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Bridging the Gap

Tom Beeman suggests strategies to maintain continuity between secondary and post-secondary Spanish education that may help to boost college language enrollments in all languages

 

The term education gap often refers to socioeconomic factors such as race, income, or gender, and perhaps even issues such as equity and access to education come to mind. But what about linguistic abilities or even the differences between the way the same subject matter is taught in high schools versus colleges? Unfortunately, there seems to be a gap between these different levels of education, especially when it comes to the teaching of world languages. To solve this dilemma, it is important to learn about trends in both secondary and post-secondary language teaching, be open to input from those in the field, and begin to come up with ideas for possible solutions. Though this article focuses on the teaching of Spanish, many of these same issues and solutions could easily be applied to other languages.

The first step toward solving any problem is to reflect on current practices and perspectives. Here, that means looking at the current trends in language education. Technology has come a long way since I first started teaching 15 years ago. I remember my credential program instructors talking about the importance of technology, but back then technology meant the use of overhead projectors, audiovisual equipment for using supplemental materials from the textbook publishers, and finding time to schedule a session for the class in the computer lab. Now, even Web 2.0 is starting to become outdated with the rapid pace of technical advancements. Who needs a paper dictionary when you can download an app on your smartphone? Students can use social media such as Twitter or Snapchat to incorporate language use into everyday life. This is also a great opportunity to make the world a smaller place by interacting with native speakers in the community and around the world.

Another key issue is differentiated instruction. While the idea of multiple approaches to teaching to meet different learning styles is not new, there is now the need to shift from learning styles to learning populations. It is common practice to see many schools, even at the high school level, offer Spanish for Spanish Speakers courses, and anyone who remotely speaks Spanish at home is put on these courses. However, there is a need to differentiate between native speakers and heritage language learners. Native speakers are more like true bilingual students—that is, students who have the skilled use of both languages and can function as two monolingual people in the same being. However, according to Wiley (2001), heritage language learners are those who have some proficiency in a community or ancestral language. These speakers have communicative competence in the language but lack the academic competence that a native speaker possesses. For many of them, learning is more about making a connection to family and culture through language than it is about academic linguistic acquisition. While colleges and universities recognize this distinction and can differentiate instruction accordingly, many high schools still need work in this area.

I remember, back in 1990, my history teacher telling me that someday students would not come to a physical school but would be able to learn from the teacher on television or via a computer. I thought he was crazy. I never would have guessed that two decades later I would be one of those teachers. As an online teacher at both the high school and college levels, I see the growing demand for online education, but there are three tiers to this type of learning and, sadly, I do not see much communication and/or collaboration between the three groups. I teach at an online high school that is 100% distance education, but students still meet live with the teacher throughout the week. The college course I teach is completely asynchronous—there is no live interaction between the instructor and the students unless they drop by during office hours. However, these courses are often taught by adjunct faculty who are not required to hold office hours, and if they do, they are most likely virtual. Then, there is blended learning, in which students attend a traditional brick-and-mortar school and are either given supplemental instruction and assignments online or combine some days meeting face to face and some days online only.

While all three are valuable in meeting the needs of our students and do have some unique issues, there are underlying issues that are same across all three tiers, and it is my belief that if the groups were to start interacting with each other, they would be able to work together to find solutions to everyone’s benefit. While the approaches may be different between secondary and post-secondary, there are some additional areas where there is common ground. According to Bell (2005), along with colleagues with whom I have spoken, the following are areas in which both institutions are in agreement: communicative and interactive approaches to language learning, courses based on the ACTFL World-Readiness Standards (the five “C”s), increase in authentic culture, and the recruitment of qualified teachers for less commonly taught languages. Having examined the trends in world language education, I see it is critical that those on the front lines in the classroom have a voice as well. I sent out a survey to Spanish teachers across the country (both secondary and post- secondary) on a variety of topics having to do with language education and will now share their thoughts.

Q1. Are university professors preparing prospective teachers well? 

A1. 65% No

The feeling was that there is a lack of knowledge of second-language acquisition theories and pedagogy. It is possible for teachers to obtain their degrees without having enrolled in a theoretical course on language acquisition. It is even possible to major in something other than Spanish and still teach, as long as the candidate can pass a standardized test demonstrating language competency. Respondents also felt that some professors lacked the ability to speak the language well and that degree programs were too literature based. But the biggest concern was that post-secondary educators are not required to complete any kind of teacher preparation program similar to what is required for K–12 teachers. There are brilliant minds in the field who have graduate and doctorate degrees and are experts in their content fields. But being an expert in one’s field does not automatically translate to having the ability to teach it.

Q2. Are university professors too disconnected from the high school educational setting? 

A2. 82% Yes

I recently attended a conference where representatives from 32 states were gathered to discuss and promote language education. There were members from all levels of education, industry, politics, and so on. Some of the consistent comments that were made were that there is a need to bridge the gap between high school and college because colleges are not prepared to teach the students who are coming from today’s language courses. This was also reflected in the survey, in which respondents felt that professors are not keeping up with current trends in language education. Respondents felt the disconnect was largely due to a lack of communication and understanding between the two levels. High school teachers have more hours of required instruction per week and have other duties that require evening and weekend hours, such as sporting events, dances, and parent-teacher meetings. Additionally, there was a desire for college professors to attend workshops led by high school teachers just like high school teachers attend workshops led by college professors.

Q3. Are high school teachers preparing students well enough for college? 

A3. 58% No

Respondents felt it was “hit and miss” due to lack of professional development by high school teachers. With some states such as California no longer requiring professional development hours, combined with a lack of funding to pay for courses and conferences, teachers are reluctant to give up their free time to improve practice. They also felt that teachers were preparing students “to the best of their ability” because of pressure on retention and pass rates, which sometimes resulted in “encouragement” to provide extra credit for students for non-language items (such as providing tissues or bringing cans in for a school-wide food drive).i There is lack of support due to the number of nonteaching activities required. But the lack of support does not necessarily mean a lack of willingness or desire to support the world language teacher. Even the most outstanding administrators are limited in the support they are able to offer if they have not experienced learning a language other than their first or have not been trained in language acquisition theories and pedagogy. The other issue where respondents felt high school teachers had difficulty preparing students was the “native speaker” model. Textbooks are designed to teach Spanish so that students are able to communicate with educated, middle-income or higher speakers of Castellano in Madrid. There is no teaching or accepting of varieties of Spanish from other dialects, total rejection of “nonstandard” varieties of Spanish such as Spanglish, and bigotry toward the nonnative variety of Spanish, just as there is with English (Valdés, 1999).

Q4. Do secondary education teachers follow advances in applied linguistics research?

A4. 76% No

As mentioned in the discussion of the previous question, lack of time is the big issue. High school teachers are on campus five days a week and can often be found on campus after contract hours because they know that is the only time they are available outside of class to support students seeking additional help. Add in the aforementioned lack of funding for professional development, the erosion of the requirement for professional development hours to renew their credentials, and the lack of language studies requirements for graduation, and the prevailing opinion among teachers is if the state does not care about professional development, why should they?

From a pedagogical perspective, not all teachers have studied applied linguistics, so having never studied the principles of it, they are not likely to study advances. Those teachers who do graduate with a linguistics concentration in their majors are more likely to have had their studies focus on generative linguistics, because they need to understand grammatical theories, since that is the core of what has been traditionally taught in the classroom. I feel it would be a tremendous asset if teachers were to learn about how socioeconomic status and other applied linguistic theories factor in to language learning with native, heritage-language, and nonnative Spanish speakers.

 Q5. What suggestions would you make to teacher preparation programs to help prepare prospective Spanish teachers?

As important as it was to give teachers an opportunity to examine where issues like those are causing a gap, I felt it was equally important to have them propose solutions. For secondary teachers, it was suggested that additional preteaching observation time be incorporated into teacher preparation programs. For post-secondary teachers, it was suggested a certificate program in teaching of 18 hours be created. For both levels, it was suggested that degree programs ensure instruction on second-language acquisition theories and a focus on both language and culture as part of their course of study.

Q6. What unique challenges do you see to teaching Spanish online and how would you recommend teacher education programs and the professional development community better serve this population of educators?

Distance-education teachers are often overlooked in the conversation when it comes to the professional development community because not a lot is known about us outside of our online community. This is evident in respondents’ comments, as there is a lack of mention of incorporation of online teaching in state/national standards.ii Therefore, teachers feel that they must take it upon themselves to align learning outcomes with the standards in a way that meets the unique needs of this student population.

While there are other problems, such as difficulties with technology and lack of face-to-face student/teacher interaction, the biggest challenge to distance-education teaching is the lack of available resources for teacher preparation.iii Lack of face-to-face interaction can make it easier for students to use translation websites and other tools that violate schools’ academic integrity policies. In fact, a recent article was published on how artificial intelligence is becoming so advanced that it is increasingly difficult to determine the difference between human translation and computer translation (Alang, 2018). While there are courses in teacher education that are offered online, there are no courses in how to teach in a distance-education setting, and there is no training for university students taking distance-education courses.iv Even for veteran teachers, it is a challenge, and there needs to be a period of adjustment when switching from bricks-and-mortar to an online environment. When it comes to parental support, there is an increased difficulty because, unless a student is self-motivated, parents need to be even more hands-on than usual, as it is easy for students to avoid logging in and completing assignments without parental monitoring.

Some other discrepancies based on my own observations and on informal conversations with colleagues over the course of my career are as follows: use of target language in the classroom varies;v high schools use varied methods of instruction, whereas colleges are primarily lecture based; colleges do not offer any of seal of biliteracy, and not every state offers them for high school students either; schools, districts, and teacher preparation programs may lack support programs for distance-education teachers, possibly including some districts that sponsor online charter schools; and state content standards and frameworks may be outdated or nonexistent.

Solutions

Some possible solutions to these problems would be to align teacher preparation programs to K–12 teaching requirements (there can be a disconnect between what the university requires of the student teacher and what the school requires of him or her in the classroom); offer additional methodology courses, such as those for distance-education teachers; have some kind of collaboration (maybe a brown bag forum) between language teachers of every level to discuss everyone’s needs; and allow release time for secondary teachers similar to a sabbatical. I think this last point is a valid one that should be examined further, as it would not only solve the teacher burnout/retention problem but also help solve the issue of lack of professional development. Imagine if a high school teacher had a paid year off (or even just a semester) to work on research, attend conferences, give seminars, and so on. That teacher would have the chance to keep up with current practices in the field, and he or she could bridge this gap by having this time to meet with college and university professors. While there are discrepancies among language teachers, we all have one goal in mind: to help expand our students’ horizons through language learning. If we as a language community can avoid pointing the finger at one side or another, set our differences aside, and come to the table, we could not only strengthen our programs but expand them as well.

Bibliography

Alang, Naveet. (March 16, 2018). “Microsoft’s Translation Treason.” The Week. http://theweek.com/articles/760984/microsofts-translation-treason.

Bell, Teresa R. (2005). “Behaviors and Attitudes of Effective Foreign Language Teachers: Results of a Questionnaire Study.” Foreign Language Annals 3(2), 259–270.

Collins, L., and Muñoz, C. (2016). “The Foreign Language Classroom: Current Perspectives and Future Considerations.” Modern Language Journal 100 (Supplement 2016), 133–147.

Russell, V. (2017). Email communication.

Stevenson, H. W., and Nerison-Low, R. (2000). To Sum It Up: Case Studies of Education in Germany, Japan, and the United States. National Institute on Student Achievement, Curriculum, and Assessment Office of Educational Research and Improvement, U.S. Department of Education.

Valdés, G. (1999). “Nonnative English Speakers: Language Bigotry in English Mainstream Classrooms.” ADLF Bulletin 31(1), 43–48.

Wiley, T. (2001). “On Defining Heritage Languages and Their Speakers.” In J. K. Peyton, D. A. Ranard, and S. McGinnis (eds.), Heritage Languages in America: Preserving a National Resource, 29–36.

i This same problem is also occurring in post-secondary courses, where pass rates are tied in with tenure and retention due to increased pressure to develop major-oriented students.

ii As of this writing, although ACTFL does have a Distance Education Special Interest Group, there is no mention of online learning and teaching in the World Readiness Standards.

iii Difficulties with technology could refer to nonfunctioning programs or teachers who are not proficient enough with technology to be able to use the various platforms that come with online teaching.

iv This could be especially problematic for re-entry students and for those entering the profession for the first time.

v One of ACTFL’s core practices is that teachers should use the target language 90% of the time, but high schools predominately use English as the primary method of instruction.

Tom Beeman is a High School Spanish Teacher at the California Virtual Academies, Adjunct Spanish Instructor at Taft College, California Language Teachers’ Association (CLTA) Advocacy Chair, CLTA 2017 Outstanding Language Teacher Award recipient, and co-author of the book “Voces;  Latino Students on Life in the United States”

English Immersion at One of the Oldest Girls’ Schools in the U.S.

This summer, Buffalo Seminary (SEM), one of the oldest girls’ schools in the U.S., has opened its beautiful student residences for international students who want to learn English, have fun, and practice safe independence.

In the mornings, girls can choose from a variety of camp activities from video production to theater design, coding with robots, baking, traditional camp arts and crafts, and Fashion Lab NY, a week of exploration of current brands that raise social awareness and inspire others to pay it forward. All students will sew two items and give one to a designated organization. Mornings can also be spent learning squash from a college team coach or learning how to row or sail on Buffalo’s rivers and Great Lake waterfront.

In the afternoons, girls will learn English in immersion classes taught through the American woman’s experience. This humanities-based immersion curriculum uses primary texts and trips to take English language learning to the next level. There are also local adventures and exploration—SEM is 20 minutes from Niagara Falls. In the evenings, students can stroll to Starbucks, get ice cream, find nearby Hoyt Lake in Delaware Park and take a rowboat for a leisurely spin, or grab a city rental bike from a rack on the corner. On weekends, there are college visits, adventure parks, and enjoying summer in the city with concerts, food trucks, and browsing local shops and museums. Squash@SEM is a unique all-girl squash clinic available to immersion students in the mornings. The coach from Connecticut College will be at SEM from July 15–28. Learn to Row is offered at the Buffalo Scholastic Rowing Association, of which SEM is a founding member. Sailing is offered with the Buffalo Yacht Club.

www.buffaloseminary.org

Music & Language Lead to Efficient Brain


A new study reveals that bilinguals and trained musicians utilize fewer resources in their brains while doing tasks involving memory. This means that it’s easier for them to do so. As their brains use less effort to perform tasks, researchers infer that their musical and bilingual brains may protect them from the onset of cognitive decline later in life.

The study, which was published in the journal, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, gathered 41 participants ages 19-35 and split them into three groups: monolingual English-speaking non-musicians, monolingual English-speaking musicians, and bilingual non-musicians. The participants were played a sound, and then were asked to identify if the proceeding sound was the same as the previous one. Sounds from musical instruments, the environment, and humans were all used within the study. Spatial awareness in sound was also studied. Participants were also played a sound and asked to identify if the proceeding sound came from the same direction.

Researchers found that musicians across the board were able to identify if the type of sound was the same, while bilinguals and musicians alike performed better on the spatial portion of the study. “People who speak two languages may take longer to process sounds since the information is run through two language libraries rather than just one,” said researcher and associate professor at the University of Toronto’s Institute of Medical Science and the Department of Psychology, Claude Alain, “During this task, the brains of bilinguals showed greater signs of activation in areas that are known for speech comprehension, supporting this theory.”

The study can be found here

Reports of OELA’s Demise Hopefully Exaggerated

José A. Viana at JNCL/NCLIS Language Advocacy Day

Advocacy groups are denouncing a proposed merging of the federal Office of English Language Acquisition (OELA) into the Office for Elementary and Secondary Education (OESE). Education Department officials have said that the restructuring plan would enable the Department of Education to merge English-learner support with services provided to other disadvantaged student groups.

Director of the OELA José Viana explained the thinking behind the proposal, “Any potential merger is meant to improve policy and program coordination between OELA and OESE to ensure EL students have the support, attention, and resources they deserve from the Department.”

Last week, a coalition of organizations, including the American Federation of Teachers, UnidosUS, TESOL International Association, Joint National Committee for Languages, National Association for Bilingual Education, California Association for Bilingual Education, Center for Applied Linguistics, and Californians Together sent a long letter to Secretary of Education Betsy Devos expressing their opposition to the proposed reorganization, suggesting that it may contravene federal law—“20 USC §3420 clearly states that there shall be a Director of OELA, reporting to the Secretary. “Dual-hatting” another political appointee would necessarily and inevitably diminish the time, attention, and supporting expertise and analysis applied to EL issues, as statutorily required, and may well exacerbate staffing shortfalls in OELA,” and that it would indicate that English Learners (ELs) were not a priority of the Administration.

The letter continued, “we believe that the present time affords an opportunity to strengthen OELA,” and recommended “that OELA retain its current organizational profile, to include a full-time Director, at the Assistant Deputy Secretary level, who reports to the Secretary…that the formula grants under Title III of the Every Student Succeeds Act should be once again administered by OELA,” and that its budget and staff be increased in line with the growing number of ELs in the U.S.

Viana stressed that, “The Department is still in the preliminary stages of this important process.  Be assured that feedback from the EL community is valued and appreciated.”

José Viana will be interviewed in the June edition of Language Magazine.

Danish Language Classes Supplement Denmark Tax Cuts

A new tax deal set by the Danish government will place stronger conditions for entry to social welfare programs and payments for foreign citizens. The tax cut, which amounts to 5 billion kroner, aim to deliver 1,850-3,150 kroner to each Danish taxpayer, which is much less than the government’s original initiative of between 5,000-26,700 a year. Along with a job deduction, current employment deduction, and pension scheme deduction for Danish taxpayers, the cuts aim to fiance part of the revenue from foreigners seeking language classes among other government resources.

Previously-free Danish language classes will now cost 2,000 kroner per module, which totals 12,000 kroner if all six modules are taken, which is the requirement for residence permit forms. The text of the tax agreement reads, “”Tuition fees and deposits will provide an incentive for only self-sufficient, motivated students to take classes.” Students are expected to begin paying fees for classes beginning in July.

Education barriers have also been changed in the bill. Before the bill, residents who were present in Denmark for 7 out of 8 years in order to qualify. That has been changed to 9 out of 10 years, along with the supplementary requirement of the applicant having worked 2.5 of the last 10 years.

Global Quality Control for English Learner Programs

British Accreditation Council (BAC) CEO Paul Fear explains the rationale behind the organization’s move into the accreditation of English language providers (ELPs) worldwide

 

Language Magazine: Why was BAC formed, and what sort of organizations are accredited?

Paul Fear: BAC was formed as a charity in 1984 by the British Council and UK Department of Education at a time when the British government, led by Margaret Thatcher, was withdrawing state involvement across a range of industries. BAC’s original remit was to oversee independent further and higher education organizations in the UK with a view to encourage continuous improvement in standards in the sector and to provide transparency for students and other stakeholders.

We did this for some time, but oversight of organizations which receive public funding has become the preserve of statutory bodies such as OFSTED (Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills) and QAA (Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education).

Effectively, any organization that either receives public funding directly or takes students who receive public funding largely falls under the remit of these two organizations. As a result, BAC’s role has changed, although our focus on raising standards and providing transparency for all stakeholders not only continues but is now central to all of our work. We have a statutory function in the UK in that any institution we accredit in the UK can accept international students under the short-term study visa regime.

This means that, in the UK, we accredit a diverse and eclectic mix of organizations. These range from an organization that offers an internationally highly regarded PhD program, some of the world’s leading deep-sea diving schools, high-end executive education, and music schools through to specialized summer schools.

On top of this, we continue to accredit a number of private higher and further education organizations. This reflects the wonderful diversity and dynamism of the UK education and training sector, and we are very proud to be able to support their work. Internationally, we work with higher education organizations, private training providers, and now, with the launch of the International English Language Accreditation scheme, English language providers. We also work with NGOs and governments in developing quality-assurance capacity. By way of example, we have worked with the Higher Education Commission of Bahrain to develop an accreditation system for the kingdom’s higher education sector.

LM: Why did you decide to move into the accreditation of English language providers?

PF: We had been approached by organizations on a number of occasions asking for accreditation, so they could demonstrate to their students and other stakeholders that they offered high-quality provision.

While we had been discussing the idea internally for some time, research showed us that the English language market contains some outstanding providers but there is almost no international mechanism to encourage the sharing of best practice, to recognize high-quality provision, or to provide transparency for stakeholders. This means centers of excellence struggle to differentiate themselves from other providers, to the detriment of all.

As a result of the research, BAC took the decision to develop the International English Language Provider scheme with the view to providing a world-leading accreditation scheme which would recognize excellence in the sector, encourage the sharing of best practice, and provide transparency and confidence in accredited organizations.

LM: Will schools in English-speaking countries and non-English-speaking countries be able to apply for accreditation on the same terms?

PF: Absolutely! All organizations from any country are treated in exactly the same way for accreditation purposes.

From September, though, we will be introducing differentiation pricing dependent on the income of the country. Although we are still working on the details, we are likely to use the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) list of low-income, middle-income, and high-income countries to set fees. This will, we hope, allow organizations from all countries to be recognized for the quality of their provision.

LM: How does BAC accreditation differ from British Council accreditation of schools in the UK?

PF: I should point out here that the BAC scheme is not aimed at the UK but is designed for organizations outside of the UK.

The BAC scheme is designed for an international audience, whereas the UK is a highly regulated environment with a number of statutory and regulatory bodies overseeing the way organizations operate. Ultimately, though, the key difference would, I suggest, be the attention BAC focuses, in addition to other areas, on the student experience, which includes the validity of the assessment process. We believe we have developed a world-leading quality-assurance framework for the international sector, incorporating best practice from across the education and training sector.

LM: Is BAC accreditation a guarantee of quality? What are the key standards?

PF: BAC accreditation means an organization has met BAC standards, and their report is published and is publicly available for anyone to read. It means that the organization is considered by us to be a trustworthy organization, and we list in our inspection reports areas for improvement. We work hard to ensure that organizations maintain and improve the quality of provision and have mechanisms to monitor provision.

While we cannot guarantee that all provision will always be high quality—we would have to spend all our time at every school to do that—we can guarantee the organization has met our standards, has an effective quality-assurance mechanism in place to monitor quality within the accredited organization, and that if a problem should arise, BAC will always act to address quality-assurance issues.

The Five Key Inspection Areas Are:

Management, staffing, administration, and quality assurance

This area covers the ownership of the organization, management, the efficacy and effectiveness of administration, the assurance of adequate and properly qualified staff, the information provided to students, the mechanisms to ensure they are enrolled in appropriate courses, and the organization’s internal quality-assurance mechanism.

Teaching, learning and assessment

This area assesses academic management, course content and delivery, learning resources, assessment and student feedback, and student support and advice.

Learner welfare

This area covers the pastoral support students receive and, if offered, accommodation and social activities.

Premises and facilities

This area covers, as the name suggests, the quality of premises, classroom provision, etc.

Online, distance, and blended learning (ODBL)

For those organizations offering distance learning, we have an additional set of standards covering ODBL.

LM: Will BAC accreditation come with British Council endorsement, and is there a campaign to publicize BAC?

PF: No, BAC accreditation is not endorsed by the British Council and we would not seek their endorsement. The British Council have a number of their own language centers, and any endorsement would be a clear conflict of interest.

Secondly, we specifically set out to develop a world-leading quality-assurance scheme drawing on best practice from across the educational spectrum and drawing on BAC’s 34 years of experience.

The British Council, I am sure, will be proud of the work conducted in their schools internationally, but BAC does not run schools. Our focus is ensuring that students and stakeholders have the best possible information about schools and so can make informed choices about where they study, as well as encouraging the sharing of best practice and raising standards.

We are in the middle of a major publicity campaign since the launch of the scheme, which was held at the Houses of Parliament in the UK.

This attracted significant press attention, and we are supporting this with a social media campaign. Other ongoing activities include sponsorship and attendance of conferences as well as our ongoing publicity and communication campaigns.

We find the most effective publicity comes from BAC-accredited institutions and their students. We now accredit in more than 20 countries, and the BAC quality mark is rapidly becoming widely recognizable among students and other stakeholders, such as governments.

LM: Will providers of online or hybrid English programs be eligible for accreditation?

PF: Definitely, as mentioned above, we have specifically built in standards for online and distance learning. We are finding that ever-increasing numbers of institutions offer online learning alongside traditional teaching. This reflects the trend across all education and training providers, so we have taken the decision to build in standards for ODBL across all of our schemes.

For more information on BAC, visit www.the-bac.org. 

The Future of Education is in Two Languages

Fabrice Jaumont is convinced that dual-language education should be the norm rather than the exception

 

Gregg Roberts once said that monolingualism is the illiteracy of the 21st century. So, I ask, what if we lived in a world where every child could grow up bilingual? If this idea inspires you, then know that there is a way to do it. Through the hard work of parents and educators, a renewed push for bilingual programs is changing the educational landscape of schools, communities, and cities around the world.

Over the last two decades, the American approach to education has gradually shifted away from the mastery of one language to the goal of bilingualism, language enrichment, and the preservation of heritages and cultures. This new approach has pushed linguistic communities to create dual-language programs that have embraced these new goals. The new programs have attracted thousands upon thousands of families who embrace multilingualism and have triggered interest among many parents who wish that they themselves had had access to such programs in their local schools when they were younger.

Although the roots of bilingual education in the U.S. can be traced back to the early 17th century, a new phenomenon is emerging with three objectives: first, to espouse the cultures specific to families and linguistic communities and to promote this cultural heritage as an important part of the mosaic of our society; second, to help facilitate reconciliation between parents and schools and encourage a fruitful dialogue between parents, school administrators, and education professionals; and third, to promote a social, economic, and cultural environment that is respectful of all and helps to bridge the gulfs that divide us today.

Bilingual education means different things to different people. Some want access to English and the equal opportunity it provides. Others want to sustain their heritage and utilize bilingual education as a tool to do so. Others are interested in the benefits of bilingualism for cognitive development. Others are interested in the acquisition of a second, third, or fourth language because of the professional opportunities and advantages it will yield. Ultimately, these perspectives share the same goal: to create a multilingual society with greater access to languages and cultures.

It is critical that we make an effort to weave together these different perspectives, ensuring that more dual-language programs are created to generate greater opportunities for all children. Being bilingual is no longer superfluous, nor the privilege of a happy few. Being bilingual is no longer taboo for immigrants who want so dearly for their children to blend seamlessly into their new environment. Being bilingual is the new norm, and it must start with our youngest citizens.

By affording the advantages of bilingualism to as many children as possible, we can bring forth a viable 21st-century approach that will advance the growth of our societies by encouraging communities to invest in their linguistic heritages, by pushing schools to embrace dual-language education, and by raising new generations to be multilingual citizens of the world. This vision is reinforced by the belief that when quality bilingual education is available to everyone—in public schools across the country from preschool to college—our children’s chances of success improve, our schools flourish, and our communities thrive.

More importantly, this vision places parents at the center of change, as they have the power to transform the educational landscapes of their communities. The parents who have spearheaded recent dual-language programs, some of whom provide testimonials in my book, value the benefits of bilingualism, biliteracy, and biculturalism. They ask that schools help foster multilingual competencies and encourage new language acquisition as early as possible, preferably through immersive programs. Some of these parents are also motivated by a strong desire to sustain their linguistic heritages and ask that schools place value on their children’s heritage languages and cultures.

As school authorities reconstruct bilingual education so that it serves more children and meets new objectives, it is important to empower parents to make a difference by forming initiatives and establishing new dual-language programs. This would be a huge benefit for any society whose citizens are willing to open their minds to the world—the world of others—by mastering languages and discovering new cultures.

The initiatives that I have supported in New York and in other cities are the fruits of a bottom-up, grassroots approach conducted through the efforts of parents that positively transformed schools and communities in unprecedented ways. To succeed, parents should educate themselves on various aspects of bilingualism, bilingual education, community engagement, and the organization of volunteers. They also need to understand the partnerships that are required to build strong programs and gain the commitment of school leaders, the dedication of teachers, and the ceaseless involvement of parents at all levels.

With this informed approach and sensitivity, parents and schools hosting these programs can benefit from the multifaceted population they serve. These programs also call upon the diversity of the teaching staff, as well as their ability to incorporate linguistic and cultural differences into their pedagogy. As this model is rich in cognitive advancement and beneficial to the brain’s functions, the payoffs for our children and our communities are significant.

It is important to acknowledge the fact that, in the context of the U.S., issues of race, poverty, segregation, class, and gentrification have had and continue to have a significant bearing on the development of bilingual-education programs and on public education in this country. We must be careful that these programs do not become exclusively for the privileged, and we must continue to work in solidarity with minority communities that have the most to gain from these programs and the most to lose should their neighborhoods become gentrified.

With the benefits of bilingualism and multiculturalism becoming clearer to researchers—in particular the impact of bilingualism on cognitive enhancement, critical thinking, and sensitivity toward other people and cultures—it is equally important that we find ways to inspire and engage all parents to become bilingual “revolutionaries.” These individuals will not just be advocates of bilingual education but true pioneers willing to spur positive change in their societies and re-enchant the public with public schools, all while promoting an active community life (socially, economically, culturally) and a mutual understanding and respect for minority groups and people of varying sociolinguistic and economic backgrounds. This is the path to breaking the crippling cycle whereby access to good education is often linked to household income and status.

Dual-language education has enormous potential. Why? Because our children are part of a world that is shrinking and in which languages serve as pathways to understanding others around the globe, as well as understanding who we are. Our children deserve the opportunity to connect not only with their relatives and friends but also with their and others’ cultures and histories. This learning approach has the potential to foster respect, tolerance, and mutual understanding. These are the cornerstones of a peaceful world.

We need to embrace and advance homegrown bilingualism, but that can only happen if we offer these languages in public schools. Furthermore, immigrant children raised in environments that value the language of their parents learn the dominant language faster, as many of the studies discussed in this book will show. Today, more and more students benefit from full-time dual-language programs in public schools and graduate fully bilingual, biliterate, and bicultural.

Like many parents, I am convinced that bilingual education is a universal good that should be offered everywhere, because it can constructively change a child, a school, a community, and even a country.

Fabrice Jaumont is the author of The Bilingual Revolution: The Future of Education is in Two Languages (TBR Books, 2017), Partenaires inégaux. Fondations américaines et universités en Afrique (Editions de la Maison des sciences de l’homme, 2018), and Unequal Partners: American Foundations and Higher Education Development in Africa (Palgrave-MacMillan, 2016). He holds a PhD in comparative and international education from New York University. He is currently a program officer for the FACE Foundation in New York and the education attaché for the Embassy of France to the U.S. This article is the transcript of his keynote speech for Language Advocacy Day on February 15, 2018, in Washington, DC.

New App, Color Game, for Language Evolution

CREDIT: MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR THE SCIENCE OF HUMAN HISTORY

Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena, Germany and the Mint Minds and Traditions Research Group (a Max Planck research group) have released a new app that introduces a new way to study language evolution.

The app aims to gamify language learning by asking players to communicate specific colors to each other using only a series of black and white symbols. Essentially, the game allows players to create their own language to communicate, and their processes will be recorded for scientific research.

The way it works is, one player is presented with a target color, say green. They attempt to communicate to the other player the color green without using any words. Instead, they use a set of black and white symbols that come with the game to communicate the color. The symbols themselves have no associations with color, yet the associations can be made. It sounds a bit more confusing than it actually is, watch a video below to see how it works.

The creators of the game say, “Can we communicate across the barrier of languages, with images instead of sounds? The scientists behind the color game will document the evolution of a new kind of language, a language beyond words. They will explore the way that new symbols emerge, acquire a meaning, or change their meaning, over time and across space. Will the color game give birth to different dialects, languages that only some people can understand but not others? Will the images of the color game evolve in the same way that words for colour evolved through human history? These are some of the questions that the creators of the Color Game hope to answer.”

Did Ford’s Model T Kill Midwest German Dialects?

After decades of research, University of Kansas researcher William Keel believes it was Henry Ford, not Kaiser Bill, who was responsible for the decline of the distinctive German dialects spoken by immigrants and their descendants in five Kansas and Missouri settlements during the 20th century.

His theory is that you couldn’t keep their youngsters down on the farm after Ford’s automobile came to the isolated agricultural settlements that had been established in the mid-19th century.

It was that, far more than any anti-German sentiment in the aftermath of World War I, that led to the decline of these linguistically distinctive communities, Keel says, and so he argues in a chapter of “Contemporary Language Contacts in the Context of Migration” (Winter publishing, Heidelberg, Germany).

The exception to the rule is the increasing population of speakers of Pennsylvania German in Kansas: Old Order Amish. They shun the automobile and remain in rural isolation.

Keel, professor of Germanic languages & literatures, has been studying—interviewing, recording and writing about—these communities since the 1980s. He and his students have published online the Linguistic Atlas of Kansas German Dialects, where the settlements are mapped out and sound samples of native speakers are preserved.

In his article, Keel profiles the following groups, sketching their migratory history, landmarks and distinctive communal features, often involving religion:

  • Saxon Lutherans in Eastern Perry County, Missouri
  • North German Lutherans in Concordia, Lafayette County, Missouri
  • Horseshoe Creek Lutherans in Marshall and Washington counties, Kansas
  • Volga-German Catholics in Schoenchen, Ellis County, Kansas
  • Herndon Hungarian-Germans in Rawlins County, Kansas

In each case, the decline in language usage followed a similar, generational pattern, until today there are only a few hundred fluent speakers of these dialects in the two states.

“There were maybe 5,000 Volga German speakers in Ellis County, Kansas, in the 1980s,” Keel claims. “Today, there are a few hundred.”

German Growth in Kansas

Interestingly, Keel says, the 21st century has seen the growth of one other pocket of German-speaking immigrants—who arrived via Poland, Ukraine, Canada, and Mexico—in southwest Kansas, attracted by jobs in feedlots and meatpacking.

“They speak a variety of Low German called ‘Plautdietsch,’” Keel said. “There are maybe 3,000 to 5,000 German-speaking Mennonites in southwest Kansas. It impacts the school system, with requirements for English as a Second Language courses. It also affects the Kansas statewide health program for farm workers.”

Babies Like the Sound of their Own Voices

Although infants do appreciate the coos of their parents, they seem to prefer to hear sounds from other babies, according to a new Canadian study.

Even at the pre-babbling stage—before they can form sounds resembling syllables like “ba ba ba” —infants recognize vowel-like sounds, but they tend to dwell on these sounds when from the mouths of babes. In an experiment, 5-month-old subjects spent 40% longer listening to sounds from babies than adult vocalizations of the same vowels.

This result and follow-up experiments probing infant speech perception are shining a new light on “how infants develop their understanding of spoken language – what they bring innately and what is shaped by their experience as listeners and as ‘talkers-in-training,’” said Linda Polka, a professor at Montréal’s McGill University.

At last week’s 175th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Polka presented findings from a new line of research focusing on a neglected aspect of infant speech development: how babies perceive speech with infant vocal properties (“When infants encounter infant speech”).

Studies by Polka’s team show pre-babbling babies’ fondness for their vocal sounds. Even moms’ best imitations of their vowel-like vocalizations—identical in pitch—can’t compete with infants’ preference for their own acoustic vocal properties, uniquely formed by the resonance of their very small bodies.

“Access to infant speech, likely including a baby’s own vocalizations, seems to have a broad and significant impact, influencing receptive, expressive and motivational aspects of speech development,” Polka said.

This work emerged from a collaboration between Polka, doctoral student Matthew Masapollo and Lucie Ménard, a linguistics professor at the University of Québec in Montréal and expert in speech production.

Using a synthesizer that simulates movements of the mouth, tongue, vocal cords and other parts involved in generating speech, Ménard can create vowel sounds just like those that come from a human mouth – at any age.

To test how infants respond to vowel sounds spoken by different talkers, babies sat facing a screen displaying a checkerboard pattern. They could turn a sound on or off by looking at or away from the checkerboard.

After determining infants attend more to vowels that sound like theirs compared to simulations of adult females, the team focused on different dimensions of each sound. A key question was whether babies’ high voice pitch, which women often match when speaking to their infants, is sufficient to grab their attention. Or are the unique resonance properties of infants also key?

Recent tests with 7-month-olds, the age at which infants are on the verge of babbling, strongly indicate that infants have a distinct preference for speech sounds that resemble theirs in terms of the combination of high pitch and resonance. Infants appear “tuned” to sounds produced by very small talkers just like them.

This doesn’t mean that mom or dad should give up oohing and aahing in high voices. Babies do respond to these kinds of sounds. Still, Polka said, “Infants’ own vocalizations are quite potent; infant speech seems to capture and hold infant attention, sometimes prompting positive emotions. This may motivate infants to be vocally active and make it easier to evaluate their own vocalizations, perhaps energizing and supporting spoken language development.”

 

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