Introduction

Americans tend to be naive about foreign languages. Many, especially among the middle class, believe the United States is more heterogeneous with respect to language than it is and, when making choices about language learning, are unaware of the language diversity even among their own community or of many of the opportunities for language learning that exist. The Esperanto League for North America proposes offering "language fairs" to the public in selected communities across the United States. These language fairs would identify schools, language teachers, and populations of different language speakers and invite them to offer a booth where the public could be invited to learn about their language and the language studies available in the community. Public performances would be solicited including music in different languages and readings of important literature in selected languages.

ELNA is a good choice to host language fairs because happens to have a geographically distributed members who are experienced with foreign languages. We have the apparatus necessary to obtain volunteers across many states. We have enough experience with the internet to share ideas, plans, and physical resources in support of this effort nationwide."

Budget

A budget is requested to

Conclusions

We expect the outcomes to include: (1) increased public awareness of and participation in language learning opportunities, beyond those available at the public schools, colleges, and universities; (2) increased public awareness of language diversity in the community; and (3) increased connections among foreign-language teachers and professionals that leads to improved collaboration and communication around issues of foreign-language teaching.

References