The CALL 2017 Conference will be hosted by the Berkeley Language Center, a unit in the Division of Arts and Humanities of the College of Letters and Science at the University of California, Berkeley. Founded in 1994 by Claire Kramsch, the BLC supports the learning and teaching of heritage and foreign languages on the Berkeley campus and, where appropriate, in the University of California system. To meet this overarching goal, the BLC employs numerous strategies to improve teaching effectiveness and enhance the learning environment:
- Provide language instructors with opportunities to learn of new developments in the fields of sociolinguistics, language pedagogy, and second language acquisition theory;
- Support research by language instructors and its dissemination at professional meetings and in professional journals;
- Support faculty production of new language learning materials;
- Provide faculty and students with state-of-the-art learning facilities and equipment;
- Provide faculty and students with access to language learning materials;
- Maintain a library and media archive of materials for language teaching and research.
UC Berkeley is home to 10 departments of foreign language providing instruction in approximately 65 languages each year.