Author: gustavorernesto

Race to adapt to remote ESL learning

City educators say they’re bracing for herculean challenges in adjusting to teaching students remotely and are racing to adapt their lessons as the city rolled out additional guidelines for principals and teachers Wednesday.

Teachers and parents POLITICO spoke to described an onslaught of information being rolled out as the city begins the process of teaching more than 1 million students from afar, at dramatically different levels of learning, affluence and technological savvy — neverminded students who don’t speak English or those have special needs.

Islah Tauheed, a general education second grade teacher at P.S. 567 Linden Tree Elementary School in the Bronx told POLITICO 20 of her school’s families are in shelter and about 100 are living “doubled up” with relatives.

“When it came to Sunday night … I was so heartbroken,” Tauheed said referring to when the city finally decided to close schools amid the rapidly spreading coronavirus. “I didn’t have a proper goodbye or proper closure, or the fact that in the Bronx … 37 percent of our students are in temporary housing, just not knowing where they were gonna get their food.”

The school sent home a paper survey Friday for parents to asses their technological access and received 114 responses — 92 percent have smartphones and 94 percent have internet access, but only 58 percent have computers and laptops. There are six different languages spoken at the school, with more than 60 percent of families on the poverty line.

Learn more about this topic by reading this article on Politico.

After reading “Race to adapt to remote ESL learning” you can check important issues for ESL teachers on the section PDFs, and visit my YouTube channel.

A great example of an ESL teacher

Whether we like it or not, decent knowledge of the English language is a necessity and has become an important factor for anyone who wants to bag a well-paying job, believes Ramesha A from Kolar who runs Daffodils English Training Academy. You might think that it’s no big deal if a person is running an English academy but Ramesha’s story of what led him to start this academy is one for the books. Recalling his initial days, when he did not know a single word in English, he narrates, “Having studied in a Kannada medium school, I never took the English language seriously. I always found it tough and did not bother about it during exams except for trying really hard to score pass marks. In 2011, when I failed the second PUC exams, I was shocked. English was the reason I failed. Anyone in my place would have given up and taken it as an insult but my aim was to not give up learning English because I always wanted to secure a degree. I worked hard for a year to learn English, frame sentences correctly and finally, I passed the English language exam of second PUC in 2012.”

Within a year, Ramesha became sort of famous for passing the exam. What he did to achieve this milestone can serve as an example to many youngsters today. “For a year, I did not speak in Kannada with my family members. Though I spoke broken sentences and incorrect grammar, I continued to speak in English. My mother would laugh at me or get angry for not speaking Kannada at home. People treated me differently. They called me a mad person and yes, I was mad about learning something that I did not know.” When people began to ignore Ramesha, he would communicate with nature in English. He spoke to the trees, birds and animals around him. That’s how he improved his English and eventually passed the exams. “Students would ask me about the methods I used to learn English and how I passed the exams. I realised that many people want to learn English and I wanted to start classes for them. After I started pursuing my Bachelor’s degree in Arts, I would take hour-long English classes for students who had failed in this subject. What started in a small room that day, today, it has become a new academy. That’s how Daffodils English Training Academy was born in 2016.”

Learn more about this topic by reading this article on EdexLive.

After reading “A great example of an ESL teacher” you can check important issues for ESL teachers on the section PDFs, and visit my YouTube channel.

What Do the Names of British Houses Mean?

Since the nineteen-eighties, Laura Wright, a historical linguist at the University of Cambridge, has carried out much of her research at London’s Metropolitan Archives. Wright studies the way that Standard English, as linguists call it, came to be standardized. “My career has been spent looking up, What did people actually write in the thirteen-hundreds? What did they actually write in the fourteen-hundreds?” she told me recently. One of Wright’s subjects has been the records of medieval shopkeepers and businesses on London Bridge, which captured the blend of Latin, French, Anglo-Norman, and Old English that became the modern English language. Waiting for her manuscripts to appear at the archives, which are kept in Clerkenwell, not far from the ancient heart of the city, she fell into the habit of flicking through old post-office directories that were on the shelves nearby. Wright considers British names and accents to be vessels of deep history, complex codes that indicate our place in the social order. “We live in a democracy, supposedly, but we are still feudal in our voices,” she said. People have named dwellings in the British Isles for as long as there have been dwellings, and over the centuries there have been periods, like the turn of the twentieth century, when these names have acquired an astonishing expressiveness.

Laura Wright, a historical linguist at the University of Cambridge, has carried out much of her research at London’s Metropolitan Archives. Wright studies the way that Standard English, as linguists call it, came to be standardized. “My career has been spent looking up, What did people actually write in the thirteen-hundreds?  Learn more about this topic by reading this article on The New Yorker.

After reading “What Do the Names of British Houses Mean?” you can check important issues for ESL teachers on the section PDFs, and visit my YouTube channel.

Is now the time to give new life to Gaelic?

Till now, the venerable language of the Emerald Isle has been preserved by government edicts, educational requirements, dwindling native speakers and diehard Irish nationalists.

But for most of Ireland’s population, Gaelic is a nostalgic linguistic throwback of scant use in daily life and a sop to patriots who refuse to let it die a natural death. However, machine translation and translation services have the potential to revive and reactivate a language heading to extinction. Can Gaelic hope to gain a new following? Could this be a good thing for Ireland? And how would a campaign to revive the Irish national language be conducted?

During the Coronavirus crisis, as we wait out the pandemic, it may seem trivial to discuss a subject as esoteric as the resurrection of Gaelic. But as we retreat from pubs, clubs and football pitches, we find ourselves with more time on our hands to learn something new. We are asked to distance ourselves even from classes and social gathering. So it may well be an ideal moment to bring to life a tongue long left by many for dead. How to do it? From language tools available, for free, on our phones and computers.

What is the status of the Gaelic language in Ireland?

Irish – Gaelic or Gaeilge — belongs to the Celtic language family. It originated in Ireland and was historically spoken by Irish people throughout Ireland. It is still spoken as a first language in some counties — Galway, Kerry, Cork and Donegal chief among them. In 2016, native speakers were counted as 73,000 in Ireland and 4,000 in northern Island. It has also been adopted by non-traditional speaker in Irish cities for cultural or nationalistic reasons, albeit as a second language.

Learn more about this topic by reading this article on Irish Tech News.

After reading “Is now the time to give new life to Gaelic?” you can check important issues for ESL teachers on the section PDFs, and visit my YouTube channel.

Two-thirds opt for just one foreign language – Students attending church schools are the most likely to sit for exams in two or more foreign languages.

Statistics published by the University of Malta’s MATSEC examinations board show that a fifth of students hailing from church schools sit for two or more exams in contrast to only 6% of students in state schools, and 15% of students in independent schools.

66.6% of all candidates born in 2003 registered for only one foreign language, other than Maltese and English.

This marks a further increase over last year when 59% applied for one foreign language.

School differences between the different sectors are substantial. Candidates from state schools are the most likely to register for not a single foreign language (27.3%) and the least likely to register for two or more foreign languages (5.8%).

Candidates from church schools are the least likely to register for no foreign language (14.3%) and the most likely to register for two or more foreign languages (19.3%).

Among students attending independent schools, 22.3% do not register for any foreign language while 14.6% register for two or more foreign languages.

Italian remains by far the most popular option, followed by French, among these candidates.

Italian is the main foreign language studied in state schools. Students in independent schools are the most likely to choose French, with Italian coming a close second. Students in church schools are the most likely to opt for German, even if Italian and French are the most popular even in this sector.

Learn more about this topic by reading this article on Malta Today.

After reading “Two-thirds opt for just one foreign language” you can check important issues for ESL teachers on the section PDFs, and visit my YouTube channel.