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ELL/Spanish Specialist Appointed to Lead White House Hispanic Initiative

Aimee Viana has been appointed to the position of executive director of the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanics (the Initiative).

According to a statement, :”Viana will work closely with the Hispanic community and the President’s Advisory Commission on Educational Excellence for Hispanics. She will align the work of the Initiative with the Department’s goal of rethinking education while expanding opportunities and improving educational outcomes for Latinos of all ages. Viana will also undertake the coordination of the Federal Interagency Working Group on Educational Excellence for Hispanics, partnering with other federal agencies to focus on the educational system and challenges facing the Hispanic community.”

Prior to her appointment, Viana was the senior executive director of the Secretariat for Lay Formation, Marriage, and Family Life for the Catholic Diocese of Raleigh, North Carolina, serving a population of nearly 500,000 individuals in over 32,000 square miles in that state. In this capacity, she implemented, led, and managed a new organizational structure and facilitated, in both English and Spanish, a leadership team focused on community support for children and families, youths and young adults, married life, and adult formation. In these efforts, Viana also administered the Hispanic ministry, African ancestry ministry, and Native-American ministry, among others. During this time, Viana focused on improving her team’s cross-functional performance, alignment, and accountability to its diverse constituents. She also collaborated to develop, initiate, and host the weekly Spanish-language internet news brief “Desde Raleigh a Roma” to further engage stakeholders through effective social media communications.

Previously, Viana undertook various roles in education. She served as a school principal and assistant principal, including at a U.S. Department of Education Blue Ribbon School of Excellence. Viana was honored as a top middle school principal in Western Wake County (North Carolina) by Cary Magazine in 2016. She was also recognized by Latino American Who’s Who in 2012 for her achievement in advancing the culture of the Latino-American community.

As a former elementary and middle school teacher, Viana fostered individual student development and support of families. She began her teaching career in Miami-Dade County Public Schools (Florida), serving a large percentage of Hispanic students, and went on to teach Spanish to middle school students in North Carolina.

A daughter of Cuban immigrants, Viana holds a Bachelor of Science degree in elementary education, with endorsement to teach English as a second language, and a Master of Science degree in early childhood education—both from Florida International University in Miami, Florida. She went on to complete the School Leaders Program at Florida Atlantic University, acquiring certification in educational leadership with specialization in K–12 school-site supervision. Viana holds teaching certificates in pre-K through elementary education, K–12 English as a second language, Spanish K–12 education, and school administration. Viana lives in northern Virginia with her husband, José, who is assistant deputy secretary and director of the Office of English Language Acquisition (OELA), and their three children.

Ancient Script Found in Sudan

In northern Sudan, archaeologists have uncovered a trove of new artifacts at the necropolis of Sedeinga, an ancient Nubian city. Tablets, lintels, and steles covered in the mysterious script of one of the oldest known written languages will hopefully provide more insight into this ancient culture.

Sedeinga is known for its group of small pyramids and the ruins of an ancient Egyptian temple dedicated to Queen Tiye, who ruled the kingdom jointly with her husband, Amenhotep III, during its peak between 1386 and 1349 BCE. She was also the grandmother of Tutankhamun. Between 600 and 300 BC, the necropolis was part of the kingdoms of Napata and Meroe, a civilization that merged local tradition and ideology with those of the ancient Egyptians. Collectively, these two kingdoms were known together as the Kingdom of Kush by the Egyptians. There is very little documentation on these civilizations, but it is known that they used to speak the Meroitic language, which is thought to be one of the oldest written languages known from Africa.

Often called Kushite, the language was used as early as 2000 BC and went extinct sometime around 550 BC. Even though it was in use for so long, little is known about it, as there are few surviving texts.

All Australian Languages Linked

New research has found a groundbreaking link between Australian Indigenous languages, demonstrating for the first time that they all descend from one common ancestor.

The unprecedented finding sheds new light on the origins of Australian language and has significant implications for the cultural history of Australia.

The result of a collaboration between the University of Newcastle (UON) and Western Sydney University (WSU), this finding signifies the first time the theory that all Australian languages derive from one language, Proto-Australian, has been proven.

UON chief investigator and historical linguist, associate professor Mark Harvey, said the finding was an exciting culmination of a three-year project, which he hoped would enhance the understanding of Australian and human history.

“Until now, it was speculated that Australia was significantly more linguistically diverse than somewhere like Europe, because it had not been proven that all Australian languages actually stemmed from the same lineage,” he said.

“This is the first demonstration that all Australian languages are part of the same language family. This language family spread across all of Australia, presumably from a small area in northern Australia. This spread is likely to have been carried out by at least some population movement whose material and genetic traces have remained somewhat elusive.

“However, with further interdisciplinary research, this new linguistic evidence is likely to give us a more precise reconstruction of Australian prehistory from what is currently known,” Associate Professor Harvey said.

The project used the standard method in historical linguistics to establish whether similarity between languages was due to inheritance from a common ancestor, as opposed to transfer from one language to another through human contact or chance.

WSU chief investigator, associate professor Robert Mailhammer, said the findings revealed recurrent similarities between languages that were not in contact.

“We discovered that the sounds of words we compared showed recurrent systematic differences and similarities across a set of languages that are spread out in a geographically discontinuous way—which makes it very unlikely that they are the result of chance or language contact,” Mailhammer said.

“While a multitude of Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages were spoken at the time of European settlement, the findings also imply that Indigenous Australian languages only spread after the end of the last ice age, some 10–12,000 years ago.

“These findings show that Indigenous Australian languages were not the likely languages spoken by the first inhabitants of Australia, raising more questions around how the languages spread and how the linguistic findings connect to the genetic findings,” added Mailhammer.

This project was funded under an Australian Research Centre (ARC) 2014 Discovery Project Grant. The key research findings were published in the journal Diachronica.

Chinese Celebrations and Inaugurations

The United Nations celebrated its ninth Chinese Language Day last month at its offices worldwide.

Celebrations in New York included lectures on Chinese culture, film screenings, panel discussions on education, and art exhibitions. Lectures on Chinese poetry, calligraphy, and painting attracted UN staff from around the world. The event also offered them an opportunity to practice Chinese calligraphy, draw in the Chinese style, and play classical Chinese musical instruments.

Professors and scholars from China’s Zhejiang University and Columbia University in the U.S. talked about education in China in relation to the UN’s sustainable development goals. At the opening ceremony, Liu Zhenmin, UN undersecretary-general for economic and social affairs, reminded the audience that Chinese is one of the oldest languages in the world and one of the six official languages of the UN, and that its importance was rising with China’s economic growth and increasing involvement in global affairs.

Wu Haitao, China’s deputy permanent representative to the UN, said the Chinese language bears testimony to the evolvement of the UN, as well as the increasingly closer relationship between it and China. “Maintaining world peace and promoting common development are our shared goals,” he said. Over 10 million people follow the UN on Chinese social media such as Weibo and WeChat, Wu added.

Speaking at the opening of an exhibition, Charm of Chinese Culture: from Characters to Literature, at the UN Office at Geneva (UNOG), Michael Mølller, director-general of UNOG, said, “Multilingualism is the basis for multilateralism. Only if we understand each other can we find common ground.” He praised the “ambitious project of learning Chinese for their invaluable contribution to building bridges across language divides.”

The Geneva exhibition had an interactive workshop with touch screen games, video clips, and demonstrations of Chinese calligraphy. Books of contemporary Chinese literature and their translations were also presented.

China’s permanent representative and ambassador to the UNOG, Yu Jianhua, explained that one of the thousands of Chinese characters in use today that holds the key to understanding Chinese philosophy is Min, or “people” in English. This, he said, is central to the idea of “putting people first, a founding principle of the Chinese society” and a value echoed by the UN’s theme for 2018 of “people at the center.”

UN Chinese Language Day has been observed on April 20 every year since 2010, celebrating the language’s contribution to the world while encouraging more people to learn it. April 20 marks the Guyu, Grain Rain, or “Rain of Millet” in Chinese. The Guyu is sixth of the 24 solar terms in the traditional lunar calendar, the day when farmers start sowing. It is also the day to pay tribute to Cangjie, an imaginary figure in traditional Chinese lore regarded as the inventor of Chinese characters. Legend has it that when he invented the characters, the gods and ghosts cried and the sky rained millet.

Drums Amplify Speech Across Amazon

The Amazonian Bora people mimic the rhythm of their language using drums. Credit: GAIAMEDIA/AEXCRAM

The Amazonian Bora people mimic the rhythm of their language for communication over large distances using drums

Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and the Université Grenoble Alpes have found that the drummed speech of the Northwest Amazon Boras not only reproduces the melody of words and sentences in this endangered language, but also their rhythm. This suggests the crucial role of linguistic rhythm in language processing has been underestimated.

The human voice can produce rich and varied acoustic signals to transmit information. Normally, this transmission only has a reach of about 200 yards. The Boras, an indigenous group of about 1,500 members residing in small communities in the Amazonian rainforest of Colombia and Peru, can extend this range by a factor of 100 by emulating Bora phrases in sequences of drumbeats. The Boras do this with manguaré drums pairs of wooden slit drums traditionally carved from single logs (each about two yards) through burning. Each drum can produce two pitches, a pair four in total.

The Boras use manguaré drums in two ways. One is the “musical mode”, which is used to perform memorized drum sequences with little or no variation as part of rituals and festivals. The other is the “talking mode”, which is used to transmit relatively informal messages and public announcements. “For example, the manguaré is used to ask someone to bring something or to come do something, to announce the outcome of non-alcoholic drinking competitions or the arrival of visitors”, says Seifart of the former Department of Linguistics at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology where the major part of the now published work was done. “In this model, only two pitches are used and each beat corresponds to a syllable of a corresponding phrase of spoken Bora. The announcements contain on average 15 words and 60 drum beats.”

Rhythm essential

The Boras use drummed Bora to mimic the tone and rhythm of their spoken language and to elaborate Bora phrases in order to overcome remaining ambiguities. “Rhythm turns out to be crucial for distinguishing words in drummed Bora”, says Seifart. “There are four rhythmic units encoded in the length of pauses between beats. These units correspond to vowel-to-vowel intervals with different numbers of consonants and vowel lengths. The two phonological tones represented in drummed speech encode only a few lexical contrasts. Rhythm therefore appears to crucially contribute to the intelligibility of drummed Bora.”

This, the researchers argue, provides novel evidence for the role of rhythmic structures composed of vowel-to-vowel intervals in the complex puzzle concerning the redundancy and distinctiveness of acoustic features embedded in speech.

 

 

Society-wide Benefits of DACA

According to a National Bureau of Economic Research working paper, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program has had a “significant impact” on the educational outcomes of undocumented immigrant youth, including a 15% increase in high school graduation rates, an extra 49,000 Hispanics obtaining a high school diploma, a 45% drop in teenage motherhood, and a 25% increase in college enrollment among Hispanic women.

Researchers from Dartmouth University, Southern Methodist University, and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute found that DACA had a significant impact on adolescents’ schooling, work, and fertility decisions. Their preferred estimates analyzing Hispanics show that DACA led to a 3.3 percentage point (p.p.) increase in the school attendance of 14 to 18-year olds and an 11.4p.p. increase in the high school completion of 19-year olds, relative to a mean of 75%. The results imply that more than 49,000 additional Hispanic youth obtained a high school diploma because of DACA. This large response coupled with the fact that the effects are significantly larger for males, who have an elevated risk of deportation, suggests that teenagers value the benefits of DACA and remain in school to attain eligibility.

The paper implemented a difference-in-differences design by comparing DACA eligible to non-eligible individuals over time to find that DACA had a significant impact on the investment decisions of undocumented youth, suggesting that DACA raised aspirations for education above and beyond qualifying for legal status. It even found that the same individuals who acquire more schooling also work more (at the same time), counter to the typical intuition that these behaviors are mutually exclusive, indicating that the program generated a large boost in productivity

Under the eligibility rules of DACA, applicants had to be enrolled in school, have graduated from high school, have a GED, or be an honorably discharged veteran.

The researchers did warn that the research has yet to undergo peer review or review by the National Bureau of Economic Research’s board of directors.

The paper is available at http://www.nber.org/papers/w24315

To Celebrate World Book Day, Spanish Language Day, and English Language Day, 10 Books from Spanish Authors to Read in English or Spanish

 

Today is a big day, with three coinciding celebrations all at once. World Book Day is a celebration of authors, books, and most importantly, reading. According to their website, it is “the biggest celebration of its kind, designated by UNESCO as a worldwide celebration of books and reading, and marked in over 100 countries all over the world.” There are many events happening in honor of the day, including a two-day readathon of Don Quixote.

Spanish language day was created to celebrate multiculturalism and multilingualism, while English language day aims to increase awareness of the history of English and falls on the birthday (and day of death) of William Shakespeare.

Books In Spanish
1. Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
2. The City of Marvels by Eduardo Mendoza
3. Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges
4. The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolano
5. The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende
6. Feast of the Goat by Mario Vargas Llosa
7. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
8. Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel
9. Waiting for Snow in Havana by Carlos Eire
10. In the Time of Butterflies by Julia Alvarez

Spanish Fades with Generations

Although U.S. Latinos believe it’s important for future generations of Hispanics to speak Spanish and the vast majority speak the language to their children, less Latino parents ensure their children speak Spanish as they become second- and third-generation, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis.

Overall, 85% of Latino parents say they speak Spanish to their children, according to the Center’s 2015 National Survey of Latinos. Among immigrant parents, the figure increases to 97%, but it drops to 71% among U.S.-born second-generation Latino parents (those with at least one immigrant parent). And it falls to just 49% among third or higher generation Latino parents – those born in the U.S. to U.S.-born parents.

Spanish use also declines in mixed families. Over 90% of Latino parents with a Latino spouse or partner speak Spanish to their children, but only 55% of Latino parents with a non-Latino-partner or spouse say they speak Spanish to their children.

Encouragement to Speak Spanish

About 70% of all Hispanic parents say they often encourage their children to speak Spanish, but again, successive generations are less likely to continue doing this.

Ninety percent of Latinos say Spanish was spoken in their home when they were growing up, and 81% say their parents often or sometimes encouraged them to speak Spanish when growing up. It is worth noting that 20% of Latino adults say their parents often or sometimes discouraged them from speaking Spanish when growing up.) Today, nearly all Latinos (96%) say their parents speak Spanish, and unlike some other measures, this percentage is relatively steady across generations.

Nearly all Hispanic adults also express a desire for the language to live on: 88% say it’s important to them that future generations of Hispanics living in the U.S. be able to speak Spanish, and this view holds across generations.

The Center’s 2015 survey findings also show that Spanish dominance is on the decline among second- and third-generation Latinos. While 61% of Hispanic immigrants in the U.S. are Spanish dominant (and another 32% are bilingual), the share who are Spanish dominant drops to 6% among second-generation Hispanics and to less than 1% among third or higher generation Hispanics. Meanwhile, the share of Hispanics who are English dominant rises across generations: Just seven percent of immigrant Hispanics are English dominant, a share that rises to 75% among third-generation Hispanics.

Overall, about 40 million people in the U.S. speak Spanish at home, making it the country’s second-most spoken language. At the same time, growth in the number of Spanish-speaking Hispanics has slowed, according to the Center’s analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data. As a result, the share of Hispanics who speak Spanish at home has declined, while the share that speaks only English at home has increased, especially among children.

These trends are expected to continue as Hispanics born in the U.S. increasingly drive the group’s population growth, in large part due to slowing immigration from Mexico (and, to a lesser extent, high intermarriage rates). Already, most U.S. Hispanics say a person doesn’t need to speak Spanish to be considered Hispanic.

 

Newspapers, Childhood Reading Key to Strong Vocabulary

Researchers at London’s Institute of Education have found that children who are avid readers reap the rewards well into adulthood. The participants of the study who were avid readers as children scored significantly higher on vocabulary tests as adults.

“The long-term influence of reading for pleasure on vocabulary that we have identified may well be because the frequent childhood readers continued to read throughout their twenties and thirties,” lead author Professor Alice Sullivan told The Telegraph. “In other words, they developed ‘good’ reading habits in childhood and adolescence that they have subsequently benefited from.”

The study tested the vocabulary of 9,400 British people by asking them to match words to their meanings throughout their lives from age 10 to 42. Avid childhood readers scored and average of 67% at age 42, while participants who didn’t read for pleasure as children scored 51%.

However, not all texts are created equal when it comes to building lifelong vocabulary skills. Choice of reading material affected how well participants scored on vocabulary tests.

Readers of “high-brow” literature, such as award-winning novels, improved the most between the ages of 16 and 42. Also, participants who read quality newspapers, whether in print or online, improved more than participants who did not read newspapers.

Tabloid newspapers proved to be almost worthless in enriching vocabulary. In fact, participants who read tabloids scored worse than participants who never read any kind of periodical. Tabloid readers scored 57%, while people who didn’t read newspapers scored 61% and readers of quality newspapers scored 76%.

“A number of these findings are intriguing,” said Professor Sullivan. “It was interesting, for example, to find that readers of tabloid newspapers did less well in the age 42 vocabulary tests than those who didn’t take a newspaper.

“This is, however, in line with our previous work which showed that the presence of tabloid newspapers in the home during childhood was linked to poor cognitive attainment at age 16.”

Latvia Drops Russian High Schools

Last month, the Latvian Parliament (Saeima) passed amendments to its education laws according to which ethnic-minority schools will have to transition to Latvian-only secondary education in the 2019/2020 academic year. In passing the amendments, lawmakers rejected a petition calling for the preservation of bilingual education signed by over 10,000 Latvian citizens.

When education and science minister Kārlis Šadurskis proposed the education reform late last year, it caused a wave of protests from Latvia’s Russian-speaking community.
Aware of the political consequences, Prime Minister Māris Kučinskis pushed for the reforms to be adopted quickly so that the issue would be settled before the general elections scheduled for early October.

Already in preschools, starting from the age of five, new education guidelines will be introduced in 2019/2020 school year, providing for a bigger role of the Latvian language in the study process.

A new bilingual education model will be introduced in grades 1–6, ensuring that at least 50% of the subjects are taught in Latvian, and in grades 7–9, ensuring that at least 80% of the study contents are in Latvian in 2019/2020. The final exams for the ninth-grade pupils will be held entirely in Latvian.

Starting in 2021/2022, all general education subjects in high school (grades 10–12) will be taught only in Latvian, while children of ethnic minorities will continue learning their native languages, literatures, and subjects related to culture and history in their respective minority languages.

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