Open Educational Resources for Language Learning
This page provides access to open educational resources (OER) for language learning from a variety of repositories and publishers. The purpose is to showcase content that might be of interest to faculty who are considering adopting OER for use in their classes. This list of content is by no means exhaustive and more resources are available.
Open Textbooks
CITOYEN.NE.S: Conversation en Français by Publication Date: 2021CITOYEN.NE.S is a French language method for the conversation class at the intermediate/ advanced level. Content and activities are built around the concepts of diversity, inclusivity and equity, and engage students to practice French while questioning and participating in the world they live in – to be full citizens whatever their background, their race or their gender identity. As the French spelling of the title indicates, the book embraces écriture inclusive and uses it for instructions and general information for all students.
The book is composed of five chapters covering various themes. None of them provides again basic vocabulary from first- and second-year French courses, like food and body parts. Instead, each chapter builds on students’ previous knowledge and takes them further to develop language and cultural skills.
Each chapter presents a mix of vocabulary lists and activities, authentic documents and others that have been written for the book, based on research. Chapters end with creative activities and one overarching assignment that help students go deeper in topics of interest. Early chapters have two grammar reviews, later chapters only one.
Elementary Mandarin I Textbook by Publication Date: 2020This OER textbook was created with support from the Kapi'olani Community College Open Educational Resources Creation Award (OERCA) program during the 2019-2020 academic year. It is a living document and a work in progress. If you have any feedback or comments on this textbook, please share them with me at polley@hawaii.edu. I would like to thank Sunyeen "Sunny" Pai for her guidance on all things OER, as well as Delmar Larsen and the entire LibreTexts team for their technical support.
German 101 by Publication Date: 2022Features of German 101:
-Short articles and dialogues in each chapter.
-Extra practice for each grammar concept.
-Links to an interactive video series that reviews grammar and vocabulary.
-Comic strips to promote interest, reading, and provide additional visual examples.
-Exercises for both in-class and out of class.
-Links to German music with grammar concepts. A range of songs from the 1980s to the present day is included to help introduce the music culture.
-Links to videos that reteach each grammar concept and pronounce new words.
-Oral Proficiency Interview practice at the end of each chapter with helpful tips.
-Quick upgrades as necessary. As feedback is received, more practice and videos will be added.
Spanish I: Beginning Spanish Language and Culture by ISBN: 9781947112421Publication Date: 2020This peer-reviewed textbook is designed for the true beginner with U.S. college students in mind. It contains themed chapters, which are divided into 8 sections. Each section has its own set of learning objectives, and is further separated into three types of assignments, Para estudiar en casa (with detailed explanations), Para practicar en casa (homework exercises), and Para practicar en clase (paired and group classwork activities). The explanations and primary input are written to be easily comprehensible. The individual exercises are geared towards acquisition of form and function, and the communicative classwork exercises promote interpersonal exchanges between students. The digital copy includes some embedded audio files, and we are developing a website to house many more resources.
Tutt* a Tavola! Vol. 1 by ISBN: 9781945764172Publication Date: 2021This new open educational resource is for Elementary Italian. Our goal is for this book to be comprehensive, user-friendly, inclusive, and cost-effective. Tutt* a tavola has two parts, one for each course, with six chapters in each. Generally speaking, each chapter addresses three to four grammatical topics and includes a vocabulary section related to a cultural theme. The vocabulary is also incorporated into the grammatical presentations and exercises. There is also a short reading in each chapter regarding different aspects of culture and language, to address those questions of diversity and inclusion that are often missing from the textbooks we have used in the past. To include more culture, we have also included multimedia: each chapter begins with a song that is used as a starting point for the inductive presentation of the chapter’s content, and ends with a video (a film clip, an interview, social media) that summarizes the ideas covered.
Tutt* a tavola! Vol. 2 by ISBN: 9781945764189Publication Date: 2021This book has all of the same features as the first volume: an opening song for each chapter (Ascoltiamo!); vocabulary and grammar sections; exercises based on a film clip (Guardiamo!); and more in-depth explorations of cultural topics (Punto culturale). It also introduces a new section, Leggiamo!, in which we begin reading short literary texts in Italian.
Where to Find More
The following are dedicated search engines, repositories, and publishers hosted by organizations dedicated to open and institutions of higher education that can connect users with OER.
- The Mason OER Metafinder (MOM)from George Mason University
- MERLOTfrom California State University Long Beach
- Milne Open Textbooksfrom SUNY Geneseo
- OASISfrom SUNY Geneseo
- OER Commonsfrom ISKME
- Open Textbook Libraryfrom the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
- OpenStaxfrom Rice University
- SkillsCommonsfrom California State University Long Beach
Additional Free and Low-Cost Options
The following free and affordable resource collections lack the wider flexibility of OER, but they offer tremendous value for instructors looking to reduce the textbook cost burden on students.
Open Access (OA) Collections
ACLS Humanities EBook, OA Collection
Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB)
Additional Resources
Center for Open Educational Resources & Language Learning (COERLL)
COERLL's mission is to produce and disseminate Open Educational Resources (OER) for the Internet public (e.g., online language courses, reference grammars, assessment tools, corpora, etc.). The term OER refers to any educational material offered freely for anyone to use, typically involving some permission to re-mix, improve, and redistribute. Thus, COERLL seeks to promote a culture of collaboration that lies at the heart of the Open Education movement. In addition, COERLL aims to reframe foreign language education in terms of bilingualism and/or multilingualism. As such, all COERLL resources strive to represent more accurately language development and performance along dialectal and proficiency continua. To date there are language-learning resources available for 23 languages.
University of Cambridge: The Language Centre Open Courseware
To support language learning the Language Centre is making a range of its language learning resources available as open courseware under the Creative Commons Licence. Open Courseware is available for 11 languages.
