Formed in June 1996 after a one-year informal association, GU-FLIRT is a cross-linguistic faculty-graduate student research collaborative that aims to strengthen research, teaching, and learning in foreign languages at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. As its name indicates, GU-FLIRT focuses on classroom second language acquisition. A further defining characteristic is its collaborative nature, between faculty and graduate students. By now more than twenty faculty and an equal number of graduate students belong to the group which hopes to draw on a near-unique strength at the University. That strength resides in Georgetown's faculty with its research interests, its graduate students, and its diverse language programs. This combination provides an exceptional opportunity for work in three areas: