LINGUIST List 12.568

Wed Feb 28 2001

Confs: Heritage Lang in America/ Washington, D.C.

Editor for this issue: Lydia Grebenyova <lydialinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. Scott McGinnis, Heritage Lang in America - Second National Conf/ Washington, D.C.

 Heritage Languages in America: Second National Conference
 Washington, D.C.
 February/March 2002
 
 The Second National Conference on Heritage Languages in America will
 be held in Washington, D.C. in February/March, 2002. The conference is
 being organized by the Center for Applied Linguistics (CAL) and the
 National Foreign Language Center (NFLC), with support from the
 University of Maryland, College Park.
 
 In addition to the general sessions, participants will have
 opportunities to meet with special interest constituencies, based on
 instructional settings, language, and other common concerns. As with
 the First National Conference, there will also be poster sessions. The
 call for poster session proposals will be made in April 2001.
 
 Information about the conference will be disseminated on a regular
 basis through the heritage languages listserv, heritage-list.
 Individuals wishing to subscribe to that list should contact Scott
 McGinnis at the National Foreign Language Center (e-mail
 smcginnisnflc.org; phone 202-637-8881 x28; fax 202-637-9244). Please
 pass on this information to others that you think might be interested
 in the conference.
 
 Building from the foundation of the First National Conference,
 convened in October 1999 in Long Beach, California, the Second
 National Conference will seek to further the aims of the Heritage
 Languages Initiative, a national effort to develop the languages of
 our heritage communities. It will bring together heritage language
 community and school leaders, representatives from pre-K-12 schools
 and colleges and universities, world-renowned researchers, and federal
 and state policymakers. The goals of the Heritage Languages Initiative
 and the conference are to continue to make manifest the economic and
 social benefits to our nation of heritage language preservation, and
 to work toward collective approaches to the development of all
 heritage language programs.
 
 "Competence in languages other than English is desperately needed in
 the United States. Our huge and varied heritage language resources
 have a definite role to play in arriving at such competence."
 Joshua Fishman, Yeshiva and Stanford Universities