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The International Benefits of Language Education

Michael Nugent, Martha “Marty” Abbott , Esther Brimmer, and Sanford J. Ungar discuss the importance of language education to the U.S. on the international stage

This summer, the Council on Foreign Relations (ww.cfr.org) convened a meeting of experts to discuss foreign language learning in the U.S. education system, as well as learning methods that go beyond the classroom walls and the value of foreign language learning to U.S. national security. Here is a key excerpt:

UNGAR: Michael, do you have to—do you sort of proselytize? Has [Defense] Secretary Mattis heard your pitch yet?
NUGENT: I don’t think the secretary has heard it, but I know he was very engaged when he was wearing the uniform… Yes, we do proselytize all the time, that’s kind of our mission. It’s part of our statute to advocate for language learning. We do a lot of outreach.
But I think our biggest problem is—is that many people tell me, “oh, yeah, I took Spanish in high school, it was terrible, I can’t say a word.” Well, that’s our biggest problem, it’s that some of the teaching that happened in the past was pretty bad.
And Marty’s organization [ACTFL] is working very hard, as we are through our various programs, trying to get students learning effectively, so when they graduate from college, they’re not only able to order a beer, maybe they can actually sit up here. Our students who finish the Flagship Program at 26 universities across the country doing the language flagship in Korean, in Persian even, in twelve universities doing Chinese, five doing Arabic, four doing Russian—when those students finish, they can sit on this panel and have this conversation in those target languages.
UNGAR: How many of those students are there now altogether?
NUGENT: Currently enrolled? Currently enrolled, we have signed up a little over a thousand, but there are 2,000 taking courses in the programs across the country.
UNGAR: And how many have come through the program altogether, if that’s meaningful?
NUGENT: It is meaningful because it takes a while and the program is fairly new. It does involve an overseas program. But I believe we have fully certified around 500 people that have gone through this program, that have tested at the level three or the ILR, which means you’re professionally proficient. It means they’re like those folks who come from Europe and speak here on this stage in English. They’re using Chinese, Arabic, and Russian at that level. It’s pretty amazing.
UNGAR: The same level as people who come here?
NUGENT: Who come here from Europe, who are sitting up here having the same conversation. We are now doing a video project where we’re actually going to be sampling these students sitting in the kind of environment we are in now, speaking the language, and having people ask them questions. It is pretty amazing.
UNGAR: So, to ask an awkward question, if we have a foreign policy now that is characterized as an “America first” foreign policy, does it have room for promoting language study? Or is that a setback, too?
ABBOTT: You know, one thing we’ve found is that languages, for many reasons, resonate on both sides of the aisle.
NUGENT: That’s true.
ABBOTT: And we have just had a national report released, and it was commissioned by Congress.
UNGAR: This is the study by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
ABBOTT: Right, America’s Languages: Investing in Language Education for the 21st Century. And two Democratic and two Republican senators, as well as two Democratic and two Republican House members, commissioned the study. And we’re also seeing that at the state level with the Seal of Biliteracy. We have 26 states now that have enacted some kind of documentation on a high school senior’s transcript that demonstrates competence in two languages. And that has been passed by—
UNGAR: That’s a pretty big step.
ABBOTT: —state legislatures that tend to be fairly conservative.
BRIMMER: It’s interesting because we similarly see a bipartisan understanding that it’s important to invest in international competencies, so we, of course, look particularly at study abroad and international students coming to the U.S. And what’s striking is we just take something like the Simon bill, which was introduced both by Senator Durbin and Senator Wicker—
UNGAR: But was never enacted.
BRIMMER: Right, but reintroduced again, you know. And what’s interesting is it is actually saying that the ability to study abroad, which helps with immersion and really learning a language to a high level of competency, that this is an important skill for the U.S., and that being able to create greater access by funding to institutions would be beneficial.
What’s interesting is that particularly increasing access to study abroad is just as important for international affairs speakers and specialists as for an inner-city kid. You could be on a rural farm—it’s not a red state, blue state [issue]—it’s how do we get more Americans to have these opportunities. And that’s a bipartisan issue.
UNGAR: I have heard a person of some significance in this very room say that he thinks it’s not a great idea to waste your chits in college on language courses, that you should acquire language in some other informal ways but not spend your valuable X number of courses in college studying languages.
NUGENT: I would like to take that one because we’ve got great examples of how that is in fact probably true if the language is poorly taught. In the case of the Flagship Program, not only are we making liberal arts central to an engineer or whatever the major might be—because remember, we’re not doing language majors through Flagship, we’re saying to the Flagship major, “You, as an environmental science, or health sciences, or engineering student at UT”—for example—“doing Arabic at the University of Texas, you’re committing to learning to the highest levels possible, that is the professional level, while you’re in undergraduate study.” What ends up happening is that students’ central aspect of everything they do in engineering or health sciences focuses around their focus area of Arabic studies. And it just makes the richest experience for these students. It’s like an honors program. They come out and they are transformed, but also their disciplines are transformed. They are acting and working in their disciplines. When they go overseas, they study in their disciplines, so we are creating a kind of a mini honors program nationally that’s focused around this.
So, I would say your colleague is probably right if the language is poorly taught, because anything poorly taught is a waste of time. And I think that that’s usually what people are referencing. “I took, you know, language X in college, it was a waste of time.” Well, we’re trying to change that, and we’re trying to set very clear goals, very clear expectations, and then allowing, through funding and other mechanisms and working with universities, the creation of opportunities for these folks to meet these expectations.
UNGAR: I don’t know how many other people remember this. I was particularly sensitive to it as a college president at the time. But at some point, when he was running for president, Newt Gingrich—oh, I think I know when it was, 2012—mocked Mitt Romney for speaking French, and he said that he sounded just like John Kerry, he said at the time. (Laughter.) That was a pretty high level—a guy speaking who has a lot of people he resonates with as a politician. That’s one that I’d ask you to address.
The other one is this perennial effort, which I think is perhaps not active at the moment, to declare English the official language of the U.S., which—I don’t think that bill has ever passed either house of Congress. S. I. Hayakawa, the late senator from California, was the great proponent of it, and having his Japanese name, I think people felt that lent it somehow some more credibility.
It never achieved its goal, but it was a pretty powerful influence. So, how do we address those two phenomena in the face of a new awareness about studying language?
ABBOTT: I think we need to create a new normal in this country the way it is around the world. In almost every other country of the world, if it’s not an anglophone country, it’s very normal to grow up speaking more than one language.
I think what happened in the case of Newt Gingrich criticizing was that maybe there was some resentment and jealousy, thinking, oh, he’s trying to show off and show that he’s so smart because he knows another language. There’s still that mentality in this country.
UNGAR: You know, there are circles where it’s sort of frowned upon to show off that you speak another language.
ABBOTT: Right. Right. So again, I think it’s starting students early. And there are many students now in what we term dual-language programs where they’re learning half the curriculum in one language and the other half of the curriculum in English. And they’re growing up with language proficiencies that are going to assure that they can get into the Flagship Program because it’s a long sequence, and it’s going to be part of their normal. And that’s what I think we need to try to create.
BRIMMER: I’ll just share this point also about the opportunities that are opened up by speaking languages, and even one just on a foreign policy point. In my previous life when I was at the State [Department], one of the things we would do at the International Organizations Bureau, of course, was place Americans in international organizations. And some countries are masters at this, of getting their nationals on the international staffs helping shape policy.
But the U.S.—we’re actually underrepresented, literally, an underrepresented country amongst the United Nations staff. And remember, at the United Nations and at NATO, the working languages are English and French. So part of our job was actually to place Americans in key jobs. And usually we’d have brilliant people, great scientists, all sorts of people we could place in international organizations. Usually, the problem was finding people with the language capabilities. And so, for foreign policy reasons, you wanted to be able to make sure you had Americans in key positions, but we needed them to speak another language.
UNGAR: Michael, what do you—I don’t imagine people say to you, “English ought to be the official language of the country,” because they know better. But what would you say if they did say that to you?
NUGENT: Well, I know that organizations that work worldwide know the realities of their workforce, of their mission. And I know for a fact that many of the government agencies that we work for in promoting the language work of the National Security Education Program, those folks are well aware of the need.
So, I think that the proof—back to your earlier question about, is it easier now than before. I would say it’s easier now because we’ve actually created through some of our efforts a momentum. We’ve created students that we can put up here on stage now consistently, not just a couple, but a whole bunch, 500 of them that can get up here on this stage and do this kind of thing in that target language. Once you start showing that—
UNGAR: I can tell you’re very proud of that.
NUGENT: We are, because we were told it couldn’t be done. When we started this, we were told—you remember that, Marty—we were told, “that cannot be done, students are not capable of doing that.” And they are, and we’ve proved it.
I think that the point is, as time moves on, more and more of these people move into positions. For example, some of the big companies—investment companies will get these people as interns, and they’ll say, “how can we get ten more of these?” because they never realized that these people existed and could do the kind of work that they do.
So, I’m very optimistic about the more we do the work that we’re doing, the more that people will get behind it. Yes, there will always be skeptics…

 

 

 

Michael Nugent is director of the Defense Language and National Security Education Office, U.S. Department of Defense.

Esther Brimmer is executive director and CEO of NAFSA: Association of International Educators and a former adjunct senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Martha “Marty” Abbott is executive director of American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages and executive director of Lead with Languages.

Sanford J. Ungar is director of the Free Speech Project at Georgetown University.

A complete transcript of the discussion is available at https://www.cfr.org/event/link-between-foreign-languages-and-us-national-security.

UCLA to Create Center for Greek Culture

Ioanna Kakoulli, professor of archaeological materials science and conservation, documents the condition of Byzantine and post-Byzantine wall paintings in the caves of the St. Neophytos Monastery near Paphos, Cyprus.

A $5 million grant from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation will enable UCLA to create a center for the study of Hellenic culture, which will be housed in the UCLA College and will build on the university’s strengths in Hellenic studies, supporting research across disciplines ranging from archaeology and classics to languages and digital humanities.

In addition to its teaching and research mission, the center is envisioned as a vibrant cultural hub for the sizable Los Angeles Greek community, which has been formed by generations of families and new immigrants. About 150,000 Americans of Greek ancestry live in California—more than in any other state except New York—with about half of them in Southern California, according to a 2006 U.S. Census Bureau survey.

The center will engage with organizations, churches, and academic institutions throughout Southern California to present community programs and generate interest in Greece’s historical and ongoing contributions to modern culture.
“We are grateful to the Stavros Niarchos Foundation for helping us establish a permanent home for research and teaching on Greece and the Greeks, ancient and modern,” UCLA chancellor Gene Block said. “The Greeks have played an important role in the history of the world and in higher education. Their ideals and achievements have sparked inquiry and teaching and advanced our understanding of humanity, all of which are echoed in UCLA’s own commitments as a public institution.”

With the support of the center, scholars will pursue new research, develop state-of-the-art digital resources, and forge international collaborations for students and faculty.

“Thanks to the Stavros Niarchos Foundation, we are now in a position to contribute even more to the field of Hellenic studies and to connect with cultural institutions and universities near and far to highlight the rich legacy of Hellenic culture in our world today,” said David Schaberg, UCLA’s dean of humanities.
UCLA will raise an additional $3 million in external funding in support of the center. The fundraising effort will include engaging with members of the Greek-American community in Los Angeles and throughout the West Coast who wish to play an active role in the center’s growth and success.

The grant will include funding for visiting faculty and graduate students from the U.S., Greece, and elsewhere. In addition, the humanities division will bolster the core capacity of the center by funding a lecturer hired to teach modern Greek language and literature. And those studying at the center will be able to take advantage of UCLA Library’s extensive collections related to ancient, Byzantine, and early modern and modern Hellenism.

Gates Highlights English Learners

During a speech last month at a meeting of the Council of Great City Schools in Cleveland, Ohio, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates outlined a change of direction in his foundation’s approach to education funding in the U.S., while highlighting the application of data analytics to discover priorities for English learners. He expects to invest close to $1.7 billion in U.S. public education over the next five years. Gates announced that: “Although we will no longer invest directly in new initiatives based on teacher evaluations and ratings, we will continue to gather data on the impact of these systems and encourage the use of these systems to improve instruction at the local level.”
He also said that they will focus on locally-driven solutions identified by networks of schools, and support their efforts to use data-driven continuous learning and evidence-based interventions to improve student achievement, increase commitment to develop curricula and professional development aligned to state standards, continue to support the development of high-quality charter schools focus more on working with charters on developing new tools and strategies for students with special needs, and expand investments in innovative research to accelerate progress for underserved students.
Gates anticipates that about 60% of this spending will eventually support the development of new curricula and networks of schools that work together to identify local problems and solutions, and use data to drive continuous improvement.
Gates highlighted examples of data being used to improve student outcomes, including that of Summit Public Schools, which operates 11 charter schools in California and Washington, where they analyzed data and determined that English Learners [ELs] entered school significantly behind and never caught up. Data was used to identify the teachers whose EL students were doing the best, so they could talk to them and curate their materials, and apply those best practices across all Summit schools. In less than a year, the performance gap between English Learners and others decreased by 25%.
Gates began his speech by recognizing the racial and economic inequity in the U.S. that preludes educational success across the board, “When disaggregated by race, we see two Americas. One where white students perform along the lines of the best in the world—with achievement comparable to countries like Finland and Korea. And another America, where Black and Latino students perform comparably to the students in the lowest performing OECD countries, such as Chile and Greece.”

Bilingual children do find it easier to pick up other languages

It is often claimed that bilinguals are better than monolinguals at learning languages. Now, this hypothesis has found support in a new study of brain activity, conducted at Georgetown University Medical Center and published in the journal Bilingualism: Language and Cognition.
“The difference is readily seen in language learners’ brain patterns. When learning a new language, bilinguals rely more than monolinguals on the brain processes that people naturally use for their native language,” says the study’s senior researcher, Michael T. Ullman, PhD, professor of neuroscience at Georgetown.
“We also find that bilinguals appear to learn the new language more quickly than monolinguals,” says lead author Sarah Grey, PhD, an assistant professor in the department of modern languages and literatures at Fordham University. Grey worked with Ullman and co-author Cristina Sanz, PhD, on this study for her PhD research at Georgetown. Sanz is a professor of applied linguistics at Georgetown.
The 13 bilingual college students enrolled in this study grew up in the U.S. with Mandarin-speaking parents, and learned both English and Mandarin at an early age. The matched comparison group consisted of 16 monolingual college students, who spoke only English fluently.
The researchers studied Mandarin-English bilinguals because both of these languages differ structurally from the new language being learned. The new language was a well-studied artificial version of a Romance language, Brocanto2, that participants learned to both speak and understand. Using an artificial language allowed the researchers to completely control the learners’ exposure to the language.
The two groups were trained on Brocanto2 over the course of about a week. At both earlier and later points of training, learners’ brain patterns were examined with electroencephalogram (EEG) electrodes on their scalps, while they listened to Brocanto2 sentences. This captures the natural brain-wave activity as the brain processes language.
They found clear bilingual/monolingual differences. By the end of the first day of training, the bilingual brains, but not the monolingual brains, showed a specific brain-wave pattern, termed the P600. P600s are commonly found when native speakers process their language. In contrast, the monolinguals only began to exhibit P600 effects much later during learning — by the last day of training. Moreover, on the last day, the monolinguals showed an additional brain-wave pattern not usually found in native speakers of languages.
“There has been a lot of debate about the value of early bilingual language education,” says Grey. “Now, with this small study, we have novel brain-based data that points towards a distinct language-learning benefit for people who grow up bilingual.”
The other study co-author is psycholinguist Kara Morgan-Short, PhD, from the University of Illinois at Chicago, who also conducted her graduate work with Sanz and Ullman.
This research was supported by a National Science Foundation grant (NSF-BCS 1124144).

Catalan Publisher Leaves Amid Uncertainty

As uncertainty and anxiety over secession grip Spain’s autonomous region of Cataluña, publishing giant Planeta, the world’s leading Spanish-language publisher and second biggest publisher in France, has moved its official address out of the region’s capital, Barcelona, to Madrid.

According to an official statement, the decision to move the publisher’s registered address was taken to “protect the interests of shareholders, employees, and the business” and will not result in the movement of employees.

Over 1,700 companies have now moved their official headquarters out of Cataluña, including the iconic Catalan bank, La Caixa, formally Caixa d’Estalvis i Pensions de Barcelona, which is Spain’s third largest financial institution. The turmoil comes as Spain’s economy has been experiencing some of the fastest growth in Europe.

The Spanish government has maintained its forecast for economic growth in 2017 at 3.1%, but revised its estimate for 2018 from 2.6% to 2.3% as a result of the crisis.

Tourism spending in Cataluña for the first two weeks of October —after the independence referendum — was down 15% from a year earlier.

Tourism accounts for 11% of Spain’s 1.1-trillion euro ($1.3 trillion) gross domestic product, with Cataluña supplying a fifth of that, as its capital, Barcelona, is one of the most popular destinations for visitors and students.

 

 

Editor Daniel Ward on EdTalk Radio

Listen to Language Magazine editor Daniel Ward interviewed by Larry Jacobs on EdTalk Radio: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/edutalk/2017/11/02/the-importance-of-language-educationcross-curricular

Nationwide Disparities in Support for Young ELLs

According to a new report from the Migration Policy Institute (MPI), the support offered to young children who speak languages other than English at home varies widely from state to state, and community to community.

“As the population of young Dual Language Learners (DLLs) continues to grow, early childhood policies that recognize and address the learning strengths and needs of these children are crucial to ensuring that all young children have the tools to build a strong foundation for future success,” said Margie McHugh, director of MPI’s National Center on Immigrant Integration Policy. “Unfortunately, the analyses we are releasing today show that far too few states have adopted or implemented such policies.”

The institute uses the term Dual Language Learners (DLLs) for children under age eight with at least one parent who speaks a language other than English at home. Analysis of census figures shows that this population has grown by about 24% since 2000, and now represents about 32% of the nation’s children in that age group.

MPI researchers Maki Park, Anna O’Toole, and Caitlin Katsiaficas found that while these 11.5 million young learners stand to benefit disproportionately from high-quality early childhood education and care (ECEC) services, they are less likely than their peers to be enrolled in such programs, which may contribute to lags in kindergarten readiness and later academic achievement. The factors responsible for this lower enrollment include language barriers and other obstacles that impede access to high-quality ECEC programs, as well as risk factors including higher levels of poverty in DLL households and lower parental educational attainment.

The MPI report includes a series of fact sheets that use U.S. Census Bureau data to outline the key sociodemographic characteristics for these children across the U.S. and in the 30 states with the largest such populations. Among the characteristics covered for this child population: age and enrollment, race/ethnicity, income and poverty levels, parental English proficiency and educational attainment, and top home languages spoken.

The profiles also use information from surveys of state ECEC agencies to denote the presence or absence of policies and practices that are important to the success of DLL children, such as support for bilingual education and services for limited English proficient (LEP) families and early childhood care providers.

The profiles also provide national and state-level information on fourth grade academic outcomes by English proficiency, as a means of helping understand the lags in achievement that DLLs experience later in their academic trajectories that may be due in part to inadequate or ineffective ECEC services. English Learner (EL) students recorded lower fourth grade reading and math scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress: in reading, 189 versus 226 for non-EL students, and in math 218 versus 243.

Among the MPI findings:

  • There are 11.5 million DLL children in the U.S., with more than half of them living in just a handful of states: California, 2.7 million; Texas, 1.75 million; New York, 893,000; Florida, 781,000; and Illinois, 495,000.
  • DLL children are enrolled in pre-K programs at lower rates: 41.5 percent for DLL children ages 3–4 nationally, compared to 47.9 percent for those in English-only households.
  • While bilingualism and cultural diversity represent important assets for the development of DLL children, their families exhibit higher risk factors that might impede their access to high-quality ECEC programs, including higher instances of poverty (58 percent of DLLs nationwide live in low-income families, as compared with 43 percent of non-DLLs). And while just 6 percent of parents of young children who only speak English have less than a high school education, the rate rises to 26 percent for the parents of DLLs. The parents of DLLs also exhibit high rates of limited English proficiency, with 41 percent reporting speaking English less than “very well.”
  • Sixty-two percent of DLL children are Hispanic, while 15 percent are Asian and 6 percent Black. The top five languages spoken by parents of DLLs: Spanish (59 percent); Chinese (3.3 percent); and Tagalog and Arabic (1.9 percent each).

“Our findings should demonstrate to states the significant stake they have in addressing the needs of their growing immigrant and DLL child populations,” said MPI policy analyst Maki Park, who led work on the fact sheet series. “Our mapping of key policies regarding Dual Language Learners should give actors both within and outside early childhood education and care systems a roadmap of measures that can be implemented to close gaps in opportunity and support academic success for all children.”

Read the U.S. and state fact sheets here: www.migrationpolicy.org/research/dual-language-learners-demographic-and-policy-profiles.

 

U.S. Team Wins ” Chinese Bridge ” Contest

A team from the U.S. has won the 15th “Chinese Bridge” language proficiency competition for secondary school students in Kunming, the capital of southwest China’s Yunnan Province.

During the final round on Saturday evening, U.S. team beat out the winning teams from each continent: Russia, Kyrgyzstan, Mozambique, and Australia.

The series of contests, which focuses on spoken Chinese, Chinese culture and art performances, attracted 320 teachers and students from 96 countries and regions.

During their stay in Kunming, the participants visited local families and communities to experience folk arts and traditions.

Since 2002, the headquarters of the Confucius Institute in Beijing has organized an annual series of Chinese Bridge language competitions

Study Tracks Progress of English Learners

A recent study out of Philadelphia tracked kindergartners who were learning English and found that four years later almost 60% had achieved proficiency, but more students had become proficient in oral language (listening and speaking English) than in literacy (reading and writing English). There were also major discrepancies between which groups of students had and had not mastered the language.

Not surprisingly, considering socio-economic factors and the prevalence of Spanish speakers in Philadelphia, students whose home language was Spanish were considerably less likely to reach proficiency than any other subgroup.

The study examined the progress toward English proficiency of English learners (Els) who entered the School District of Philadelphia in kindergarten during 2008–09 through 2011–12.

Using data from these four kindergarten cohorts, English proficiency upon entering school, the percentage who achieved proficiency within four years, and characteristics of students who were more likely to reach proficiency within four years were examined.

KEY FINDINGS

About two-thirds of kindergarten EL students knew and used minimal English when they entered school: 49% of the kindergarten EL students placed at the lowest English language proficiency (ELP) level at entrance to school (ELP Level 1), and an additional 19% placed at ELP Level 2. About 32% of the kindergarteners placed at ELP Levels 3, 4, 5, or 6.

​The percentage of students who were more proficient in English at school entry increased across cohorts between 2008–09 and 2011–12: 27% of students in the 2008–09 cohort placed at ELP Level 3 or above, compared to 41% of students in the 2011–12 cohort.

​ Almost 60% of kindergarten EL students achieved English proficiency within four years of starting school. By the end of first grade, 12% of the ELs who had entered in kindergarten had achieved English proficiency, and an additional 17% were proficient by the end of second grade. By the end of third grade, an additional 30% had reached English proficiency.

Some groups of students were more likely than others to achieve proficiency within four years. English proficiency rates were higher among female students and students who were not identified with a disability. Relative to Spanish speakers, students who spoke Arabic, Chinese, Khmer, or Vietnamese were more likely to achieve English proficiency within four years.

Students who were more proficient in English when they entered school were more likely to reach proficiency within four years: 53% of students who entered at ELP Level 1 reached proficiency within four years, compared to 62% and 68% of students who entered at ELP Levels 2 and 3, respectively.

More students became proficient in oral language than in literacy. Within four years, 81% of kindergarten ELs were proficient in oral language, compared to 63% in literacy. A key driver of the lower proficiency rate in literacy is writing, with a 48% proficiency rate.

The full report can be downloaded at https://3l59p62inu0t2sj11u1hh23l-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/PERC-ELL-Trajectory-Web-version-1.pdf.

IMPLICATIONS FOR POLICY AND 

PRACTICE

These analyses can inform goal setting for schools tracking kindergarten ELs’ progress toward English proficiency. This study can help to set ambitious but achievable proficiency targets for future cohorts. Targets for ELs could be set based on students’ entering English proficiency levels.

High-quality prekindergarten for ELs may boost English proficiency at entrance to kindergarten. Philadelphia’s universal prekindergarten program provides an opportunity to help the city’s youngest ELs begin school with less catching up to do in English. Research indicates that quality prekindergarten experiences can help ELs make rapid growth in both English proficiency and academic skills.

An area for continued work is supporting ELs in developing proficiency in writing. Given the substantial disparity in proficiency rates between writing and the other three language domains (speaking, listening, and reading), the district may want to develop a stronger focus on supporting these students in becoming effective writers in English.

America Becoming More Multilingual

According to an analysis by the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) of newly released Census Bureau data for 2016, a record 65.5 million U.S. residents over the age of five spoke a language other than English at home. The number is up six million since 2010 and has increased by nearly 34 million since 1990. As a share of the population, over 20% U.S. residents now speak a language other than English at home.

Of languages with more than 400,000 speakers, the largest percentage increases since 2010 were among speakers of Arabic (up 42%), Hindi (up 33%), Urdu (up 22%), Chinese (up 20%), Persian and Haitian (each up 15%), and Gujarati (up 14%).

The largest numerical increases 2010 to 2016 were among speakers of Spanish (up 3.5 million), Chinese (up 564,000), Arabic (up 366,000), Hindi (up 201,000), Telugu (up 143,000), Vietnamese (up 129,000), Tagalog (up 128,000), Haitian (up 109,000), Bengali (up 101,000), Tamil (up 89,000), and Urdu (up 86,000). Telugu and Tamil are spoken in India and Tagalog is the national language of the Philippines; Bengali is spoken in India and is also the national language of Bangladesh.

Languages with more than a million speakers in 2016 were Spanish (40.5 million), Chinese (3.4 million), Tagalog (1.7 million), Vietnamese (1.5 million), Arabic (1.2 million), French (1.2 million), and Korean (1.1 million).

CIS researchers estimate that nearly one in four public school students now speaks a language other than English at home. In California, the estimate is 44% , while in Texas, New Mexico, New Jersey, New York, and Nevada, it is estimated that over a third of school-age children speak a language other than English at home.

The analysis was carried out by Karen Zeigler, a demographer and Steven A. Camarota, the director of research at the CIS, which supports decreasing immigration.

 

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