Center for Applied Linguistics, Initial Focus

Early Years

The founding director of CAL, Charles Ferguson, was an intellectual leader in the emerging field of sociolin-guistics. The early years of the center focused heavily on the teaching of foreign languages in the United [Page 118]States and the teaching of English internationally, as well as on language planning issues in the use of vernacular languages for education in newly decolonized nations. The civil rights movement of the late 1960s saw CAL take the lead in research on African American Vernacular English and on the significance of language differences in schools undergoing desegregation.

CAL for many years sponsored the National Advisory Council on Teaching English as a Foreign Language (NACTEFL), a group of leaders in the field who met annually to hear reports on the work of various federal agencies involved in the teaching of English and to make policy recommendations in response. A NACTEFL recommendation for a survey of English teaching in the government's Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) schools led to a planning conference for the first Navajo bilingual kindergarten program in BIA schools beginning in 1969. Ameasure of the impact of CAL on BIA language education policy is that of 28 recommendations made to the bureau from 1967 to 1969, 75% were adopted.

An early contribution to bilingual education came through a commission from the ERIC Clearinghouse for Languages and Linguistics, then housed at CAL, to Muriel R. Saville and Rudolph C. Troike to prepare a Handbook for Bilingual Education (1971), which became a popular text in bilingual teacher preparation programs. With the appointment of Troike as director/ president of CAL in 1972, bilingual education and minority language issues in the United States became CAL's top priority and remained so throughout his tenure to 1977. During this period, a number of new staff members were added to CAL to head up the initiatives in bilingual education. In addition, the Board of Trustees was diversified to include members familiar with minority language issues. These new members included prominent professionals in that field: Charlotte Brooks. Courtney Cazden, Arnulfo Oliveira, Christina Bratt Paulston, Dillon Platero, and Oscar García-Rivera.

Setting Guidelines for Bilingual Education

When Senator Edward Kennedy's (D-Mass.) staff began planning for the 1974 reauthorization of the Bilingual Education Act of 1968 (Title VII, Elementary and Secondary Education Act), CAL brought together a group of leaders in the field to define a set of priorities for needed changes and new initiatives, most of which were adopted in the final legislation. In particular, these included funding for teacher training programs and PhD programs, and support for research and information dissemination activities.

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