Resources

Through our collaboration with the Center for Latin American Studies (CLAS), another Title VI Center, LARC was first  able to develop an online Culture Box for Mixtec, based on Lynn Eddy-Zambrano original idea for hands-on exploration of authentic cultural artifacts stored in a box.  The authentic culture box that was transported from classroom to classroom, has been made virtual online with digital audio, images and video of the authentic artifacts. Following the example of the Mixtec Culture Box, and another was produced for Persian with hopes to add more for other cultures.

Culture Box Links
Mixtec Culture Box

Persian Culture Box

Mixtec Language & Culture

Mixtec is one of eight branches of the Otomanguean language family, a family accounting for about a third of all the indigenous language speakers in Mexico today. It is spoken primarily in the state of Oaxaca, but there are significant groups of Mixtec speakers in the states of Puebla and Guerrero. In addition, migration has had the effect of creating significant Mixtec communities in the U.S., primarily in California. The Mixtec Language & Culture project is an online trilingual website that uses Spanish and English to present the cultural differences of greeting people in Mixtec. It offers some basic grammar, translations and transcriptions for these video resources.
Links: http://larc.sdsu.edu/mixtec/language/index.html

Human Rights in Latin America

The Human Rights (HR) project focuses on understanding human rights issues in Latin America by examining authentic Spanish language resources. Interactive exploration enables learners to establish their perspective from the site rich resource library, and share their opinions. These HR resources gain student interest in learning more (and thus, in reading more) about the critical and timely subject of human rights in the target language, and from multiple perspectives, and at multiple levels of linguistic proficiency.
Links:

• Los Desaparecidos Site
• Los Derechos Humanos en México
• Human Rights in Latin America Site
  
• Interviews with  former guerilla leader, Cesar Montes
• Interviews about 1970 political situation in Chile with Elizabeth Lira
  

LARC Language Labs

The LARC Language Labs merge the resources of the Title VI National Language Resource Center and the College of Arts and Letters for foreign language students at SDSU. Two labs support high quality digital recording capabilities, an extensive collection of  language learning resources,  a set of tools for assessment, and lab tech training and support for teaching language through technology, which are but a few of the products of this convergence of resources.

LARC Lab Materials

LARC works in collaboration with SDSU departments of language, literature and linguistics by hosting and providing language and culture resources to  students enrolled in these subject areas. LARC Materials include course texts, graphics, photos,  audio and  video that are posted online by language. Most of these course materials are intended just for SDSU language students. As faculty give us permission to use their materials, we post or link to them in related resource sites.  The LARC Materials includes materials for Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Hebrew, Japanese, Korean, Mixtec, Persian, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish.

LARC Materials Link: http://larcmaterials.sdsu.edu

The LARC lab also maintains and supports site licenses for  language learning software which faculty are including in their syllabus and teaching.  Students build vocabulary and practice speaking by recording audio at their computer workstations, and then save it on a LARC  server for instructor review. Transparent Language BYKI electronic flashcards provides access to hundreds of card sets online and allows you to create your own sets for students. Auralog Tell Me More software with 35 activities at all levels, six with speech recognition, and a variety of cultural texts, is available online in Western European languages and on CD in Chinese, Japanese and Arabic. Eurotalk, by the company of the same name, is available on every computer in LARC for vocabulary building and oral skills practice in 17 languages.

Los Desaparecidos

LARC created a website for Argentina historical Los Desaparecidos or The Disappeared in conjunction with the Human Right in Latin Americas site. Professor Nora Strejilevich, one of the few disappeared to escape death, has made testimonial literature of these times her main focus of research. This site explores testimonials via authentic video interviews and related literature.

Links: http://larc.sdsu.edu/dirtywar

LARC/SDSU On Youtube

The attraction of YouTube Internet reputation has led LARC to create an account to post language video resources from their Digital Media Archive and other projects. These videos are tagged with foreign language metadata and are made accessible with links to LARC project sites and related resources. YouTube also provides informative data as to the number of viewers attracted and where they come from.

Links: http://youtube.com/larcsdsu