Fulbright Program: U.S. Applicant Podcast
Transcript For: Language study grants available
July 18, 2007
Tony and Valerie interview Joe Livingston. Joe discusses the Critical Language Enhancement Award available to Fulbright grantees to study Arabic, Azeri, Bengla/Bengali, Mandarin, Farsi, Gujarati, Hindi, Marathi, Pashto, Tajik, Urdu, Uzbek, Korean, Russian, and Turkish. Find out what the program is, who's eligible, and how to apply.
Valerie: Hi and welcome back to the Fulbright podcast I am your host Valerie Hymas, senior program manager for Europe, Eurasia, and Central Asia with… Tony: Tony Claudino, Director of Fulbright Student Outreach Valerie: Today we are going to be interviewing a colleague by the name of Joe Livingston, who is responsible for the Critical Language Enhancement Awards, as well as the Central America and Caribbean U.S. Student Fulbright Program. So let’s get started - Joe welcome. Joe: Thank you. Pleasure to be here. Tony: Welcome, Joe. Valerie: Wonderful to have you. So, Joe, can you give us a little background about the Critical Language Enhancement Award Program? Tony: There is a lot of confusion here. Valerie: Everybody asks about this. Joe: It’s a little bit confusing. There are a lot of details. The Critical Language Enhancement Awards started last year, we are in our second year of grant administration. The idea was to provide an opportunity for U.S. students who are receiving a Fulbright award, to have an opportunity to enhance their language ability through an additional 3-6 months of language study, prior to their Fulbright award. Valerie: Prior to their Fulbright award, so not during or after? Joe: It’s in almost all cases prior to the Fulbright except for cases when someone is doing language study as the sole purpose of their Fulbright project itself. In those few cases, the person must do their language study after the Fulbright has ended. Valerie: So you can actually apply for Fulbright to focus on language acquisition, what countries, or what languages would be included in an opportunity like that? Joe: The only countries I have dealt with where that has come into play are Egypt and Syria. But you want to check with the individual program managers for those regions to make sure that it is a viable option. Tony: And you can’t apply for the Critical Language Enhancement Award by itself, you still have to apply for Fulbright. That’s a lot of questions we get. Are there two different grants, do they only apply for the language study, or do they have to apply for Fulbright as well? Joe: They are two different grants, but they are completely connected to each other. So in order to be eligible to be a recipient of the Critical Language Enhancement Award, one must receive a U.S. Student Fulbright award to a country. You do apply at the very same time, but if you are not recommended for the Fulbright, then you are also immediately not qualified to receive the language award. Tony: Joe, talk to us about the number of awards for this year available, and the number of awards for next year. Joe: Well, this year the target is to have up to 150 language awards and we should be coming pretty close to that. For next year the budget isn’t quite set yet, but we can assume that there will probably be a number of awards close to that. Valerie: About 150 then. Joe: Not necessarily. Tony: It was a big jump though, the first year, how many awards were in the first year? Joe: The first year there were around 35 awards, and it was more of a pilot program. This is part of the National Security Language Initiative. So really to make this a major part of the Fulbright award the State Department has allocated funds for up to 150 grants per year. Tony: But the National Security Language Initiative involves more than just Fulbright. Can you talk a little more about the initiative? Joe: NSLI is a big umbrella encompassing funding that has been allocated in all departments. There are many different individual programs that have been either created out of NSLI initiative or have been augmented as a result of that funding. Tony: Like the summer institutes? Joe: Exactly, the summer institutes, which are also designed for the study of critical language but are entirely separate to the awards that we are discussing here. Those were really created as a result of NSLI. Tony: Where can people find more information on the summer institute program? Valerie: I am sure it is something you can google, just google that and get all of the information. Tony: It’s called caorc.org [www.clscholarhip.org]. Valerie: So let’s get back to the Critical Language Enhancement Awards, Joe, how do candidates craft successful proposals that would increase their chances of being offered this unique pre-grant opportunity. Joe: In the application, when applying for a Fulbright, it is important to fully explain one’s past commitment to the language. We are looking for applicants who have at least one year or its equivalence of study in the particular language. They should also document exactly how the language applies to their experience in the Fulbright country, how it’s related to their project, the need for that language, how they hope to use those language skills specifically for their work. They should also talk about how they hope to use that language as part of their future endeavors, whether that fits into their future career goals or future academic plans, because really NSLI as an initiative and the Critical Language Enhancement Awards specifically, were designed to foster a long-term training in that language. Tony: And there is language testing involved, can you talk a little bit about language testing? Joe: The language testing is really just for evaluation and to test the success of the program in meeting those goals. It happens after one has become a grantee and usually within a month prior to departure for the country, a phone test is taken from the United States where the applicant’s ability to comprehend and speak is tested. After the language grant has ended while the individual is still overseas, they will take an additional phone test to see how their performance has improved as a result of their training. Tony: Let’s go over the language overviews. I wanted to take about some of the languages involved… Joe: We have quite a few languages that are available: Arabic, Russian, Turkish Farsi, Korean, Chinese (Chinese is for Mandarin only, so we can’t accept applicants who are looking to study Cantonese or other dialects) also Bangla or Bengali, Azeri, all the Indic languages (including Gujarati, Hindi, Marathi, Pashto, Tajik, Urdu, Punjabi, and also Uzbek Valerie: Wow, that’s a lot. Joe: Yeah you have quite a few choices but you can’t consider any languages that are not part of that list unfortunately. So none of the European or Romance languages. Valerie: Talk about at what level the candidates need to be. Can they be at beginner level? Do they have to have already studied the language to a certain degree? Tony: Because some of these languages you are not going to have at the university. Joe: Obviously, there is a big difference between the opportunities available to study say, Arabic or Mandarin in the U.S. versus a language like Azeri or Punjabi. One thing you can do is, if you have any questions and you are not really able to ascertain what level you are at or whether you have the qualifications, you may want to discuss that with me directly. You can reach me at jlivingston@iie.org or by phone at 212-984-5366. Generally we are looking for a year or its equivalent In terms of meeting that one year or its equivalency, options include attending one of those CAORC summer institutes that we were talking about, or doing any kind of eight or 10 week summer course that is intensive and designed to meet a year’s worth of curriculum. So we are not saying someone has to be in class every day for a year period of time. Some people have intermediate level skills as a result of growing up with the language to some extent, or spending time in the country, or from study abroad. If that can be evaluated through the intermediate level on the language evaluation form then we can also accept that. Another thing that a candidate could do, particularly if they are applying to one of the languages that we were mentioning that are very hard to study, would be to create a language plan within the Fulbright application itself. So let’s say you are applying for Azeri, and you say that maybe you have just started studying the language, but you plan to hire an Azeri tutor for the year and develop that intermediate level or at least the normal amount of course work that you would have at the intermediate level by the time you would depart for your language award, then we can also take that into consideration. Tony: How many applicants have done that, this language plan that you are talking about? Joe: At this point, I have seen very few applicants do that. I think that is mostly because they might not have been aware that it was something that they could take advantage of. Now I do caution that that’s something that probably is best employed for people who are proposing language plans for languages that are hard to study in the U.S. Like Tajik, like Uzbek, if you are studying Mandarin, Russian, or Arabic, languages like this, then there are so many opportunities right now to study them in the U.S., it is best if you at least have some study behind you. Tony: So you don’t want them to avoid the language classes at their institutions. If their institution if offering Russian then they should really take Russian classes at campus rather than doing an independent… Joe: And depending on how competitive the award is we might look at those factors. So if someone had the opportunity to study a particular language at their university and they didn’t take advantage of that, that might make someone less competitive. Valerie: Joe, one other question I wanted to ask, what countries actually qualify for, we know what languages work, but let’s say we have a candidate who wants to work with the Turkish population in Germany, can he or she apply for Turkish language skills, but have their actual Fulbright grant based in Germany? Can we cross over countries? Is that sort of thing going to be allowed? Joe: For this coming year, the rules have changed so someone must be applying for a language that’s spoken in the country where they are doing their Fulbright as well. So someone studying Turkish would have to be doing a grant in Turkey. Now there are certain cases where an applicant applies to a country where there just aren’t really viable places to study the language. This year we have someone applying to Bahrain, and there just isn’t a suitable option in Bahrain, so that person might be sent to a different country for their Arabic study. But the important part of that is, Bahrain is an Arabic-speaking country and the language is going to be employed for the use of the project there. In general, all applicants should, when outlining their plans for study, propose an institution in the country where they are planning to do their Fulbright. Valerie: Very good point, host affiliation, yes I am glad you brought that up. Joe: We think it is very important for applicants to learn the language in the country where they are going to be spending their time. That sometimes relates to the particular dialect that they might be using in the country. Also because it really helps overcome a lot of the cultural adjustment that is just a normal part of the Fulbright process. Tony: But this host affiliation has nothing to do with their Fulbright project, right? Valerie: Right, that would be different. This is more like their language institution. Tony: So they could do more than one affiliation, in their application they do an affiliation for their project and an affiliation for the language study. Can you talk about when they do the language study, in relation to the grant, and how long the duration? Joe: Sure. The language study is done prior to the Fulbright award, except for cases where the Fulbright’s project is specifically focusing on language itself. Minimum duration of the award is 90 days and the maximum duration is six months. It is important that the candidate outline specifically how long they propose to be doing language study. It will make things much easier if we are actually deciding how long the duration of the award will be and which institution is appropriate. We allow a candidate in the application to specify which institution is best suited to their language needs. Now if they are unable to find a particular institution and they just note that anything is acceptable, we will work with the [U.S.] embassies and the receiving countries to find a suitable place. It is important that if they have a preference they note this in the application. Tony: For this award, a student could basically go 15 months on a Fulbright grant, right, because they will go six months for language training? Is there any language training after they are a Fulbright? Joe: As far as we can tell right now, as the rules are currently, the language training will all take place prior to the Fulbright award and can’t be split up between two different segments. One thing that is important is that the grants will be in total, sometimes 12 months if you are doing a three-month language award, or 15 months if you are doing a six-month language award. There is not traditionally any break between those awards so a candidate should think carefully about that duration of time, and also shouldn’t make any assumptions about when that language award and whole experience will begin. For certain countries the language award will begin in early July, for other countries that language award will begin in September. The Fulbright project itself, its normal start dates are pushed forward, the Fulbright always maintains its normal duration. So if you have any questions regarding when the language award is going to start for, say, Morocco versus China you really should speak with me first. Tony: Last question, what are some hot languages to study right now? Where do you want to see more? Joe: We currently have a lot of applicants in some of the languages you would expect like Arabic, Turkish, Chinese, Russian. It would be good to have people who are looking at Farsi and Tajik, now that Tajikistan is an acceptable place to apply for a U.S. Student Fulbright award. This year we had very few applicants for those languages. For the Indic languages we had very few applicants, especially for languages outside of Hindi. Valerie: Well, thanks, Joe. We really appreciate your time explaining and talking about the Critical Language Enhancement Awards, a unique opportunity and I am sure that a lot of people will be really excited about it. Tony: And will be emailing you Joe: Absolutely, I know there are a lot of questions and I welcome them. Tony: Great, thank you!
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