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Anchor Lead: The mastery of foreign languages has never been one of this country’s strengths. Only 9 percent of Americans are fluent in a second language, compared with more than 50 percent of Europeans. There is a campaign now underway to make foreign language learning more mainstream. Congress has declared 2005 the year of language learning.

In the first segment of a three part series on foreign languages in schools, Deborah Wang spoke with Michele Anciaux Aoki, a long-time foreign language advocate and a leader of the Washington State Coalition for International Education.

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