Category: News

Dual Immersion Language Program

Muncie, IN – Muncie Community Schools is excited to announce our upcoming Dual Immersion program set to begin fall of 2017. Students in this program will learn to speak, read, and write in English and Spanish. Using a research-based immersion approach, teachers will conduct class in Spanish part of the day, and English the other part.

With this program, MCS will join more than 400 existing immersion programs in the United States.

The goal is for MCS Dual Immersion students to become completely bilingual in Spanish and English. Bilingualism is proven to benefit students cognitively, socially, and emotionally. According to a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services website, “Bilingual children benefit academically in many ways. Because they are able to switch between languages, they develop more flexible approaches to thinking through problems. Their ability to read and think in two different languages promotes higher levels of abstract thought, which is critically important in learning.”

In addition, bilingualism can give students a strong advantage when they enter the workforce. Globally, bilingual adults have more job opportunities and earn an average of $7,000 more than their monolingual peers.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 4.3% of Muncie, IN, residents at least five years old spoke a language other than English at home, based on data from 2011 through 2015.3 Over the past decade, MCS’ English Language Learner (ELL) population has grown from 0.2% in 2005-2006 to a steady 1.0%.

Currently, MCS students learn to read in English only, meaning ELL students are not formally taught to read in their home language. However, research shows that learning to read in one’s home language can make it easier to learn a second language because the reading skills easily transfer from the first language to the second. The MCS Dual Immersion students will benefit by learning to read in their home language and a second language.

Learn more about this topic by reading this article on Muncie Journal.

After reading “Dual Immersion Language Program” you can check important issues for ESL teachers on the section PDFs.

Researchers from the University of Washington (UW) recently expanded on a previous study (Bilingual teaching benefits explored by researchers), experimenting with a new method of teacher training, and creating software that would train language tutors online to support dual language learning from infancy.

The previous study conducted by the team in 2017 sought to learn whether and how infants can learn a second language in the context of an early education center, if they don’t get that exposure at home. That study showed the effects of an interactive, play-based English-language program, compared to the standard bilingual program already available in Madrid schools, on 280 children at four infant education centers in Madrid, Spain.

In the new study, conducted by UW’s Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences (I-LABS) as part of researchers’ ongoing work with infant education centers in Spain, not only found that bilingual teaching led to sustained English-language comprehension and vocabulary-building, but also that the method could be scaled up to serve more children, and children from a greater variety of backgrounds.

Naja Ferjan Ramírez, the lead author of both studies, said that researchers knew their research-based method worked to boost second language skills rapidly in infants, without negatively affecting their first language, but needed to explore how to train people worldwide to use it.

The most recent study used the same curriculum from 2017 but trained tutors differently, using an online program called SparkLing. By testing a remote form of teacher training and providing lessons to larger groups of children, researchers explored how to spread the benefits of bilingual education across a wider population.

Learn more about this topic by reading this article on The Sector.

After reading “Bilingual teaching benefits explored by researchers” you can check important issues for ESL teachers on the section PDFs.

My Mother Tongue, My Identity

What is Mother Tongue?

Merriam Webster defines Mother Tongue as one’s native language. Also, the Cambridge dictionary defines as the first language a person learns to speak. Contemporary linguist and educators use L1 for Mother Tongue and L2 for the second language.

What is Identity?

Cambridge defines Identity as the fact of being who a person is or the qualities of a person or group that makes them different from others. Nelson Mandela says “If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes in his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. also clearly stated that “language is the blood of the soul into which thoughts run and our of which they grow.”

The definition itself tells us how important and unique our mother tongue is. It is not only the first language but a speaker’s ability to master its linguistic and communicative aspects. Languages, with their complex implications for identity, communication, social interaction, education and development are of strategic importance for people and the planet. Yet due to globalization processes, they are increasingly under threat, or disappearing altogether. When languages fade, so does the world’s rich tapestry of cultural diversity. Opportunities, traditions, memory, unique modes of thinking and expression – valuable resources for ensuring a better future are also lost. Languages are the most powerful instruments of preserving and developing our tangible or intangible heritage.

Learn more about this topic by reading this article on Eastern Mirror.

After reading “My Mother Tongue, My Identity” you can check important issues for ESL teachers on the section PDFs.

Tackle Linguistic Bias in Classrooms – A couple of years ago, I worked in the writing center with a student on a paper about her identity development. She received high marks for content but lost points for writing. As I read her paper, two things struck me. She had grown up in Boston, but her parents were from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. 

At home, she spoke Lingala, which she hid from her friends after she was mocked. Second, many of her sentences were indecipherable. She wrote, for example, “I didn’t have an indistinguishable surface hair from different females in my class and they wouldn’t converse with me or simply give me disposition since I didn’t seem as though them.”

After a decade of working in writing centers, I knew to ask, “Did you use the thesaurus to write this?” And she told me that, in an effort to sound academic. She had used the thesaurus for every single sentence in this essay about her own identity development. Teachers had told her not to write like she speaks but to translate her Black vernacular English (BVE) into standard academic English (SAE). I suspect that most of us would feel a flash of rage if we heard the insults slung at her for speaking Lingala. But many of us would also mark her down for writing in BVE. Why?

Learn more about this topic by reading on INSIDE Higher Ed.

After reading “Tackle Linguistic Bias in Classrooms” you can check important issues for ESL teachers on the section PDFs.

Education and English-speaking Quebecers – A strong English-language education system, from kindergarten to university, is essential to the vitality of Quebec’s English-speaking community. It allows anglophones to be schooled in their mother tongue. It reinforces their ability not only to speak, but also write the language properly. And increases the chances of students’ success. 

Not all students have the capacity to flourish academically in a second language. English educational institutions, many of which have deep roots in Quebec, also preserve a sense of community identity; serve as incubators for future community leaders (not only students, but also parents who participate in school governance); provide opportunities for anglophones to work in English. As well, schools serve as important community gathering places, especially outside of Montreal.

Each level in the education system has its own realities and challenges.

The biggest problem faced by English primary and secondary schools is declining enrolment. According to Canadian Heritage ministry figures, Kindergarten to Grade 11 enrolment in English in Quebec has plummeted from 248,855 students in 1970-72 (or 15.7 per cent of the Quebec total) to 83,649 in 2017-18 (or nine per cent). Those numbers translate into school closures and transfers of school buildings to an overcrowded French sector. Reasons for the decline are no mystery. The biggest is the Charter of the French Language (Bill 101), enacted in 1977, which, generally speaking, excludes francophones and the children of immigrants from English schools. The English-speaking community has been calling for years for immigrants from English-speaking countries like the United States and Britain to be allowed to attend, which would mitigate the decline at least somewhat, to no avail. We should keep asking.

To read more about visit Montreal Gazette.

After reading “Education and English-speaking Quebecers” you can check important issues for ESL teachers on the section PDFs.

Language in some universities- As Algeria moves to replace French with English in universities, in neighboring Morocco lawmakers have passed a draft education law that will pave the way for strengthening French in pre-university education, overturning decades of Arabization and raising concerns about threats to cultural identity. Quoted as saying that “the French language does not get us anywhere”, Algerian Higher Education and Scientific Research Minister Tayeb Bouzid has ordered the country’s 77 universities and higher education institutions to use English rather than French.

Learn more about this topic by reading this article on University World News. 

After reading “6 Strategies for Teaching English “, you can check important issues for ESL teachers on the section PDFs. And visit my channel by YouTube.

Translation Market Growth, Trends and Forecast – The speech to speech translation market is expected to record a growth at a CAGR of 9.4%, over the forecast period (2020 – 2025). The speech-to-speech (S2S) translation breaks down communication barriers among people that typically don’t speak a common language. The basic purpose that such technology used to serve at its inception stages was to enable an instant oral cross-lingual communication. Learn more about this topic by reading this article on Reportlinker.

After reading “Translation Market Growth, Trends and Forecast”, you can check important issues for ESL teachers on the section PDFs. And visit my channel by YouTube.

Some Poetry for a change

Akhil Katyal’s poetry speaks in many voices: sly turns of phrase, urban proverbs spun out of bleak realities, smutty jokes, erotic longing, slowly unpeeling layers of thoughts. His new collection, Like Blood On The Bitten Tongue, borrows its title from a line by the poet Agha Shahid Ali. But unlike Ali’s gentle laments and flowery sentiments, Katyal is crisp and quick. With his ear to the ground, he listens to the rumblings around him, while remaining alert to the desires of the heart.

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

After reading “Some Poetry for a change “, you can check important issues for ESL teachers on the section PDFs. And visit my channel by YouTube.

Why Did I Teach My Son to Speak Russian?

I no longer remember when I started speaking to Raffi in Russian. I didn’t speak to him in Russian when he was in his mother’s womb, though I’ve since learned that this is when babies first start recognizing sound patterns. And I didn’t speak to him in Russian in the first few weeks of his life; it felt ridiculous to do so. All he could do was sleep and scream and breast-feed, and really the person I was talking to when I talked to him was his mother, Emily, who was sleep-deprived and on edge and needed company. She does not know Russian.

But then, at some point, when things stabilized a little, I started. I liked the feeling, when I carried him through the neighborhood or pushed him in his stroller, of having our own private language. And I liked the number of endearments that Russian gave me access to. Mushkin, mazkin, glazkin, moy horoshy, moy lyubimy, moy malen’ky mal’chik. It is a language surprisingly rich in endearments, given its history.

When we started reading books to Raffi, I included some Russian ones. A friend had handed down a beautiful book of Daniil Kharms poems for children; they were not nonsense verse, but they were pretty close, and Raffi enjoyed them. One was a song about a man who went into the forest with a club and a bag, and never returned. Kharms himself was arrested in Leningrad, in 1941, for expressing “seditious” sentiments, and died, of starvation, in a psychiatric hospital the following year; the great Soviet bard Alexander Galich would eventually call the song about the man in the forest “prophetic” and write his own song, embedding the forest lyrics into a story of the Gulag. Raffi really liked the Kharms song; when he got a little older, he would request it and then dance.

Learn more about this topic by reading this article on New Yorker.

After reading “Why Did I Teach My Son to Speak Russian?” you can check important issues for ESL teachers on the section PDFs.

The Importance of Gaming in Education

The advent of technology has led to the creation of video games that suit the educational needs of students. These games have the best graphics, which are prettier and engaging when played by students. Technology has made people realize the significance of virtual work for personal development through online learning. The advancement of video games, through gamification, has significantly engaged students by putting education at the forefront.

The experts behind the establishment of video games know that people enjoy the social products that use gamification just like they are interested in movies, using social media sites, or reading books. Students can use games to explore the fantasy raiding castles and other virtual worlds. So, the gaming industry is such an extensive establishment which should be used for developing the world technologically. Apart from that, modern-day children enjoy playing video games since that’s their most paramount source of entertainment. Playing video games is used to enhance social interaction, teamwork, and imparting knowledge as well.

When students are allowed to play video games in groups, they usually tend to take turns following and leading once they are sure of the skills required to play the game. Children who like online games have been reported to be potential leaders since they’ve been practicing motivating and persuading others when they used to play video games in groups. Without further ado, here are the benefits of including gamification in education.

Learn more about this topic by reading this article on PowerUp Gaming.

After reading “The Importance of Gaming in Education” you can check important issues for ESL teachers on the section PDFs.