Your Name and Title: Joe Anthony Blum, COO. 

     School or Organization Name: Global E:P:N Learning Foundation, Inc. 

     Co-Presenter Name(s): Dr. Duncan Charters, Principia College; Jeremy Aldrich, Foreign Language Coordinator, Harrisonburg City Public Schools; Dr. Robb Kvasnak, Prof of Ed, ESOL & bilingual L2 acquisition; Prof. Derek Roff, UNM, on low-tech/no-tech game ideas; Chuck Mays, AATE, and many others if time permits. 

     Area of the World from Which You Will Present: USA.  

     Language in Which You Will Present: English and Esperanto. 

     Target Audience(s): Elementary school administrators, language teachers, especially those teaching Latin; and, of course, parents of offspring who still are in school . . . at any level. 

    Short Session Description: AATE: Addressing the need to teach all children of the world to use an easy first foreign language.

    Full Session Description: The historians among you may recall that the Assembly of the League of Nations (in 1919-20) addressed this same need and proposed this same solution: (in essence) “Let every child’s first foreign language be the same and let it be one easy enough to learn by all.”

At that time the French decided that this was not necessary because the whole world was already learning French. Of course, that never happened; nor, unfortunately, is English ever going to be an easy-to-learn first foreign language for all. Believe me, I know; I recently taught for a whole year at a 1^st-tier university in China. Their conversational English was more than lacking. Even after eight-plus years of studying it, the majority could not engage in the simplest of conversations. By contrast, those who had learned Esperanto, were totally fluent . . . my boss at Nanjing University being one of the many.

Without doubt, Esperanto is by far the best and most natural first-foreign-language choice. Let us prove this to you once and for all. Join our sessions every day at our assigned time. Our bet is that by the end of November you will still remember ... and be able to use ... what you internalized during your sessions starting November 14^th.

     At http://clozeonline.us/Net-Eo-Quickie.html is a 1-page summary that you might find interesting. Many other and better summaries as well as actual Esperanto lessons are strewn throughout the 150+ million hits you get during a Google search of "esperanto". Try any of them; I bet you'll be impressed. If you are, please share with the forum participants what you found and where you found it. Thanks. Joe

    The Universala Esperanto-Asocio, the global organization, is at http://uea.org/info/angla.html.