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House Introduces Native American Language Resource Center Bill

New Mexico Congresswoman Deb Haaland has introduced the U.S. House of Representatives companion bill to the Senate’s Native American Languages Resource Center Act, which would create a designated resource center for the protection and stability of Native American language education.

“The beauty of a Native language is something that has been passed down from generation to generation, but the federal government has fallen short on resources to teach these languages. I learned some Kares from my grandparents and my Mom, who still speaks our language fluently, but we’re at risk of losing the language and the traditional knowledge that comes with it.

That’s why Senator Schatz and I introduced the Native American Languages Resource Center Act. This bill will protect our Native languages and ensure the next generation has access to the traditions of our ancestors,” commented Haaland, vice-chair of the Congressional Native American Caucus.

Strict curfews and stay-at-home orders to prevent the spread of COVID-19 in hard-hit Native communities are threatening the progress made by grassroots initiatives to preserve indigenous languages.

Now, more than ever, Congress needs to take decisive actions in furtherance of the trust responsibility of the U.S. and carry out the commitments and policies enacted under the Native American Languages Act.

The Native American Languages Resource Center would:
• Be a consortium of institutions that reflect the diversity of Native American languages, cultures and communities throughout the U.S.
• Provide support for Native American language medium/immersion programs and schools serving children of all ages and at all levels of learning, from Pre-K to PhD.
• Provide a central outreach to other Native American language programs.
• Provide necessary resources and best practices to support distance learning.

The Native American Languages Resource Center Act is endorsed by Tribes, Tribal organizations, and groups and organizations supporting the protection and stability of Native American language education.

“The National Coalition of Native American Language Schools and Programs supports the Native American Languages Resource Center Act. As we commemorate the thirtieth anniversary of the passage of the 1990 Native American Languages Act, we applaud the vision of Representative Haaland and Senator Schatz to establish a center to support Native American Languages. We must quicken the pace over the next thirty years in our language revitalization efforts to ensure this protection and promotion is rightfully sustained for our next generations. A focused Native American Language Center is an important next step to support the rights and freedom to use our Native American languages now and into the future,” explained Leslie Harper, president, National Coalition of Native American Language Schools and Programs.

“The establishment of a Native American Languages Resource Center will play an important role in amplifying the voices of Native Americans and ensure that Native languages will live on for generations to come. The Joint National Committee for Languages (JNCL) is proud to endorse legislation that provides essential resources to support the revitalization of Native languages in communities across the country,” added Alissa Rutkowski, policy manager, JNCL and the National Council for Languages and International Studies.

Language Affects How We Perceive Motion

The way our native language employs verbs of motion—words like “go,” “run” or “descend”—may have an effect on how we perceive those motions, according to a study published in Neuropsychologia.

According to the study, different languages can encode different semantic information in their verbs of motion—in this sense, languages fall into two camps: manner-verbs and path-verbs. English tends to encode the manner in the verb form—for example, the verbs “run” and “roll” focus on the manner in which the subject is moving. Spanish verbs of motion, on the other hand, focus more on the path that a subject follows—to express manner, an adverbial expression is often appended after the verb phrase.

To explain, researchers used the Spanish sentence, “El perro entra la casa rápidamente,” which would be translated word-for-word into English as “The dog enters the house quickly,” with the verb “enter” emphasizing the path or direction in which the subject moves. Although this is a perfectly grammatical English sentence, English speakers are far more likely to generate the sentence “The dog runs into the house,” with the verb “run” emphasizing the manner of the movement. Other languages that prefer manner verbs include Polish, German, and Dutch; other path verb-dominant languages include Japanese, Turkish, and Korean.

When the researchers showed English speakers grammatically constructed sentences that mimicked the path-oriented structures (or when they showed the opposite to Spanish speakers), they found that the brain responded as if the sentences were ungrammatical. Using an electroencephalogram to analyze electrical activity in the subjects’ brains, the researchers found that these less common, though still grammatical, sentences were processed by the brain as errors, because they violated the subjects’ expectations of how the sentence would normally be formed.

The study was conducted by a team of researchers in the Psychology Department of Georgia State University, who performed a series of perceptual experiments on speakers of English and Spanish, two languages which tend to encode slightly different meanings in their most frequent verbs of motion.

“Our study, with its neural approach, has the potential to expand our knowledge of the effect of language on motion event processing in several important ways,” the paper reads.

The team hopes to conduct similar experiments with speakers of other languages, as well as bilingual English and Spanish speakers, to get a better look at how the language we speak subtly impacts our view of the world around us.

Connecting the Dots

Whatever the outcome of this month’s U.S. election and however bad the second wave of COVID-19 hits this winter, our world will continue to become more interconnected and more interdependent. Despite the closing of borders and the imposition of travel restrictions, the pandemic has proven how permeable national borders are to not only disease and disinformation but also cures and creativity. The shared common experience of the world in 2020 only serves to highlight how we are now living in a global village, where our actions or inactions will likely have an effect on people we may never meet and whose languages we may never speak.

School shutdowns and social distancing have accelerated the adoption of online learning systems, many of which have been developed internationally and even more of which are used transnationally. At the same time, kids are communicating and sharing experiences even more through global social media products like Snapchat and TikTok, and gaming through platforms shared across the world. They’re experiencing international cooperation firsthand.

International cooperation is also necessary in the battle against the coronavirus. Despite public protestations against supranational bodies like the World Health Organization, behind the scenes scientists and health officials worldwide are collaborating to limit the spread of infection and share medical advances. Many of these experts have had the opportunity to study abroad and are skilled communicators.
The common language for much of this cooperation, even among kids, is English, often World English, learned as a second or third language by speakers of other languages through the vast English education network of schools, tutors, apps, radio, television, and every other teaching method you can imagine, which has succeeded in establishing English as a global language, providing a valuable catalyst to international cooperation.


However, relying on English alone for international communication may be shortsighted. Along with the pandemic, we are facing two issues of global existential importance—climate change and nuclear proliferation—which will test our capacities for international cooperation and diplomacy to the ultimate degree. To succeed, scientists and negotiators will require fluency in multiple languages and cultural awareness, as well as exceptional interpreters, to understand the details, nuances, and subtleties of international research and argument.


Over the last decade, the number of Spanish speakers has grown by 30% and its number of learners by 60%; now, courts in Africa are struggling to function due to a lack of Chinese interpreters. Both are example of how languages other than English are increasing their international influence.


Many people are naturally resistant to change, but improved communications have revolutionized our world. Globalization is a reality that is here to stay, with consequences good and bad. We can’t turn the clock back, but we can make the most of our advances by cooperating through sharing knowledge and communicating deeply so that together we can work to overcome the common threats to our world. Improving our linguistic skills and cultural awareness will be crucial to the process.

Using Data to Pick up the Pieces of the Puzzle

It is Tuesday morning; I am at my desk that is smothered by books, research, sticky notes, and who knows what else. I am on another call with one of our dual-language (DL) leaders whose words are tinged with sheer overwhelm that refuses to stay underneath the surface. It was the sixth call from a DL leader since Monday.

For program leaders and educators, navigating the complexity of DL during this pandemic has reached a breaking point. In large part, this has happened because of the many preexisting inequities. The first of these being the lack of belief or support, clear systems for, and collaborative processes that work to prevent isolation and ensure coherence around curriculum, instruction, and assessment, (Guilamo, 2020). The second factor that already existed was a historic lack of DL leader and educator access to “the same supports for improving their effectiveness,” …[even though they continued to be] accountable to the same teacher effectiveness accountability metrics & action (Guilamo, 2020). This pandemic has not changed that experience, nor did it create it.

“I know,” I reassure her, “it’s like someone has taken all the pieces of the puzzle, tossed them in the air, and thrown away the box with the picture. Start from the beginning so we figure out the first piece of the puzzle to hold on to.” I close my eyes, quiet the world, and I listen. I listen, and listen, and listen. I keep listening, until the picture makes sense, a pattern of puzzle pieces has emerged, and the one puzzle piece that we need to find first is clear.

DL leaders, educators, and program stakeholders will need to develop and leverage a similar approach. This approach must be rooted in a commitment to, “protect access to educational lifelines for immigrant, emergent-bilingual, and Black and Brown students—who still lack access to basic things like resources, evidence-based practices, environments,” (Guilamo, 2020). Together with a commitment to equity, the following data metrics, questions, and sources create the foundation for a more authentic, humane, and program-aligned approach to answering the hard questions about DL curriculum, student learning, and assessment.

Metric 1 – Attendance:
• Questions – What is the attendance rate is low-level data. Who is absent and why is what DL stakeholders need to know. Access to devices, connectivity (Arias, 2020), comprehensible input in the language other than English (LOTE), and meaningful interactions designed to maximize engagement and interaction continue to be the top reasons for DL student’s absence and failures.
• Source – The most effective strategy our schools have found is still a personal phone call by a trusted member of the school that can respect the families’ home language and cultural norms, and prioritizing the quality of time spent synchronously over the quantity of time as a meaningful indicator.

Metric 2 – Literacy:
• Questions – It’s not simply the literacy level that DL schools need to know. What literacy skills and abilities do students have across both program languages? What practices are authentic to that language and designed to be most effective in developing that skill? Is there a loving advocate at home that has been shown how to continue that practice?
• Source – formative literacy assessments that leverage teacher observation during small group instruction or one-on-one check-ins.

Metric 3 – Language:
• Questions – A student’s proficiency level or composite score is not what DL schools need to know. Can teachers and students describe what students can do across listening, speaking, reading, writing, and translanguaging, or mobilizing all linguistic resources and funds of knowledge (Seltzer, García, & Ibarra-Johnson, 2016)?
• Source – formative data processes, using teacher anecdotes, student work samples, and student ownership of language objectives.

Metric 4 – Perception:
• Questions – Questions like can we keep supporting DL, is it working, or should we continue to postpone the opening of new programs, are distractors. Who is DL working for? How do we know? Did we plan for the most vulnerable student groups success before planning for populations that already had access?
• Source – The source. Ask students what is working and expand those successes. Ask home advocates what is working and what is not, and work with them to remove real barriers that exist. Ask DL teachers leaders who has access, who is engaged (not present), and who is learning in that order.

Remember that the pandemic has caused a butterfly effect for DL programs that can be observed in the number of new programs that chose not to open, the increasing mobility of DL staff, and other data points that we must understand. With these small shifts in data sources and discussions, DL leaders can create powerful small moments and day to day conversations that spark meaningful progress towards equity. So, stop, close your eyes, and listen. Then keep listening to your students & families, your teachers, and your leaders until the picture makes sense, a pattern of puzzle pieces has emerged, and the next puzzle piece that you need to hold is clear.

Alexandra Guilamo (CEO, TaJu Educational Solutions) is an expert in the implementation, education, and effective leadership of dual-language, bilingual, and language-learner education. She has previously served as a teacher, academic coach, elementary school principal, and district-level educator.

Moldova to Relax Restrictions on Russian

Andrew Warner reports on moves to bolster the status of the Russian language in Moldova

The Moldovan Parliament building with 'MOLDOVA"
Parliament of Moldova in Chisinau. Chisinau, Moldova.

The outgoing president of Moldova, Igor Dodon is expected to sign a bill to improve access for Russian speakers in the country, according to reports from Russian News Agency TASS. As a former Soviet Republic, Moldova—whose official language is Romanian—has a sizable minority of native Russian speakers.

The Moldovan Parliament has passed bills that would lift a ban on Russian TV broadcasts as well as bolster the language’s status by giving Russian speakers the right to access legal communications in Russian. According to TASS, Russian-speaking Moldovans must currently pay for their own court interpreters and legal translators.

Some members of the Romanian press have suggested that while the bill is a net positive at first glance, it could be seen as a last-ditch attempt to maintain some influence by a lame duck president. Although Dodon’s Socialist Party maintains a plurality in parliament, he recently lost re-election to Maia Sandu, a member of the center-right Party of Action and Solidarity.

“It is of principle importance for us to have those bills adopted in the second reading before the new president’s inauguration, so that I could sign them. It seems to me that the next president won’t sign those bills,” Dodon said, according to TASS.

Since gaining independence in 1990s, Moldova has maintained somewhat cold relations with Russia and tensions have risen between Russian and Romanian speakers in the country. However, Dodon and his party have been criticized for harboring pro-Russian sentiments throughout his tenure as president.

Under the Soviet Union, the Cyrillic alphabet was introduced for writing the Romanian language (which is traditionally written in Latin script) in Moldova, as a means of emphasizing the historical differences between Moldovans and Romanians. The Romanian language, as spoken and written in Moldova, was also referred to as the Moldovan language officially—this was not reversed until 2013.

Cambridge Dictionary announces ‘quarantine’ as Word of the Year 2020

Cambridge Dictionary has announced ‘quarantine’ as Word of the Year 2020, after data shows it was one of the most highly searched words on the Cambridge Dictionary this year.
 

Quarantine was the only word to rank in the top five for both search spikes and overall views (more than 183,000 by early November), with the largest spike in searches (28,545) seen the week of 18-24 March, when many countries around the world went into lockdown as a result of COVID-19.
 

The Cambridge Dictionary editors have also tracked how people are using quarantine, and have discovered a new meaning emerging: a general period of time in which people are not allowed to leave their homes or travel freely, so that they do not catch or spread a disease. Research shows the word is being used synonymously with lockdown, particularly in the United States, to refer to a situation in which people stay home to avoid catching the disease.
 

This new sense of quarantine has now been added to the Cambridge Dictionary, and marks a shift from the existing meanings that relate to containing a person or animal suspected of being contagious: a specific period of time in which a person or animal that has a disease, or may have one, must stay or be kept away from others in order to prevent the spread of the disease.
 

Wendalyn Nichols, Cambridge Dictionary Publishing Manager, said: ‘The words that people search for reveal not just what is happening in the world, but what matters most to them in relation to those events.
 

‘Neither coronavirus nor COVID-19 appeared among the words that Cambridge Dictionary users searched for most this year. We believe this indicates that people have been fairly confident about what the virus is. Instead, users have been searching for words related to the social and economic impacts of the pandemic, as evidenced not just by quarantine but by the two runners-up on the shortlist for Word of the Year: lockdown, and pandemic itself.’
 

Cambridge Dictionary is the top dictionary website for learners of English in the world. As well as definitions, the Cambridge Dictionary shows how words are used in real-world contexts. Its ‘About Words’ blog, written by language usage experts, helps learners gain confidence in using vocabulary related to specific topics. The most highly viewed blog post this year was Quarantine, carriers and face masks: the language of the coronavirus, which had almost 80,000 views in the first six weeks after it was posted on February 26, and now ranks as the ninth most viewed About Words post in the nearly ten years that the blog has been live. The post covers a range of related terms, such as infectious, contagious, carriers, super-spreaders, and symptoms, as well as phrases such as contract a virus, a spike in cases, contain the spread, and develop a vaccine.
 

The Cambridge Dictionary editors regularly monitor a wide range of sources for the new words and meanings that are added monthly to the online dictionary. On the ‘New Words’ blog, potential new additions are posted weekly for readers to cast their vote on whether they feel these words should be added. In a recent poll, 33 percent of respondents said quaranteam – combining quarantine and team, meaning a group of people who go into quarantine together – should be added to the dictionary. Other suggestions include the portmanteau words quaranteen, coronnial and lockstalgia.

Joy in the Time of COVID

In these challenging times, it seems that we are all yearning for some way to incorporate moments of joy into our lives. Some have picked up a new hobby during quarantine; others have begun a new fitness routine. These are personal solutions to a problem that affects all aspects of our lives—including our professional lives (or maybe especially our school lives).

We teachers are struggling in ways never before dreamed of, ranging from teaching entirely remotely with no contact with our students to “room and Zoom,” where our attention is split between analog and digital versions of our kids. Short of a vaccine, there is no immediate solution to these problems, but there are ways to mitigate the stress and to inject (pun intended!) some joy into our lives, and just as importantly, into the lives of our students.

Rationale
My middle name is Joy. It really is, so I often feel as if I have some right to write about this topic. Joy in the language classroom is one of my favorite areas of research and exploration, because it is at once so simple and so deeply rooted in research and data. Stephen Krashen famously posits the affective filter hypothesis, in which he describes the role of comfort, motivation, and self-confidence for students of languages. These things are not merely important for learning languages, he says, but rather essential for effective language learning to take place.

In his book A Whole New Mind, Daniel Pink refers to the importance of play in work and in life. The ways in which play manifests in one’s life include games, humor, and joyfulness and are essential elements for a 21st-century learner. Carl Jung also referenced play in his book Psychological Types: “The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves.” We have all experienced students playing with language in our classes—and witnessed the joy that it brings to the language-learning endeavor.

Getting to Know Students
Humans are social beings. Part of what we find so very challenging during COVID times are the restrictions on interpersonal connections. Not only are physical interactions verboten, but even talking with others is challenging through masks or face shields. What we—and especially our students—crave most is that connection to others.

Last spring, educators around the world began teaching online. Most of us already knew our students well and were able to build on personal connections with them that had been established throughout the beginning and middle of the school year. This year, we’re going in cold. How can we replicate those in-person experiences with a whole new batch of students—most of whom we don’t know at all?

Google Form surveys: My colleague Verónica shared her “Todo sobre ti/All about you” Google Form with me. She used this student survey at the start of the school year as a means of getting to know her kids. It is in English, and it includes questions about their favorite snack foods, their families and pets, and my personal favorite: “If you could have one super power, what would it be?” After tweaking the survey a bit, I shared it with my eighth-grade students and then met with each one individually to discuss their answers, share commonalities, and talk about their goals for the year. If we were in person, I might have tried to use Spanish for this conversation, but with these novice high students it would have made the communication less open and fluid. This is one of those trade-offs that we have to make during these times—for now, making sure that my students feel seen was the main goal.

Student of the Day: A few years ago, my colleague Marissa in our elementary division designed a fantastic digital presentation for their FLES classes. One student was chosen every day to share their likes and dislikes with the class. The language was scaffolded, giving students choices such as “¿Qué te gustan más, los gatos o los perros?/What do you like more, cats or dogs?” For use with my middle school students, I recreated the deck and added more open-ended questions: “¿Cuál animal te gustaría tener como mascota?/Which animal would you like to have for a pet?” Giving students the opportunity to share their preferences with the class helps them to connect with each other and also provides them with interesting topics to discuss in the target language.

Mystery Object: By now you may be sensing a theme! We tend to feel happy when we are sharing information about ourselves in a comfortable and safe environment. Mystery Object is an activity that leverages that desire as well as the fact that kids are at home, surrounded by their favorite things. I asked students to pick an object and “bring” it to our Zoom class. The student then describes the object in three to four sentences (the color, the shape, what it is used for, etc.), and then classmates guess by asking yes/no questions until we uncover the object. This is a fantastic way to practice basic vocabulary, and oftentimes, the objects that kids show help to tell the story of that student’s passions, interests, and hobbies.

Playing Games with Students
It is not new to say that play is a huge part of bringing joy into the language classroom. This has always been true but is even more imperative during these uncertain and stressful times. In play, people often describe the sensation of time and space dropping away and a total focus on the task at hand. Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls this feeling a state of flow. It happens when we are so absorbed by a task that it becomes a singular focus and we lose ourselves. Despite sounding intense, this focus can be quite freeing and enjoyable—just think about a time when you created a piece of art, worked on a puzzle, or read a really great book. As we know well from our students and their relationship to videogames, gameplay can also put you into a state of flow.

Kahoot and Quizlet: These ubiquitous tools can contribute to a sense of controlled chaos in the brick-and-mortar classroom, but in a Zoom room, they can bring a familiar sense of playfulness and joy to your classes. I like to ask students to create their own games for use with their classmates, which serves the purpose of helping them review class material while also creating some ownership over the competition.

Breakout rooms in your breakout rooms: This year, I share a class of MS Spanish with my colleague Carmen. She is a huge proponent of games, and we often stage interclass competitions, which our students absolutely adore. One area of passion for her is the use of virtual escape or breakout rooms in our Spanish classes. Students get placed randomly into traditional Zoom breakout rooms and then are given a series of tasks to accomplish in the target language. When they achieve all the requirements of the challenge, they can “escape” from the breakout room and return to the main room (and earn a digital prize).

Curating Curricula for Students
During quarantine, so many of us have taken advantage of the time at home to clean house. I know I have. We have cleaned out corners of rooms, basement shelves, and garage spaces and can feel happy in the subsequent orderliness and calm of an uncluttered space. Organizational expert Marie Kondo famously encourages us to look at the things we own and ask if they “spark joy.” Suffice it to say, there were a lot of things in my home that did not, and so, we have a lot to donate! This sort of intent and thoughtful evaluation of our “stuff” can be a really useful frame for our language programs. Our programs tend to continue along, year after year, with the same textbook or materials or vocabulary units. Unless asked to do so for a departmental review or other such administrative project, we often don’t have the time or energy to really examine our curricula critically, let alone check if they spark joy in us and in our students. I suggest that this weird time in our lives is exactly the right moment to review what we teach and to strive to curate curricula that are engaging, that address important social justice issues, and that engage us in joyful work.

Focus on interpersonal communication: In the spring, one thing I noticed during remote teaching, especially in smaller group and pair meetings with students, was how much more students were willing to speak up. Student production in the main/full-class sessions was not quite as robust, but in one-on-one meetings or triads, I started to hear student voices that I had not heard nearly as much in full-group activities. So I began to design more tasks that allowed me to work with small groups while other students had asynchronous tasks to accomplish in the language. We started focusing on helpful communicative strategies like circumlocution, interjections, and the use of filler words in conversations. Students loved this focus and reported feeling excited about how much they were able to communicate. ¡Qué bien!

Diversity of materials: Whether cleaning out a home or a curriculum, one easy place to start is with outdated or inauthentic materials. Now’s the time to replace some of those didactic resources and readers in favor of culturally authentic ones, wherever possible. This is the opportunity to find readings, memes, advertisements, and other interpretive reading materials that address social justice topics and center on the stories and lives of Indigenous peoples and people of color. Students need what educator Emily Styles calls “windows and mirrors” in the classroom—they need to see themselves and their identities reflected in the curriculum, and they also need windows through which to see and learn about cultures other than their own. An honest assessment of our curricula can help restore balance and ensure that every student feels joy in a respectful, thoughtful, and inclusive language program.

Who knows when we will return to any sort of normalcy? We have already grown so accustomed to this “new normal.” As teachers of languages during a global pandemic, we all have so many competing responsibilities. Life is stressful right now, and our students feel that stress keenly, even if they don’t show it.

In my mind, this is the perfect opportunity to seek out and incorporate elements of joy in our classes. By infusing our work with bits of fun and frivolity, we can accomplish so much. We can establish a comfortable and safe classroom environment for our kids, when they are likely uncomfortable and quite unsafe in real ways. We can incorporate games and play into our classes, when most everything else feels way too serious. And we can share a personal moment with our students by seeing and loving them and all their identities—and be seen by students as people, not just teachers.

In his masterful novel Love in the Time of Cholera, Colombian author and Nobel Prize winner Gabriel García Márquez wrote: “He was still too young to know that the heart’s memory eliminates the bad and magnifies the good, and that thanks to this artifice we manage to endure the burden of the past.” Once we are all back in school and we can go back to high-fives and hugs, we will look back on this time, magnify the good, and move on. It is my hope that my Spanish classes will fall into the category of the “good” that students will choose to remember with a sense of joy for years to come.

Resources
All About Me Google Form Example: https://tinyurl.com/allaboutmegoogleform (thanks to Veronica Valentín)

Authentic Resources: www.grahnforlang.com/authentic-resources.html

BreakoutEDU: www.breakoutedu.com/

Curriculum as Window and Mirror: https://nationalseedproject.org/Key-SEED-Texts/curriculum-as-window-and-mirror

Escape the Classroom Ideas on Pinterest: www.pinterest.com/chrissystar/spanish-class-breakout-ideas/

Puppets and Games: PuppetED website, www.puppeted.com (thanks to Carmen Campos, @puppeted.com)

So You Want to Build a Classroom Escape Room: www.weareteachers.com/build-a-classroom-escape-room-lesson/

Student of the Day Example: https://tinyurl.com/elestudiantedeldia (thanks to Marissa Coulehan, @srtacoulehan)

References
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990). Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. New York: Harper & Row.

García, M. G., and Grossman, E. (1988). Love in the Time of Cholera. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

Jung, C. G. [1921] (1971). Psychological Types. In Collected Works of C. G. Jung, vol. 6. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Kondo, M. (2014). The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese art of decluttering and organizing. Berkeley: Ten Speed Press.

Krashen, S. D. (1982). Principles and Practice in Second Language Acquisition.

Pink, D. H. (2006). A Whole New Mind: Why right-brainers will rule the future. New York: Riverhead Books. Styles, E. (1988). Listening for All Voices. Summit, NJ: Oak Knoll School monograph.

Dr. Lori Langer de Ramírez is director of the World and Classical Language Department at the Dalton School, NYC. Her website, miscositas.com, features free resources for English, Spanish, French, and Chinese teachers.

Card Game Aims to Revitalize Traditional Mongolian Script

The traditional Mongolian writing system—a vertical top-to-bottom, left-to-right alphabet—dates all the way back to the early days of the Mongol Empire. However, in the script’s homeland, official and day-to-day communications have been written in the Cyrillic script since the 1940s. As a result, the Endangered Alphabets Project considers it to be an endangered writing system, and is working on a campaign to help revitalize the alphabet using an unlikely method: a card game.

The card game, which recently received more than $28,000 on its Kickstarter campaign. Named ULUS, after a Mongolian word meaning “empire, land, or home,” the game plays out a fictionalized narrative set during the peak of the Mongol Empire, exploring the history and mythology of the empire.

“This Kickstarter is the most urgent and far-reaching campaign we’ve ever undertaken, and one that lies right at the heart of the Endangered Alphabets Project,” writes Tim Brookes, president of the EAP.

While under Soviet influence, Mongolia adopted the Cyrillic alphabet in 1941, which it uses to this day. While interest in the traditional writing system has been on the rise in Mongolia since the 1990’s, Cyrillic remains the predominant script in government documents (which are currently onlywritten in Cyrillic) and everyday interactions.

ULUS comes at a turning point in the script’s history.  Until recent policy changes in China were implemented, Inner Mongolia, an autonomous region in China with a large Mongolian-speaking population, had been the last place where the traditional script remained the predominant system for writing the language. However the script is at risk there too, as schooling will now be conducted in Mandarin, rather than Mongolian

Earlier this year the Mongolian government introduced plans to promote the traditional script, as The Sunday Times reported in March. While the Mongolian government doesn’t plan to replace Cyrillic entirely, the policies will make it such that legal papers and government documents will be accessible in both the traditional and Cyrillic script beginning in 2025, alongside other efforts at making use of the script more widespread over the next 4 years.

“If we want to support the Mongolian people, the best thing we can do is to show the world what a remarkable and rich culture they have, and the best way we can do that, I think, is to create games that introduce and promote Mongolian language, culture and history,” Brookes writes.

Desafío al español causa protesta

Catalonia and Spain flags waving on blue sky background. 3d illustration

El mes pasado, la octava ley de educación en la historia democrática de España fue aprobada por el congreso, lo cual generó una tormenta de ira y protesta. Uno de los aspectos más controvertidos de dicha ley es la eliminación de un pasaje que establece que el español de Castilla (castellano) es la “lengua vehicular” de España. Los comentaristas de derecha ven esto como una concesión al modelo de “inmersión lingüística” de Cataluña que utiliza el catalán como lengua principal de instrucción en la región autónoma. El gobierno minoritario de España depende del apoyo de los partidos regionales para aprobar la legislación.

Gloria Lago, líder de Hablamos Español, un grupo de presión que hace campaña para que haya una mayor educación en español en regiones con idiomas minoritarios, le dijo a Financial Times: “Este es un intento para asegurar que el español no sea un idioma con presencia en todo el país. Esto hace que sea muy difícil trasladarse de una parte del país a otra, sobre todo si se quiere que los hijos aprendan en español”.

El gobierno sostiene que el objetivo es que los estudiantes de regiones bilingües dominen el español y su idioma provincial. Incluso el poeta Luis García Montero, director del Instituto Cervantes advierte en contra de criticar el cambio: “Debemos tener mucho cuidado con las diferencias de idioma que se utilizan para fomentar tensiones y odio, cuando nuestra diversidad cultural –incluidas las lenguas maternas minoritarias que merecen apoyo democrático– es parte de nuestra fuerza “.

Sin embargo, el sector más conservador de la Real Academia Española ha pedido que la ley no “ponga en tela de juicio el uso del español en ningún territorio del estado ni promueva obstáculos en la educación de los ciudadanos en su lengua materna”.

El Partido Popular opositor afirmó que la legislación representaba una “ruptura en sus sistemas de libertades y constitución” y ayudó a organizar manifestaciones en toda España en contra de esta medida, la cual aún requiere la aprobación del Senado. Los partidarios de la ley afirman que la problemática acerca del idioma es una desviación para socavar el propósito principal de la ley, que es nivelar el campo de juego entre las escuelas públicas y las escuelas privadas, a menudo religiosas, que reciben fondos públicos y educan a una cuarta parte de los estudiantes del país.

Fue solo en 2013, bajo un gobierno más conservador, cuando se introdujo la referencia del español como idioma de instrucción.

“La acusación de que estamos tratando de deshacernos del español no podría estar más lejos de la verdad. Esta ley garantizará que cualquier alumno salga de la escuela hablando castellano y cualquier otra lengua, sea catalán, vasco o gallego, ambas con un buen nivel de competencia”, le dijo a VOA Juan Mena, portavoz de educación de En Comú, un partido de izquierda. “La mención de que el español ya no es el idioma principal se debe solo a que las leyes de educación anteriores decían que el español debe ser el idioma principal incluso en las regiones donde se hablan otros idiomas”.

Risk-taking

Rumi in the Language Classroom Series Vol 3

See Vol 1 of the series here.

See Vol 2 of the series here.

One of the poems of ‘Masnavi-e-Manavi’ of Rumi depicts how risk-taking can lead to success in language classrooms. The story goes like this:

Around Rey in Persia, there was a mosque with widespread fame to kill whomever goes there. One day, a stranger arrived at the city and asked the residents to show him the mosque. Despite people’s premonition, he insisted on staying in the mosque for a night. While sleeping in a mosque, he heard a voice saying “hey man. I will kill you”. The stranger thought to himself I will stay, I will either die or win. He stood up and shouted, “come here. I’m ready”. Because of the magnitude of his voice, the ceiling collapsed, and it broke the spell. There was gold raining down everywhere. He collected all the gold and became a rich man.

What can be learned from this story of Rumi is that life is full of moments of success, but those who can seize these moments are risk-takers. Stern (1983) believes that personality factors, such as anxiety, self-esteem, and risk-taking impact language learning at least as much if not more than the cognitive skills. They are risk-taking learners who take the risk of speaking in the class despite their lack of proficiency and it promotes chances of noticing the gap (Swain, 1995) which aids learning the second language faster. The gold, available for anyone who takes the risk of staying in the mosque, truly resembles learning a second language for the learner who takes the risk of testing the hypothesis of her interlanguage. This learner deserves the best prize (like the gold for the man in Rumi’s story) which is learning the second language more efficiently.

It is, therefore, needed that language teachers encourage the learners to take a risk of contributing to the class without the fear of being humiliated. To do so, language teachers should provide an environment of trust for the learners in which they can easily take a risk of speaking fearlessly.

References

Rumi, M. J. M, (2017). The Masnavi I Ma’navi of Rumi. (E. H. Whinfield, Trans.). CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform.

Swain, M. (1995). Three functions of output in second language learning. In G. Cook & B. Seidhofer (Eds.), Principles and practice in the study of language (pp. 125-144). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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