The Less Commonly Taught Languages (LCTL) Program is housed in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign and offers instruction in Arabic, Hindi, Persian, Swahili, Turkish, and Wolof and supports communicative, proficiency-based language teaching as a way for our students to obtain the most from their language-learning experiences. We emphasize the acquisition of grammar and vocabulary as necessary tools for spontaneous, creative, and meaningful communication, as well as a part of the four crucial skills: reading, writing, listening and speaking. In the classroom, we encourage conversation, small-group problem solving, and other tasks that simulate real-life uses of language. Outside the classroom, we offer extra-curricular activities like conversation tables, films series, social hours, potlucks, and picnics in order to practice the target language by learning about the culture where it is spoken.