods at Georgetown and American Universities. She is the co-founder of the East Coast Organization of Language Testers and Chair of their annual conference.

Organized by the Language Coordinators Committee, sponsored by School of Languages, Literatures and Cultures Cynthia Martin, Phd Associate Professor of Russian School of Languages, Literatures and Cultures Universit of Maryland
3215 Jimenez Hall
College Park, MD 20742
(301) 405-4244
cmartin(AT)umd(DOT)edu

Understanding China in the 21st Century: Two New Views

February 3, 2006 (12:00pm to 1:30pm)

This event will take place in Non-Print Media Services in HORNBAKE Library, Room H

Please join the Center for East Asian Studies in a two- part lecture. To begin Dr. Taylor Fravel (Dept. of Political Science, MIT) will present "China's TerritorialFuture: Rising Power and Expansion in the 21st Century." Next, Dr. Martin Dimitrov (Dept. of Government, Dartmouth College) will give a talk on "Rule of Law under Authoritarianism: Evidence from China and Russia." For more information contact: Meghan Wallace 301-405-0681 , wallacem (at) umd.edu http://www.ceas.umd.edu/news.html

"Tensions of the Social and Anti-Social: Nick Ray's Outsider Cinema"?

Wednesday Feb. 8, 4:00 pm, St. Mary's Hall (Language House) Multipurpose Room

The International Film Series is starting up again this spring, with a special lecture event. Professor Dana Polan, of NYU, will be presenting a lecture titled "Tensions of the Social and Anti-Social: Nick Ray's Outsider Cinema"?

Dr. Polan is a Professor of Cinema Studies at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, and has written 7 books in film and media studies, and provided commentary for 4 DVDs. He is a former President of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies and in 2003 he was one of two recipients of that year's Academy Foundation Scholars Fellowship from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Following the lecture, we will be screening the classic "Outsider" film, Nicholas Ray's In A Lonely Place, in the Hoff Theater on Wednesday, Feb. 8, 2006 at 7:00 pm. The film will be introduced by Prof. Myron Lounsbury of AMST, with special guest and UMD alum, George Pelecanos, author of 14 novels.

Films for March-May include Satin Rouge (Tunisia/France) on March 1, Out of this World (Japan), on April 5, and The Syrian Bride (Israel/Germany/France) on May 3. Please encourage your students, colleagues and friends to come to the Hoff Theater for these educational, entertaining, and free events open to the public, sponsored by the School of Languages, The Office of International Edcuation, and the Hoff Theater. Also, a reminder that we are accepting applications for films to be screened next academic year on the theme of"Satire, Comedy, Irony". The deadline for proposals is March 1st.

Center for Advanced Study of Language Colloquium - Robert DeKeyser

December 7, 2005 (4:00pm to 5:30pm), Stamp Student Union; Atrium

“ Proceduralization: The bottleneck in second language skill development”
DeKeyser will examine the meaning of the term "practice" in the areas of cognitive psychology, educational psychology, and applied linguistics, and how it does and does not apply to second language learning and teaching, using findings from a study abroad program.

For more information contact:
Erica Michael
301-226-8868 , emichael(at)casl(dot)umd(dot)edu

Cold Light
2005-2006 International Film Series: The Outsider

Wednesday December 7, 2005 Time: 7.00 pm
Location: Hoff Theater (Stamp Student Union)

Free Admission

Introduction by Rose Marie Oster, Department of Germanic Studies

The International Film Series offers a free screening of Cold Light (2004, 90 min.) directed by Hilmar Oddsson. A 40-year-old loner in Reykjavik is haunted by events from his childhood, until he finds redemption in an art class. Oscar nominee.

The free showing of the 2005-06 International Film Series is sponsored by The School Of Languages, Literatures And Cultures, The College Of Arts And Humanities, the Office Of International Programs, and The Hoff Theater.

Join us on the first Wednesday of each month for the International Film Series, screening films from around the world.
www.union.umd.edu/hoff/international.html

Coming to Terms with Multiculturalism: The Challenge of Linguistic Diversity in Western Europe

Tuesday, November 15, 2005 at 5:00pm St. Mary's Hall, Multipurpose Room

The School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures and the Department of Germanic Studies cordially invite you to attend a lecture given by Professor Pramod Talgeri of Jawaharial Nehru University, New Dehli. Dr. Pramod Talgeri is a well-known scholar of German Studies and Vice Chancellor of Jawaharial Nehru University in New Dehli. He has published extensively on Hegel’s philosophy and on issues of multiculturalism and globalization. He was leader of the Indo-GDR Lexicography project and organized the First International Conference “Literature in Translation”. He was Visiting Professor in Salzburg and is presently Distinguished Max Kade Professor at Washington University, St. Louis.

For further information, please contact the office of Germanic Studies, Cauleen Gary, at 301-405-4091 or Elke Frederiksen at 301-405-4107, or by writing to germanicstudies(at)umd(dot)edu

Strengthening European Union - United States Relations

Tuesday, November 15, 2005 from 11:00am to 12:15pm, 6th floor Special Events room McKeldin Library

The School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures Department of French and Italian are pleased to announce a lecture in English by Ambassador John Bruton, Ambassador of the European Union to the United States and former Prime Minister of Ireland as part of the 150th anniversary of the University of Maryland. Everyone is welcome to attend. For more information contact: Joseph Brami 301-405-4026 , jbrami(at)umd(dot)edu

Ventures and Adventures of the Persian Language

Friday, November 18, 2005

The First Annual Khayami Distinguished Lecture in Persian Studies: Dr. Ehsan Yarshater, Professor Emeritus, Columbia University
Editor-in-chief, The Encyclopedia Iranica
7:00 PM in Howard Frank Auditorium, Van Munching Hall
More Information

William Fall Memorial Lecture: "Terrorism in History"

November 1, 2005 at 11:00am in the Language House, St. Mary's Hall

The School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures Department of French and Italian is pleased to sponsor the 2005-2006 William Fall Memorial Lecture. Arnaud Blin, Senior Fellow of the École de la Paix, Grenoble Research Associate, Institut Français d’Analyse Stratégique, Paris will speak on "The Impact of Terrorism on History, from Antiquity to the 21st Century".

Arnaud Blin is Executive Director at the Charles Leopold Mayer Foundation for the Progress of Humankind, a former researcher at the Institut Diplomatie et Defense 21 in Paris, the former Director of the Beaumarchais Center for International Research in Washington, DC, and author of several books on terrorism, and on US foreign policy.

International Film Series: Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror (Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens)

November 2nd at the Hoff Theater, in the Student Union

Hosted by Professor Peter Beicken, SLLC
An Evening of Silent Film, with live musical accompaniment by Ray Brubacher on digital piano
Director: F.W. Murnau (Germany, 1922, 81 minutes)
A highlight of German Expressionist film, this classic vampire film adapted Bram Stoker’s Dracula, accomplishing an artistic landmark of the horror genre. Ingenuously composed in a painterly style, the film is foremost a psychological thriller presenting a nightmarish world with the phantom looming like a deadly disease.

The theme of this year's film series is "The Outsider." Please encourage your students, colleagues and friends to come to the Hoff Theater for this educational, entertaining, and free event, sponsored by the School of Languages, The Office of International Education, and the Hoff Theater.

Join us on the first Wednesday of each month for the International Film Series, screening films from around the world.

"Magic Rome" by II Gruppo Teatro Essere.

October 25, 2005 at 2:30 p.m. in the Language House, St. Mary's Hall

The School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures Department of French and Italian invites you to attend a special production. This special event is being held Tuesday, October 25, 2005 at 2:30 p.m. in the Language House, St. Mary's Hall. Refreshments will follow.

This performance is free and open to the public. Co-sponsored by the Italian Cultural Society of Washington, D.C., SMATCH (Scientific Methodologies Applied to Cultural Heritage, Inc. For further information call Giuseppe Falvo at (301) 405-4031 or e-mail gfalvo(AT)umd.edu

Speaking Words in Two Languages: How Bilinguals Negotiate Cross-language Competition

Tuesday, Oct 25 from 4-5pm in Prince George's Room in the Student Union

Dr. Judith Kroll

SLA Brown Bag Colloquium Series

Friday, October 28, 12-1:30pm in in the Language House, St. Mary's Hall

This week's talk, "Evidence for wh-scope marking in advanced Japanese-English interlanguage grammars," will be presented by Barbara Schulz.

Assessing automatic competence in SLA research

Monday, October 17th from 12 – 1:30 pm > St. Mary's Multipurpose room

Dr. Nan Jiang from Georgia State University will discuss the long-standing problem in SLA research: the neglect of automaticity in assessing L2 competence. He will begin by outlining three dimensions of L2 competence and discussing the importance of automaticity in its assessment. Current assessment practice and its limitations will then be illustrated in two areas: L2 morphological development, and the role of instruction in SLA. Some psycholinguistic tasks and methods will be discussed that may be of use in helping to access automatic competence in L2. He will end with a brief overview of a recent study that demonstrates how such a method can be used in SLA research.

SLA Brown-bag colloquium

Friday, October 14, 12-1:30 > Language House, St. Mary’s Hall

Argument/adjunct asymmetry in the acquisition of inversion in wh-questions by English-speaking children and Korean learners of English:
Frequency account vs. Structural account
Dr. Sun-Young Lee, Linguistic Profiling project, University of Maryland

This presentation discusses a possible argument/adjunct asymmetry in the acquisition of wh-questions by English-speaking children and Korean learners of English. In doing so, it tests and compares two approaches to the study of language acquisition: the structure-based generative approach and the lexical-based input frequency approach. One of the most frequent errors in the acquisition of English wh-questions involves a failure to perform subject-auxiliary inversion (e.g., *why he is laughing?). Stromswold (1990) and De Villiers (1991) propose that inversion is acquired earlier in argument wh-questions (e.g., who and what) than in adjunct wh-questions (e.g., how and why), attributing the asymmetry to the structural difference between the two in the G/B framework. By contrast, Rowland & Pine (2000, 2003) reject the idea that children learn general movement rules and that there is an argument/adjunct asymmetry. Instead, they argue that children learn specific wh-word + auxiliary combinations that are sensitive to the frequency of individual pattern in input. By comparing L1 and L2 learners’ input and acquisition, this dissertation aims to evaluate the two approaches and to investigate the possible argument/adjunct asymmetry. An input study was conducted by analyzing the corpora of six caregivers’ speech from the CHILDES database for L1. The L2 analysis involved 23 textbooks, 18 television situation comedy scripts, and four movie scripts. It was found that both L1 and L2 learners receive similar input in terms of the relative order of frequency of inverted wh-questions (i.e., what > why > how > who). In addition, two experimental studies were conducted. The first was a picture-aided elicited production task involving 17 English-speaking children. The second was a grammaticality judgment task involving 41 Korean learners of English for L2. Each study found that both L1 and L2 learners did better at inversion with argument wh-questions than with adjunct wh-questions (i.e., what, who > why, how). A comparison of the input and acquisition studies reveals that both L1 and L2 learners show an argument/adjunct asymmetry in the acquisition of inversion in wh-questions that cannot be traced to the input frequency, which supports the structure-based generative approach.

International Film Series Special Event

October 10, 2005 (7:00pm to 10:30pm)

Location: Stamp Student Union Charges: Free

SLLC and the Department of French and Italian are proud to present an International Film Series double feature: "Prendini l'anima" (The Soul Keeper; directed by Roberto Faenza) is the story of a 19-yearold girl under the care of Carl Jung, who falls in love with her. "La febbvre" (The fever; directed by Alessandro D'Alatri)is the story of Mario,who is conditioned by his family to lower his expectations about job fulfillment. Insuited to be a beaureaucrat, Mario steps into a new role to fulfill his dream of opening a discotheque with his friends.

For more information contact: Giuseppe Falvo 301-405-4031 , gfalvo@umd.edu

Dr. Craig Chaudron: Elicited Imitation as L2 Oral Proficiency Assessment

October 11, 2005 (10:00am to 12:00pm)

Location : St. Mary's Hall Multipurpose Room
Event type : lecture
Charges : Free

The School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures presents a lecture by Craig Chaudron of the University of Hawaii titled "Elicited Imitation as L2 Oral Proficiency Assessment." Research on second languages demonstrates that elicited imitation, especially English, Spanish, and Japanese, can be a reliable and valid measure of general competence, while also possibly serving as an instrument for linguistically oriented SLA research. Design of sentence stimuli, test format and procedures, and assessment and scoring are illustrated. Results of reliability and other test evaluation will be reported, especially using the methodology and results of the development of EI tests for Vietnamese and Indonesian oral proficiency.

For more information contact:
Anne McBrearty
301-405-4025 , amcbrear@umd.edu

The Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH) presents its first Digital Dialogue of the Fall 2005 semester

Silvia Mejía, "Ecuadorian Migration, Nostalgia, and Technology in Transnational Times"

Tuesday, September 13th, 12:30-2:00

Where: MITH conference room, basement level, McKeldin Library

Digital Dialogues are an informal brownbag style discussion free and open to the public. All are welcome to attend. Feel free to bring a lunch if you like, and if your schedule requires, arrive late or leave early.

Silvia Mejía is a doctoral candidate in Comparative Literature and a MITH fellow. In this Digital Dialogue she will show clips from her dissertation project, a documentary video analyzing how new technologies such as Internet, satellite communications, email, video-conferences, and cell phones have changed the experience of being away from home, transforming nostalgia and encouraging the appearance of transnational phenomena.

International Film Series: Rosenstrasse

Wednesday, May 4, 2005, 7pm at the Hoff Theater

Free Admission

Accompanied on electronic keyboard by Ray Brubacher
Introduction by Peter Beicken, Department of Germanic Studies

The International Film Series offers a free screening of ROSENSTRASSE (2003, 136 min.), a film that features the street protest of Aryan German women against the detention and deportation of their Jewish husbands. This riveting drama highlights the little known resistance of ordinary Germans against the Nazi regime in Berlin during World War II (February 1943). Directed by Margarethe von Trotta, one of the foremost women directors of New German Cinema, the film is in English and German with English subtitles.

The free showing in the 2004-05 The International Film Series is sponsored by The School Of Languages, Literatures And Cultures, The College Of Arts And Humanities, the Office Of International Programs, and The Hoff Theater.

Join us on the first Wednesday of each month for the International Film Series, screening films from around the world.
www.union.umd.edu/hoff/international.html

SLLC Activities for Maryland Day 2005 !

April 30, 2005: 11am - 2pm

All Day Event Persian Dance, Art & Culture

Front Steps, Jimenez Hall

Join the Center for Persian Studies for a Persian dance performance (offered every two hours), get your name written in nastaliq and shekasteh styles by a master calligrapher, and peruse books on Iranian and Silk Road Cultures.

Language House Events

Schedule of Activities for the Day:

10:15 - 11:00 Cross-Cultural Game: Multi-purpose Room, St. Marys Hall
Join the School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures for an exploration of international business cultures, and participate in a cross-cultural game!

Tours of the Language House apartments every half hour

11 AM – 1 PM

Music, Dances, and Puppet Show” presented by the Language House Music Ensemble, the Italian Cluster, and the Russian Cluster, at 12 noon
Chinese Cluster Table: Have your name translated into Chinese and written in calligraphy
Japanese Cluster Table: Come and learn origami paper art and Japanese dance steps
French Cluster Table: Learn how to make decorative carnival masks! Visit this “Cultural Arts Gallery” and show your own artistic talents!

12 noon – 2 PM

Spanish Cluster: Need some exercise? Love to dance? Come and learn how to Salsa from 12:30 to 1:30 PM
Hebrew Cluster Table: Passover Plate: learn the tradition and meaning, and taste the food
German Cluster Table: Are you thirsty? Learn to make a Bierstein (beer mug) and drink a cup of juice

THE ANNUAL WANG FANGYU LECTURE

“Play the Strange: BIZARRE CHARACTERS in Late Ming - Early Qing Calligraphy ”

Thursday, April 28 th 1:00-2:30pm: St. Mary's Hall of the Language House

by Dr. Qianshen Bai, speaker and Chinese calligraphy demonstrator, Boston University *Light refreshments will follow the presentation.

Event Co-sponsors:
Committee on East Asian Studies, Department of Art History & Archaeology, Institute for Global Chinese Affairs, School of Languages, Literatures & Cultures, Wang Fangyu Endowment for Calligraphy Education at the University of Maryland

** This event is FREE and Everyone is WELCOME!!! **

Historical Lessons in Immigration Policy: Organized Ex-Braceros Struggle for Retirement Funds

Friday, April 29, 2005: 1:00 - 2:30 pm, St. Mary's Hall/Language House Multipurpose Room

The Office of Undergraduate Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park, invites you to A Presentation by Felipe Munoz Pavon, who worked as a Bracero in the 1940s and currently resides in Tlaxcala, Mexico. Today Felipe is a leader in the movement for justice for ex-Braceros and a highly respected member of his community. Macrina Cardenas de Alarcon, the Legislative Coordinator of the Mexico Solidarity Network in Washington, DC. Macrina has 30 years of political organizing experience in the U.S. and Mexico. For the past 12 years her major focus has been immigrant rights in the United States, including 8 years with the Diocese of Rochester in New York State.

Translation from Spanish to English will be provided.

A Contrastive Approach to the Teaching of Persian and Urdu languages

Friday, April 22, 2005, 3pm: Language House Multipurpose Room

A lecture by Dr. Mahinnaz Mirdehghan of Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Iran sponsored by the School of Languages, Literatures and Cultures and the Center for Persian Studies. This event is free and open to the public.

The Second International Conference on the Iranian Diaspora

April 23-24, 2005 - Adele H. Stamp Student Union

We are excited to inform you that registration for IAAB's Second International Conference on the Iranian Diaspora is now open! Please note that registration is limited and will be determined on a first-come-first-served basis. For your convenience, you may register securely online via our website, and pay with a credit or debit card via PayPal. The registration fee of $40 for the general public and $25 for students includes access to both days of the conference including breakfast and snacks throughout the weekend.

We will also be holding an event on Saturday evening, April 23, in Washington, DC, which will feature the highly-acclaimed Iranian-American comedian Maz Jobrani, followed by a band and DJ. This event is open to all conference participants for $5 and to the Washington, DC community (non-conference participants) for $15. Ticket information for this event coming soon.

The conference, which is hosted by the Iranian Students' Foundation of the University of Maryland and sponsored by the University's Center for Persian Studies, will be held April 23-24, 2005 at the Adele H. Stamp Student Union, UMD, College Park.

Click here to register online

Honoring José Emilio Pacheco: The Confluence of Two Cultures

Tuesday, April 12, 6:30 pm at the Cultural Institute of Mexico

Free admission, VIN D' HONNEUR WITH BOOK SIGNING TO FOLLOW
R.S.V.P. (703) 728 1675 Limited Space Available
Sponsored by The National Endowment for the Arts, the University of Maryland and the Cultural Institute of Mexico
More Information

Honoring José Emilio Pacheco: The Confluence of Two Cultures

Wednesday, April 13, 9am-5pm, Language House Multipurpose Room

The event is free and open to the public
Sponsored by the University of Maryland and the Cultural Institute of Mexico

More Information

International Film Series: Cyclo (Xich Lo)

Wednesday, April 6, 2005: 7pm Hoff Theater, Introduction by Dr. Eric Zakim, Department of Asian and East European Languages and Cultures

In this film by the director of The Scent of the Green Papayas, a young man who ekes out a living with his bicycle taxi in Ho Chi Minh City (the former Saigon) is introduced to the world of organized crime. (In Vietnamese and Italian with English Subtitles)
More Information

Opening Night of the Asian American Studies Film Festival

April 04, 200, 5:00pm to 7:00pm, Cole Fieldhouse

Come celebrate Asian Pacific American Heritage Month with UM's Asian American Studies Program. AAST Director Tim Ng will provide brief remarks on HK films in the US followed by a screening of Director Steven Chow's "Kung Fu Hustle,"
winner of 2005 HK Film Awards Best Film.

More Information

Lecture by Stephen Pillet, Visiting Research Scholar from the University of Puerto Rico at Mayaguez.

April 5, 2005, 3:30 p.m., Language House Multipurpose Room

The lecture is entitled: "'Seduire le reveur': Mallarme et la poetique de la reverie" and will be presented in French. This event is sponsored by the Department of French and Italian

Second Symposium On Spanish Language Communities
In The Greater Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Area

Wednesday, March 16, 2005

A one-day Symposium sponsored by the Department of Spanish and Portuguese; the Office of Multi-Ethnic Student Education (OMSE); the School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures; and the Latin American Studies Center

All sessions will be held in the Multipurpose Room, Nyumburu Cultural Center, University of Maryland.

Open To The Public

More Information at the Office of Multi-Ethnic Student Education

Manel Lacorte – ml207@umail.umd.edu
Carolina Rojas Bahr – crbahr@umd.edu

Celebrate National Foreign Language Week

March 7 - 11, 2005

See Schedule of Events

Maryland in Montpellier

June 4 - 26, 2005

French Language and Culture on the Mediterranean. This three-week immersion program combines classroom work, extracurricular excursions, and a family stay. The three principal aims of the experience are to continue language learning in an intensive format, familiarize students with an area of France that has been romanticized in the American psyche, and strengthen students' cross-cultural knowledge and sensibility.
More Information

An American in Nanjing: Rapidly Changing China

March 2, 2005 — 4:00pm to 6:00pm

Colloquium lecture seminar at the Stamp Student Union; Prince George's Room. Presented by the Office of Undergraduate Studies and the University Honors Program.

A Lecture by Dr. Kathryn Mohrman, Executive Director, Hopkins-Nanjing Center Washington Program Office; Former Dean for Undergraduate Studies at the University of Maryland, and former President of Colorado College.

Event sponsored by the Office of Undergraduate Studies, the Office of the Provost, and the University Honors Program.

For more information contact: Lisa Kiely at 301.405.9363

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