ERIC Number: ED616293
Record Type: Non-Journal
Publication Date: 2021-Oct
Pages: 2
Abstractor: ERIC
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: N/A
EISSN: N/A
English Learners and Critical Languages
Office of English Language Acquisition, US Department of Education
The U.S. government encourages the study of critical languages spoken in geographic areas of strategic importance to U.S. national security and the global economy through a variety of discretionary grants and scholarship programs. U.S. students are traditionally underrepresented in the study of these languages; however, many of the nation's K-12 English learners (ELs) enter U.S. schools already speaking these critical languages as home or heritage languages. A federally funded consensus study reported that without school or home support, attrition of these home languages can occur as soon as 12 months after exposure to the dominant language. This fact sheet provides the following data on ELs and critical languages over the 2018-2019 school year: (1) Number and Percentage of Identified English Learners Who Spoke a Critical Language: School Year 2018-19; (2) Percentage of English Learners Who Spoke a Critical Language: School Year 2018-19; (3) Percentage of Identified English Learners Who Spoke the Top Four Critical Languages: School Years 2010-11 to 2018-19; and (4) States with the Highest Percentage of Identified English Learners Who Spoke a Critical Language: School Year 2018-19.
Descriptors: English Language Learners, National Security, Strategic Planning, Scholarships, Grants, Second Language Learning, Second Language Instruction, Kindergarten, Elementary Secondary Education, Native Language, Heritage Education, Language Maintenance, Language Skill Attrition, Native Language Instruction, Language Dominance, Bilingualism, Multilingualism, Identification, Semitic Languages, Afro Asiatic Languages, Chinese, Vietnamese, Russian, Portuguese, School Districts, Student Characteristics, Trend Analysis, Language Proficiency, Bilingual Education Programs, Code Switching (Language), Teaching Methods, African Languages, Sino Tibetan Languages, Indo European Languages, Japanese, Haitians, Creoles, Korean, Tagalog, Urdu
Office of English Language Acquisition, US Department of Education. 400 Maryland Ave SW, Washington, DC 20202. Tel: 877-424-1616; e-mail: edpubs@edpubs.ed.gov; Web site: https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/oela/index.html
Publication Type: Reports - Descriptive; Numerical/Quantitative Data
Education Level: Early Childhood Education; Elementary Education; Kindergarten; Primary Education; Elementary Secondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: Office of English Language Acquisition (OELA) (ED)
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A