The Bridging Language Acquisition and Language Policy symposium explores intersections between two research fields: language policy and language acquisition, which together inform language acquisition planning. The aim of the symposium is to facilitate dialogue about what researchers in the two fields should know about core issues and findings in each other’s areas in order to strengthen and inform endeavors around language acquisition planning. There is a salient need for such dialog because researchers in these two fields together have the potential to influence how politicians and educators create policies that affect how children and adults learn languages for academic, economic, and other purposes. The underlying premise of the symposium, then, is that language acquisition planning work can be enhanced by sociologists of language and language acquisition researchers mutually raising awareness about the cognitive, sociocultural, and political contexts in which (mother tongue, foreign, and second) language use, acquisition, and teaching take place. By engaging with research work across the two fields, researchers can strengthen their abilities to inform policy stakeholders such as legislators, curriculum planners, educational administrators, teachers, parents, and other community members.

Christine Hélot – University of Strasbourg, France Elizabeth Lanza – University of Oslo, Norway Diane Larsen-Freeman – University of Michigan, USA Virginia C. Mueller Gathercole – Florida International University, USA