The recent forces of globalization are increasingly transforming the world into a village through the expanding interchange of peoples, goods and services. Some of the major engines behind this trend of development are the international economies and recent advances in technology. As American companies are seeking to reach local markets of the world through their own languages, Microsoft is busy developing software in a select number of African languages. At the same time, dynamics in Africa have triggered an unprecedented transnational migration of Africans to other parts of the world and especially to the USA, coming not only from the “traditional” class of the educated, but also from the ranks of the working class and petty-traders, forming new enclaves of African immigrants in several major cities of the new home-away-from-home, bringing with them not only their skills, but also their cultures and languages. Even the USA census has now had to take into account these new African language formations in the space of USA. This convergence of factors has posed new challenges and created new prospects and opportunities for the study and future of African languages in the American academy from the point of view of content and language pedagogies, motives of African language learning, the integration of technology in African language instruction, funding for sustainability, the programming of study abroad projects and the (re)conceptualization of immersion programs. It also provides an excellent context for the interrogation of theories of language acquisition and bilingual/multilingual education in specific relation to the presence of African immigrant children in K-12 schools, and African immigrants participating in adult literacy programs. It is this range of topics that will constitute the focus of this conference.

Specific conference topics will include the following:

1. Language acquisition theory and heritage learners
2. African languages in the USA in the context of recent US higher educational policies
3. Microsoft in African languages and its implications for African language instruction in the USA
4. The Internet, the World Wide Web and African language instruction
5. African immigrant communities in the USA as resources in African languages study
6. The growing constituency of African heritage students: pedagogical implications
7. African languages and the transition to English in K-12 schools
8. African languages for special purposes (law, business, public health, international relation/diplomacy, etc)
9. African languages and translation studies
10. Literature in the African language classroom
11. Learner and Learning Strategies
12. Advanced Proficiency Development and Assessment
14. Curriculum Assessment
15. Language Learning in immersion context, locally and abroad
16. New challenges and new prospects in the funding of African language instruction
17. New challenges and new prospects in the production of instructional materials
18. Study abroad programs -- yesterday, today and tomorrow
19. Distance education and classroom learning: Implications for African language learning

***Of course, other traditional topics in phonology, syntax, morphology, semantics and pragmatics as they relate to language acquisition and African language learning and teaching are also very welcomed.

Individual abstracts and panel proposals should be sent electronically to the following e address:

ALTA_2006@email.rutgers.edu
Ousseina Alidou
Rutgers University
Dept. of Africana Studies
112 Beck Hall
Piscataway, New Jersey 08854

The deadline for proposal and abstract submission is December 30, 2005.