Second and Foreign Language Education

Abstract

As global economics, cultures, and languages become more pervasive, the smaller populations find themselves losing their own languages, livelihoods, and cultural practices. But there is a large and growing counterforce movement of language revitalization. Much of this movement has been focused on teaching children their heritage language in schools. Bilingual education and immersion schooling are discussed. However, the middle generations – professional-age and parent-age adults – do not speak their heritage tongues either, and it is therefore essential to have a strong adult education program in order to train language teachers for the schools and parents to reinforce the language at home. The Master-Apprentice Language Learning Program has been designed to close this age gap.