CHARTING A COURSE FOR CHANGE - BASIC GRANT PROPOSAL WRITING FOR FOREIGN-LANGUAGE TEACHERS

Foreign language teachers who face decreasing budgets can acquire need ed materials and develop new units or programs through small grant fun ding. It is believed that all teachers have the capability of obtainin g grants because of their pedagogical knowledge of lesson-planning whi ch has strong similarities with grant proposal writing. Pairing that k nowledge with the ability to locate an appropriate source is key to su ccessful grant writing and enables teachers to effectuate the organizi ng of a proposal. This article suggests seven steps for novice proposa l writers, provides the names of agencies and addresses of potential f unding sources, presents examples of successful proposals written by f oreign language teachers, and encourages all teachers who want new mat erials, equipment, programs, resources, and study or travel funds to m ake the necessary application to obtain them.