National Conferences

In a sea of competitors in your niche, how will your company find a foothold? Your number one marketing goal is to make your company known. Prospective customers cannot buy from you if they do not know you and what you have to offer. “Branding” your company means to establish and project a consistent, dynamic, powerful and memorable message about who your company is and what your company does.

Here are 7 key steps to branding your company:

1. Write or refine your company’s mission statement. Explain why your company exists. A mission statement usually involves two parts. The first states a problem your prospective customer has that needs a solution. The second explains how your company can provide the solution — and do it better than anyone else. Express succinctly and accurately your company’s mission and you will have established the “theme” for your brand. Do this step first and it will make the rest of the branding process flow smoothly.

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Center for Applied Linguistics (CAL) has worked with partners, particularly the National Foreign Language Center at the University of Maryland, on the Heritage Language Initiative to promote the maintenance and development of heritage languages in the United States (languages other than English used in immigrant and indigenous communities around the country). Bilingual programs in schools and communities are key elements of this movement. In 1999 and 2002, CAL and its partner organizations organized and sponsored two national conferences on heritage languages and produced proceedings from the conferences.

They also launched the Alliance for the Advancement of Heritage Languages in order to continue to collect and disseminate resources for the field, including profiles of heritage language programs. Bilingual education is also relevant beyond the borders of the United States, and the Center has sought to contribute positively to the improvement of the education of second languages worldwide. In 2004, for example, the Center published a report titled “Expanding Educational Opportunity in Linguistically Diverse Societies,” which profiled programs in 13 countries where a key element was instruction in the mother tongue.

The current global Education for All effort has not yet focused on language, despite the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) argument for the use of the mother tongue in primary instruction, and CAL’s efforts are directed at informing international and national educational institutions about this issue. Throughout the Center’s history, the education of ethnic and linguistic minorities has been a constant concern.

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