The Second National Conference on Heritage Languages in America will be held in the Washington, D.C. area October 18-20, 2002. The first day of the conference will be an invitational research symposium at the University of Maryland, College Park. The final two days will be a public meeting at the Sheraton Premiere Hotel in Tysons Corner, Virginia. The conference is being organized by the Center for Applied Linguistics (CAL) and the National Foreign Language Center (NFLC), with support from the University of Maryland, College Park. Building from the foundation of the First National Conference, convened in October, 1999, in Long Beach, California, the Second National Conference will seek to further the aims of the Heritage Languages Initiative, a national effort to develop the languages of our heritage communities. It will bring together heritage language community and school leaders, representatives from pre-K-12 schools and colleges and universities, world-renowned researchers, and federal and state policymakers. The goal of the heritage languages initiative, and this conference, is to continue to make manifest the economic and social benefits to our nation of preserving the languages spoken by those living in this country. In addition to general sessions, participants will have opportunities to meet with special interest constituencies, based on instructional settings, language, and other common concerns. As with the first conference, there will also be poster sessions. The call for poster session proposals will be made in the spring of 2002. Information about the conference will be disseminated on a regular basis through the heritage languages listserv, heritage-list. Individuals wishing to subscribe to that list should contact Scott McGinnis at the National Foreign Language Center:

smcginnis@nflc.org. Tel.: 301/403-1750 x18. Fax: 301-403-1754. www.cal.org/heritage