Center for Applied Linguistics, Recent Focus

From its founding to the present day, the Center for Applied Linguistics (CAL) has been a source of research, resources, and services to advance the practice of language education, to address issues related to linguistic and cultural diversity, and to inform policy on language-related topics. The improvement of education for language learners of all ages remains a prominent part of CAL's broader mission. Since the late 1960s, when demographic changes brought bilingual education into prominence, CAL has worked to build and disseminate knowledge related to bilingualism and bilingual education in the United States and abroad.

With the passage of the Bilingual Education Act in 1968 and the Supreme Court decision in Lau v. Nichols in 1974, bilingual education as an alternative model for teaching English language learners (ELLs) became more widely utilized. However, as policies were formulated to require bilingual education under certain circumstances, the perception of the program as a remedial compensatory approach also became more prevalent. The emphasis on transitioning from bilingual education to English-only instruction became stronger; bilingual programs were cast as remedial programs with the goal of teaching students English as quickly as possible, since the presence of a language other than English was regarded as a barrier to be overcome. This was assumed to occur when such students were able to move into regular (English-medium) classrooms. The possible goal of developing proficiency in two languages (native language and [Page 121]English) through bilingual education was less often considered by educational decision makers.

Consistent with its mission, CAL's orientation has consistently been toward additive bilingualism. In policy and practice, in education and beyond, the recommended goal is to foster the full development of the native language, whether it be English or another language, as embodied in the goals of two-way immersion education described below. CAL's president from 1978 to 1991, G. Richard Tucker, advanced the notion of a language-competent society in the United States, in which everyone would be highly proficient in English and at least one other language, and led the organization in efforts to advance that goal. One impediment to this work was the growing strength of campaigns to make English the official and sole language of the nation and various states and to eliminate bilingual education. In response to this scenario, CAL joined forces with the National Immigration Forum, the Joint National Committee on Languages (JNCL), and other professional organizations to establish the English Plus Information Clearinghouse (EPIC). EPIC's mandate was to gather and disseminate resources and experiences that could be helpful to groups working against English-only initiatives.

More recently, CAL has worked with partners, particularly the National Foreign Language Center at the University of Maryland, on the Heritage Language Initiative to promote the maintenance and development of heritage languages in the United States (languages other than English used in immigrant and indigenous communities around the country). Bilingual programs in schools and communities are key elements of this movement. In 1999 and 2002, CAL and its partner organizations organized and sponsored two national conferences on heritage languages and produced proceedings from the conferences. They also launched the Alliance for the Advancement of Heritage Languages in order to continue to collect and disseminate resources for the field, including profiles of heritage language programs.

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