Sunday, October 12, 2008

Oct 18 2008 - Renowned Language Expert to Address English-Only Issues

Noted language-policy expert James Crawford will speak at Oregon State University on Saturday, Oct. 18, as part of the three-day annual meeting of the Linguistic Association of the Southwest.

Crawford will speak on the subject, "English Plus or English Only: Which Way for Language Policy in the United States?"

Crawford is president of the Institute for Language and Education Policy, a nonprofit organization that promotes research-based advocacy for English and heritage-language learners. Over the past 20 years, he has specialized in these issues as an independent writer, lecturer and consultant.

His lecture begins at 7:30 p.m. at the Austin Auditorium of LaSells Stewart Center, 875 S.W. 26th St., Corvallis. The event is free and open to the public.

According to Crawford, his talk will touch on broad issues surrounding bilingualism in the U.S. – "restrictionist" versus "inclusionist" responses – as well as specific issues raised by Oregon's Measure 58 and impacts of English-only laws in states like California and Arizona.

Measure 58 would create a new Oregon state statute to require "English immersion" in Oregon's public schools. The ballot measure would require, for instance, that non-English speaking students entering kindergarten through the fourth grade could not take English immersion classes for more than a year and a half. After that, they would take exclusively English-only classes.

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