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Language teaching in the United States has always occurred in two distinctly different environments, as indeed it has in many other countries. In the 20th century in this country, most scholarly attention has been focused on only one of these environments while the other has received scant attention though it has continued to exist. The environment receiving most attention has been the the formal academic environment--that language teaching which occurs in schools, particularly in public schools at the elementary and secondary levels and in accredited institutions at the tertiary level. But there has also been a strong tradition of language teaching in other settings; language has been taught in special school-like environments outside of regular school hours and regular school curricula by ethnic communities and religious organizations, and it has also been taught informally by community groups in less-formal adult-education structures and even in industrial settings. As the result of recent influxes of refugees, particularly from Southeast Asia, a variety of long-standing informal mechanisms have begun to receive greater attention. This article will consider both kinds of language teaching--those in academic settings and those in the less-formal settings.

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