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In the interest of speed and timeliness, this story is fed directly from the Associated Press newswire and may contain spelling or grammatical errors.
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Russell Campbell, champion of innovative language programs, dies
Sunday April 20, 2003
LOS ANGELES (AP) UCLA professor Russell Campbell, who
spearheaded English language training programs throughout China and
championed language immersion programs at home, has died. He was
75.
Campbell died March 30 of colon cancer at his home in Los
Angeles, the Los Angeles times reported.
Campbell brought English language instruction to countries such
as Egypt and China, teaching hundreds of educators, scientists,
scholars and business leaders during the 1970s and 1980s.
In the United States, he championed the concept of teaching
elementary school students Spanish by having them take all their
classes in the language.
In 1971 he persuaded the Culver City Unified School District
near Los Angeles to offer one of the first full Spanish language
immersion programs in the country. The nationally distinguished
program, now in its 32nd year, inspired scores of schools around
the country to embrace the immersion approach.
Culver City's program ``was a real pioneering effort,'' said
Andrew D. Cohen, a University of Minnesota professor who directs a
national consortium of language resource centers. ``Russ was very
concerned about promoting English abroad. But he also was a
promoter of programs that would get Americans comfortably fluent in
other languages.''
Campbell was born in Iowa and grew up in Kansas City, Mo. After
graduating from Kansas State Teachers College, he developed English
training programs for the United States Information Agency in
Argentina and Columbia.
Campbell joined the UCLA faculty in 1964 and became the first
chairman of the Teaching English as a Second Language Department,
introducing courses in Hindi, Thai, Tagalog and Vietnamese.
He was instrumental in the creation in 1990 of one of the first
two-way Korean and English immersion program in the Los Angeles
Unified School District. The program teaches Korean and English to
a mix of students, including many who grew up hearing Korean but
could not read or write it and others whose home languages were
English, Spanish or Tagalog.
Campbell is survived by his wife Marjorie, son Roger, daughter
Paula Wainright and two grandchildren.
(Copyright 2003 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
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