The mission of the Language Documentation Training Center (LDTC) is to train native speakers of underdocumented languages to work on the documentation of their languages. The students in the LDTC understand that native speakers are well suited to undertake documentation work, but very few have either the necessary training or the financial resources to obtain such training. The purpose of the LDTC is to equip native speakers with basic skills in documentation, to offer them a public domain for making information about their languages accessible, to provide continued support in language analysis, and in the development of educational and literacy materials, and to inspire native speakers to become language advocates in their own communities.

The LDTC will accomplish these goals by providing targeted training in the basics of linguistics, familiarizing participants with useful software tools for documentation, and establishing a mentor relationship with graduate students in the Linguistics Department for continued learning and language analysis.