*Language Skill Attrition

While societies and their languages continually change in response to internal and external circumstances, there are proactive measures that can be implemented to either maintain the particular direction in which that language is moving or to reverse it. Parents and educators can effectuate positive change, individually and collectively. Some conditions that affect language change are the origin of the contact situation; status differential in power and economics; cultural values; demographics; status of the writing system; literacy; dialect diversity; interlingual distance; and mass media. Language planning and policy formation is but one factor impacting the course of a language. In early 1997, officials of the Federated States of Micronesia, part of the United States administered Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands, drafted a notional language policy to promote the development and expansion of the local languages and cultures and to improve the acquisition of English and other international languages. The premise that proactive language change to reverse language loss is a critical part of a larger social change was put forth by Joshua Fishman, a prominent sociolinguist. His eight-stage planning theory to strengthen local languages has been used as a description of, as well as a prescription for, reversing language loss. (Contains 20 references.) (RS) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document