Countries may include: Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, China, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Japan, Jordan, Morocco, Oman,
Russia, South Korea, Tajikistan, Tunisia, Turkey, or others where the target languages are spoken.

A program of United States Department of State, Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, the Critical Language Scholarship (CLS) Program will offer intensive summer language institutes overseas in thirteen critical need foreign languages for summer 2010. The 2010 CLS Program application deadline was December 18, 2009. The selection process will be administered by the Council of American Overseas Research Centers (CAORC) with awards approved by the U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. The CLS Program will be administered by CAORC and the American Councils for International Education.

Critical Language Scholarships (CLS) institutes provide fully-funded group-based intensive language instruction and structured cultural enrichment experiences for seven to ten weeks for U.S. citizen undergraduate, Master’s and Ph.D. students. Levels available for each language are as follows:

• Arabic, Persian: Advanced beginning, intermediate or advanced level;
• Azerbaijani, Bangla/Bengali, Hindi, Indonesian, Korean, Punjabi, Turkish, Urdu: Beginning, intermediate or advanced level;
• Chinese, Japanese, Russian: Intermediate or advanced level.

The CLS Program is part of a U.S. government interagency effort to expand dramatically the number of Americans studying and mastering critical need foreign languages. Students of diverse disciplines and majors are encouraged to apply. Participants are expected to continue their language study beyond the scholarship period, and later apply their critical language skills in their future professional careers. Please visit 2010 CLS Institutes for more information.

Please see Information for Applicants for eligibility requirements, grant benefits, and language levels and pre-requisites.

The CLS Program application deadline has now passed.