Blurb:

Seventeenth-century arrivals in America learned to communicate in native American languages as a matter of survival. However, later settlers built schools that taught languages for academic purposes. Language study in eighteenth-century America meant learning to read and write Ancient Greek or Latin, or both. With the start of World War Two and later with the Cold War, as the US government was in need of foreign language specialists, more people learned more languages faster and more fluently. In the twenty-first century, communication-first paradigm is used a strategy for improving language programs.