While multimedia language-learning opportunities, including those that are Internet-based, have proliferated in recent years, little or nothing of an instructional nature has been available for the highly advanced (SD) language learner. The “Reading to the Four” (R4) Project, currently being developed for the LangNet website of the National Foreign Language Center (NFLC), is intended to begin filling this void.

The LangNet Initiative

The LangNet Initiative (Brecht and Walton, 1993) is a complex, many-faceted effort that shares expertise and learning resources in order to enhance and democratize access to effective language-learning opportunities. The project discussed in this chapter is a seminal component in that it addresses learning needs that are underserved in almost every setting – those of the most advanced learners of languages critical to the national interest of the USA, for whom pre-existing learning resources are scarce and often of poor quality.

Progressive development and elaboration throughout the 1990s of Brecht and Walton's proposed LangNet model led to a pilot project in four Less Commonly Taught Languages (LCTLs) and development of a first version of a website and database. At that time, NFLC, in collaboration with more than a dozen national foreign language teacher associations, began to identify categories of learners in each of the languages whose needs were underserved, initially focusing on the academic sector. Editorial Boards, appointed by the associations, located high-quality learning resources, which they catalogued in a searchable database.