Conference announcement: Heritage Languages in America: Second National Conference -- October 18-20, 2002

[Scott McGinnis]

Heritage Languages in America: Second National Conference
Washington, D.C.
October 18-20, 2002
SAVE THE DATE

The Second National Conference on Heritage Languages in America will be
held in the Washington, DC area October 18-20, 2002. The first day of
the conference will be an invitational research symposium at the
University of Maryland, College Park. The final two days will be a
public meeting at the Sheraton Premiere Hotel in Tysons Corner,
Virginia. 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.

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 goal
of the heritage languages initiative, and this conference, is to continue
to make manifest the economic and social benefits to our nation of
preserving the languages spoken by those living in this country.

In addition to 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
conference, there will also be poster sessions. The call for poster session
proposals will be made in the fall, 2002.

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 smcginnis at nflc.org; phone
301-403-1750 x18; fax 301-403-1754). Also check the heritage languages
website, www.cal.org/heritage

"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