To gain a better idea of what other countries were doing in foreign language education, the Center for Applied Linguistics (CAL) collected information about policies and practices in 19 countries in diverse regions of the world. The exploratory study found that successful language programs shared common features that the U.S. could learn from: they start language instruction early, maintain a well-articulated framework, provide strong leadership, offer language as a core subject, provide quality teacher education, teach language through content, use technology creatively, and support heritage language instruction.