L2TReC: A Hidden Powerhouse in the College of Humanities

Tucked into a first-floor corner of the Languages and Communications Building is an inconspicuous glass door bearing the name “L2TReC.” One of the College of Humanities’ eight academic centers, L2TReC - shorthand for Second Language Teaching & Research Center - supports research on second language acquisition with an impressive breadth of programming, resources, and events that reach thousands of people in Utah and beyond. From running the #1 Bridge Program in the country for high school students to working with the Department of Defense to train advanced linguists in the military, and housing two of the largest and most comprehensive non-English language learner corpora to running workshops for K-16 instructors and hosting large international conferences, L2TReC is truly an unsung powerhouse of what the humanities contribute to campus and society.

Languages are sometimes an undervalued subject in the busy machinery of the modern university. Though traditionally part of a classical Western civilizations-oriented education, it can be hard to fully capture the value of multi-lingual proficiency amidst the constellation of higher education’s metrics; yet this proficiency is useful to every career and in all walks of life. Beyond the obvious advantage of being able to communicate with a broader group of people, the fundamental benefits of language learning tend to be encouraging characteristics like intercultural competency and sensitivity, developing a more nuanced understanding of one’s native and learned world views, and strengthening perseverance and discipline through the sheer hard work of learning a new language. One only needs to scratch beneath the surface to reveal the tremendous value, both intellectual and practical, that L2TReC and second language learning offers.

Utah’s Bridge Program is the best in the nation, a vibrant partnership between the Utah State Board of Education that oversees K-12 schools, and six universities in the state. L2TReC at the University of Utah coordinates this entire effort, serving 4,000+ Utah students annually while offering a model for collaboration among the state’s institutions for higher learning. Through enrollment in the Bridge program, high school students can continue their dual language immersion education at advanced levels in the 10th through 12th grades, earning college credits along the way. Completing the entire Bridge program during high school puts students just two classes away from finishing a minor in their language. This widespread program has an excellent return on investment for the state and is also preparing Utahns to be expert multilingual cultural ambassadors for significant events like the 2034 Olympics as well as in their everyday lives.

This month, L2TReC is preparing to submit a grant renewal to the Department of Defense to continue their decade-plus service as one of only ten prestigious Language Training Centers (LTCs) in the country. Military intelligence linguists who attend the advanced LTC courses funded by this DOD grant receive world-class instruction from expert language teachers with a multi-cultural orientation.

The LTC at the University of Utah teaches Arabic (Levantine), Chinese (Mandarin), French, Korean, Persian (Farsi), Russian, and Spanish – all languages that have been identified as strategically important for national defense.

Anne Lair, a Professor (Lecturer) of French in the Department of World Languages and Cultures and native French-speaker, has been teaching the three-week intensive immersion LTC courses since the program began at the U over 12 years ago. “I’m very proud to work with the military students. I enjoy it because it’s untraditional,” says Lair. “As faculty, we must remember that people do study the languages for specific purposes, and [with the LTCs] that purpose is to negotiate peace or to help other people who are in difficulty.”

Devin Jenkins, Director of L2TReC, agrees with Lair’s sentiment; “In these courses, we aren’t just teaching the mechanics of a language; we are teaching people multicultural skills. We are helping military service members prepare to interact with the folks they will meet during the course of their duties.”

Service members in the LTC courses share high praise for the faculty’s work, sharing comments about the value of the culturally-grounded assignments and the expertise of professors. One student says that their professor “was amazing at giving us really deep cultural knowledge from her own experiences and research…I was excited to expand my vocab and test my knowledge every day.” Another student reflects, “The professor’s teachings of deep cultural analysis helped tremendously in being able to understand underlying messages in Korean language that would otherwise go unnoticed to a non-native speaker.” The combined depth of insights with pedagogy par excellence give a decided edge to the servicemembers who study with University of Utah faculty at the LTC; 96% of students re-certify their fluency at the same or a higher level after completing a course, and a full 40% of students move up more than one proficiency level.

The reach of L2TReC stretches beyond the classroom; in addition to the academic programs that the team facilitates, they are also stewards of two of the world’s largest non-English multi-language learner corpora on second language acquisition. A corpus is essentially a very, very large dataset for research and analysis. Nicknamed MuSSeL (Multilingual Corpus of Second Language Speech) and CUDLI (Written Corpus of Utah Dual Language Immersion), these corpora offer researchers a finely-textured collection of “tokens,” or instances of spoken and written language from learners for study. One notable benefit to corpus research is that it allows researchers to study a high volume of authentic language produced by actual learners of the language, revealing what really happens during the process of learning.

Yejin Jung, a postdoctoral researcher in L2TReC and an expert in corpus linguistics, is enthusiastic about working with such robust corpora. She offers an example of how this type of research is valuable to K-12 educators in Utah. Researchers in L2TReC have analyzed the MuSSeL and CUDLI corpora, creating a fine-tuned understanding of what linguistic features are representative of a beginning versus intermediate versus advanced speaker. Through an ever-growing network of partnerships, L2TReC shares this data with Utah’s dual language immersion teachers, who use it to refine their classroom practices. “Teachers, they’re busy people! They don’t have time to do all the research to find out what intermediate students can do linguistically, versus what advanced speakers can do,” Jung says, “but this information is very useful for teachers. It allows them to customize their approach to students more accurately based on their level.” The corpora are providing essential information that helps Utah’s teachers and students succeed at learning languages.

The corpora also have tremendous research potential. CUDLI and MuSSeL comprise both spoken and written language gathered from learners in third through twelfth grades across the state since 2018, and the dataset is growing all the time as new samples are added. This allows a unique longitudinal window into not just one, but multiple languages – Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, and Mandarin Chinese. The data is strictly for research and education purposes, but researchers, college or graduate students, education administrators, and even enterprising K-12 students can apply for access to the corpora for study. One thing on Jung’s agenda for 2025? Nurturing more scholar-practitioner partnerships to help get this valuable data into the hands of people who can put it to good use.

Whether they are teaching military linguists, facilitating corpus linguistics research, or coordinating advanced language immersion learning in K-12 classrooms, L2TReC's dedicated team is punching far above their weight. The center is truly a hidden powerhouse, exemplifying how the humanities can serve vital national interests, deepen partnerships to better serve our K-12 students at home in Utah, and simultaneously advance scholarly understanding of second language acquisition. As we become increasingly connected with our fellow humans across the globe, L2TReC's work in educating multilingual and culturally aware individuals – whether they are students, researchers, or military personnel– becomes increasingly essential. The center attests to the College of Humanities’ leadership in language education and research, proving that language learning serves both profound and practical human needs.