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National Heritage Language Resource Center
The National Heritage Language Resource Center is one of 15 Language Resource Centers funded by the U.S. Department of Education.
Over 46 million people in the U.S. speak a language other than English at home (U.S. Census 2000). Individuals exposed to a language spoken at home but educated primarily in English are heritage speakers of the home language.
The Center's mission is to develop effective pedagogical approaches to teaching heritage language learners, first by creating a research base and then by pursuing curriculum design, materials development, and teacher education.
The creation of a national center dedicated to heritage language education attests to the importance of this new field to the nation. California is an ideal venue for the Center since more than 28% of its population five years of age and older is foreign born, and 39% speak a home language other than English.
The Center is a joint project of the UCLA Center for World Languages and the University of California Consortium for Language Learning & Teaching, which have collaborated in developing heritage language resources since 2000.