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Poly Aims to Share ALL the World’s Languages

Image Courtesy Wikitongues.

Poly began after a successful Kickstarter campaign last year as an open source, modern software built to share and learn languages in text and video. The project was created by Wikitongues founders and directors Daniel Bogre Udell and Frederico Andrade, who aimed to document and teach every language in the world. Wikitongues began in 2012 when Daniel Bogre Udell began recording oral histories with friends and colleagues in New York City with the simple prompt: tell me about yourself, or your home, in your native language.

Udell, who was raised in a monolingual English household, was interested in languages by living in a minority language community in Spain. He was later joined by Frederico Andrade, who was raised in a bilingual English-Portuguese household and studied Japanese and French growing up. Eventually, Wikitongues blossomed into a nonprofit, and continued to collect recordings from communities throughout the US. Their Youtube channel displays over 347 videos of languages from every human-inhabited region of the world.

Here is an example of one of their videos, in which a person named Giacomo is recorded speaking Romagnol in La Paloma, Uruguay. Romagnol is spoken by more than a million people, primarily in Italy’s Emilia-Romagna region, as well as the Mediterranean nation of San Marino, and by diaspora communities worldwide.

While documentation is an important aspect of revitalization of a language, Udell and Andrade were struck by the work of Marie Wilcox. Wilcox is the last fluent speaker of Wukchumni, one of the many endangered indigenous languages of present-day California. Wilcox has worked to document her language by jotting words in notebooks to create something of a dictionary and phrasebook. Through outreach to other indigenous cultures, the leaders of Wikitongues realized that many indigenous-language speakers have neither the time nor the means to create a dictionary like that of Wilcox.

Wikitongues envisioned a solution that would be user-friendly and open source, which people could use to document their languages and pass them on to new users. Hence, Poly was born. Poly is oriented toward the creation of ‘books’ which comprise vocabulary, phrases, and expressions between an arbitrary language pair. This means that if one is seeking a Lakota-Korean phrasebook, a few clicks on Poly could make that happen.

The nonprofit seeks to include every language, and they mean every language, from those that are not spoken aloud, to sign languages, to constructed languages. While language translation efforts are already in full swing with companies like Google, most often languages with fewer than 10,000 speakers are not of interest. With Poly, Wikitongues seeks to create a global community focused on languages despite the number of speakers. “As a language documentation effort, we are the only one that’s trying to work with every language in the world,” Bogre Udell notes. “Nobody else has that interest. We want to create tools that are that are useful to the public. We want to be more useful to the speakers of the language than the linguists, because the speakers are the ones who need it.”

References:

Wikotongues

Medium

Kickstarter

 

ASL Pioneer Immortalized

On April 11, the U.S. Postal Service will release the16th stamp in the Distinguished Americans series, honoring Robert Panara (1920-2014), an influential teacher and a pioneer in the field of Deaf Studies. He inspired generations of students with his powerful use of American Sign Language to convey works of literature. At age ten, Panara was profoundly deafened after contracting spinal meningitis, which damaged his auditory nerves.

Panara taught English for two decades, beginning in 1948, at Gallaudet College (now University), in Washington, DC. In 1967, he helped found the National Technical Institute for the Deaf (NTID) and became its first deaf faculty member. He taught English to both deaf and hearing students at NTID, part of the Rochester Institute of Technology (NY) for the next 20 years.

The two-ounce Forever stamp features a photograph of Panara signing the word “respect.” The issuance coincides with the 200th anniversary of the founding in 1817 of the American School for the Deaf in Hartford, CT—marking the beginning of formal education for deaf students in the U.S.

Taking Teaching to New Heights

Denise Murray examines the future of the TESOL profession in preparation for next month’s international summit

What are the megatrends (political, economic, social, intercultural, legal, and digital) that are impacting English and English language education? How
can we overcome the native speaker as the standard and address the changing realities of English language use around the world? How can practice shape and inform policy and research in TESOL? How can linguistic diversity be leveraged while teaching English?
These are just some of the questions that will be addressed at the Summit on the Future of the TESOL Profession. The summit, an initiative of TESOL International Association, is aimed at groups or individuals actively engaged in planning, facilitating, resourcing, assessing, researching, and making decisions about the teaching of English to speakers of other languages.
The use of English around the world has increased dramatically, bringing both opportunities and challenges for individuals, governments, and English language educators. To meet the challenges and broaden opportunities, the TESOL profession needs to examine its knowledge base, its values, and the diverse contexts of English language teaching. Through this examination, the profession can ensure a more inclusive, collaborative approach to English language education in the 21st century.
The summit is guided by three principles that express the values for both the summit and the teaching of English worldwide:
Equity: English should be accessible in varying contexts and cultures and should not supplant home language(s).
Professionalism: Professional development should promote sustainable, continuous, collaborative, and coherent activities. The TESOL profession should re-examine its body of knowledge with a focus on change and innovation as opposed to only academic outputs.
Inquiry: TESOL practice and policy should be inquiry based, with practice informing research as well as research informing practice and policy.
The summit will help re-envision a future grounded in these principles by generating a strategic conversation around four major themes: futurology, English in multilingualism, reimagining English competence, and the profession as change agent. The ultimate goal of the summit is to develop a framework for the future of the TESOL profession that will guide policy, practice, and research. Stakeholders will be asked to commit to this renewed vision.
Futurism. Futurology is the study of the future. Using various models that consider the social, political, economic, legal, intercultural, and technological dimensions of the changes likely to be encountered, futurists plan scenarios for the years ahead (e.g., Schmieder-Ramirez and Mallette, 2007). This broad, holistic perspective is essential for understanding the English language profession both today and in the future. Current and expected disruptive changes in several of these dimensions are affecting and will affect the TESOL profession:
Population mobility results from competing ideologies, political and economic power shifts, economic inequality, and climate change.
Governance structures and processes of traditional institutions are too inflexible and sclerotic for the current rapid change. Decision making is therefore caught between immediate responses without full knowledge and thought and stasis or immobility while processes take their time.
Free courses and websites, online programs, and for-profit corporations have proliferated to meet the demands for both English and teachers.
Instant social technology amplifies these issues.
The TESOL profession therefore needs to become more agile and entrepreneurial.
English in Multilingualism. This theme explores the role of English as one language in the linguistic repertoire of learners and educators. There is an image of English as the ruling language that may eradicate linguistic diversity. Yet the TESOL profession, in its mission to teach English, must embrace the opportunity to simultaneously support multilingualism. To this end, the summit recognizes the multilingualism of students of English and TESOL professionals (particularly nonnative-English-speaking teachers) as a societal asset.
Trends around the world have led to practices and policies that do not support the home language(s) or view multilingualism as such an asset:
Native-English-speaking teachers are often preferred over nonnative speakers, even if they have no qualifications in TESOL. Yet research shows that nonnative speakers bring advantages to the language classroom (e.g., Braine, 2013; Llurda, 2006).
English is being introduced at younger and younger ages in the hope that these learners and their countries will have a competitive advantage because they will be English speakers. However, insufficient resources are allocated to meet these policies.
Similarly, English has been introduced widely as the medium of instruction, especially for science and mathematics, such that learners no longer have the discourse of science or mathematics in their home languages (Klippel, 2008).
Schools and governments institute English-only policies in the English language classroom, which deny the linguistic resources that learners and teachers bring to the language classroom.
The vast majority of English language teaching takes place in countries where English is not a national language and therefore the teachers are most likely local, speaking the local language(s).
Reimagining English Competence. Building on the theme of the role of English in multilingualism, the summit will explore what it means to be a competent user of English. English competence has traditionally been defined in reference to a “native or ideal speaker” norm and in terms of the grammar of the language. This definition has been challenged, not only for nonnative-English-speaking teachers but also as a goal for English learners. Traditionally, this “native speaker” has been from the English-dominant countries of the UK and U.S., despite the viable and valid Englishes (Kachru, 2001) used around the world. English then is a global family of languages, not a single language with one set of grammatical rules (Jones and Bradwell, 2007).
English use also varies according to the purpose for which it is used, so that children learning English as immigrants to the U.S. or Australia, for example, need to develop the academic discourses for schooling if they are to be successful. In contrast, the business woman in China learning English to interact globally in English with companies around the world needs the discourse of negotiation and business. The summit will explore the nature of these multiple Englishes that arise in different contexts and determine how they can be incorporated in frameworks, standards, large-scale tests, and rubrics.
The Profession as Change Agent. The knowledge base from the three previous themes will help empower all TESOL professionals to foster positive change within a risk-tolerant culture. Policy often occurs without input from TESOL professionals, especially practitioners, researchers, and professional associations. Innovation and enquiry need to be encouraged among practitioners, and practitioners need to be better positioned to influence research and policy. The summit seeks to reinvigorate educational institutions, policy making, and practice to ensure a sustainable, inquiry-based profession for the future.
Organization of the Summit
The summit is a hybrid event, with virtual and face-to-face components. In the virtual environment, TESOL professionals from around the world will engage in discussions around the four themes. They will be guided in these discussions by twelve respected and innovative thought leaders from six continents, who will posit questions that challenge current thinking and provide a springboard for participants to discuss their own contexts and how the themes resonate for them. These twelve leaders will challenge common misconceptions and will help re-envision a future grounded in the guiding principles and drawing on the virtual contextual discussions.
Our twelve virtual leaders are also the summit’s featured speakers, who will use the intensive online discussions to enrich the knowledge base for the face-to-face event in Athens, Greece. This meeting will feature an invited audience of 200 industry leaders from around the world who influence English language education, policy, and practice. These summit delegates will hold high-level strategic discussions generated by the twelve speakers on what it means to be a TESOL professional and take part in the creation of a roadmap for countries and institutions seeking to upgrade or reform their language-education policies.
Following the face-to-face component will be another online segment to discuss the outcomes of the face-to-face meeting and generate broad agreement on a shared vision for the future of the profession that will influence advocacy efforts, innovation, research, policy, and practice. This vision will be articulated in a framework that stakeholders will be asked to support and implement. The document that provides this framework will be released at the 2018 TESOL International Convention and English Language Expo, March 27–30, 2018, in Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
References
Braine, G. (Ed.). (2013). Non-Native Educators in English Language Teaching. New York: Routledge.
Jones, S., and Bradwell, P. (2007). As You Like It: Catching Up in an Age of Global English. London: Demos.
Kachru, Y. (2001). “Discourse Competence in World Englishes.” In E. Thumboo (Ed.), The Three Circles of English (341–356). Singapore: UniPress.
Klippel, F. (2008). “New Prospects or Imminent Danger? The impact of English medium of instruction on education in Germany.” In D. E. Murray (Ed.), Planning Change, Changing Plans: Innovations in Second Language Teaching (26–42). Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.
Llurda, E. (Ed.). (2006). Non-Native Language Teachers: Perceptions, Challenges and Contributions to the Profession. New York: Springer.
Schmieder-Ramirez, J. H., and Mallette, L. A. (2007). The SPELIT Power Matrix: Untangling the Organizational Environment with the SPELIT Leadership Tool. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform.

Denise Murray​ chairs the steering committee of the TESOL Summit. She is professor emerita at Macquarie University, Australia, and San José State University, California. Denise has worked in language education in Thailand, the UK, the U.S., and her native Australia. Her research and practice center on the intersection of language education, society, and technology; language education policy; and leadership in language education. For more information or to sign up for the online conversation, visit www.tesolsummit.org.

Taking the Holistic Approach


Margarita Calderón and Shawn Slakk believe that the whole school is responsible for the success of English learners

English learners (ELs) are no longer solely the responsibility of the ESL teacher. The entire school’s staff of educators—counselors, secretaries, and of course administrators included—should embrace the success of ELs along with all their peers. Leadership teams are deliberately deciding to focus the majority of their staff development days, professional learning communities (PLCs), teacher learning communities (TLCs), and coaching efforts on the success of English learners. To start, they reanalyze ELs’ placement and success trajectories, in order to chart changes in staffing, school schedules, and teacher and student support systems.
Schools that are concerned with their EL underachievement and have tried different English learner development/English as a second language (ELD/ESL) strategies and programs without seeing progress have come to realize that the best thing to do is to prepare every educator in the school to adjust practices. Since everyone is already anticipating changes forthcoming from Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) accountability, a deeper dive into EL success makes sense at this time.
Fortunately, we are working with schools that have implemented the whole-school approach in the past few years, and we have mapped out their trajectories. Although we see this whole-school approach take hold at different points, the components are always the same. In this article, we highlight those components and how schools move forward on each.
The Common Factors and Components
First, for ALL educators in the school, schedule the same professional development (PD) focusing on teaching ELs and then other types of PD;
Following the PD on ELs, establish the support systems immediately: in-class and peer coaching for those directly teaching ELs in all subjects, PLC/TLC focus groups on EL data and success, and administrator observations;
Additionally, use multiple levels of data to review ELs’ placement, coordinate tweaks/repairs to the process, and ensure adequate staffing based upon EL service needs;
Successively, update schedules and staff to address the diversity of EL proficiency/educational levels;
Likewise, review, revise curriculum, and hire additional staff as needed for newcomers, students with interrupted formal education (SIFEs), and long-term ELs;
Furthermore, engage families—revisit forms sent home and primary language needs and focus on improving communications;
Continuously, build safe, caring self-actualization contexts in classrooms and on campus.
Professional Development for ALL
Schools and school divisions schedule the professional development on ELs’ success before any other PD. They set aside those days, especially when the school only has a few precious days for PD. This emphasis sets the tone and works to ensure that the PD will take place and that everyone will attend. The scheduling is sometimes modified, but the intent is sustained. For example, in Loudoun County Public Schools, Virginia, Simpson Middle School and Loudoun County High School began by offering the PD on ELs for half the faculty in year one and the other half in year two. From the start, the principals, assistant principals, supervisors, instructional coaches, and district central office specialists attended with the first cohort of teachers. In addition to attending the professional development on teaching academic language/vocabulary/discourse, reading comprehension/close reading, and writing, revising, and editing for ELs, the administrative team attended an additional training for administrators on instituting implementation and teacher-support systems.
When considering what type of PD and why to include all educators, federal guidelines provide the answer. “Necessary personnel includes teachers who are qualified to provide EL services, core-content teachers who are highly qualified in their field as well as trained to support EL students, special education-ESL/ELD teachers for dually identified students, and trained administrators who can evaluate these teachers” (U.S. Department of Education, January 2015).
The PD focusing on EL success needs to intensively focus on all components of language and literacy acquisition. We conduct these trainings in several states and school districts around the country. Below is a sample agenda for the initial training for all educators, teachers and administrators alike:
Day 1 – Vocabulary Acquisition and Discourse: Why academic language? What is academic language? Which vocabulary do we choose? How do we preteach vocabulary/discourse before reading, then supplement during reading and after reading? How do we assess vocabulary?
Day 2 – Reading Comprehension for Content Acquisition: Teaching reading comprehension, text features and structures, and close reading of different types of texts, after reading anchoring strategies and performance and acquisition assessment.
Day 3 – The Writing Process for ELs: Drafting, revising, and editing from the content. Assessing different levels of proficiency based on and from subject-matter content.
Day 4 – (Optional) Classroom Structures: For ample student interaction, social emotional competencies, and cross-cultural understanding (Calderón et al, 2016).
Notice that these trainings are focused on literacy and language. While we primarily provide PD in English for ELs, we also train bilingual staff in Spanish for bilingual schools in New York City. In addition to the intensive focus on success for all ELs (or language learners), schools and various state departments of education recently began to implement similar trainings focusing on newcomers along with the general EL population.
After the initial training, administrators, supervisors, and coaches need to receive additional training to support and sustain the staff and ensure transfer to the classroom. “Administrators who evaluate EL program staff need to be adequately trained to meaningfully evaluate whether EL teachers are appropriately employing their training in the classroom for the EL program model to successfully achieve its educational objectives,” advises the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights and the U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division, Educational Opportunities Section in their “Dear Colleague Letter” (January 2015).
The Basic Version of This Additional Training
Day 1 – Coaching vs. Evaluation: Why coaching? What are the tools to conduct observations and give feedback on vocabulary/discourse, reading comprehension, and writing for ELs? What constitutes evidence of successful implementation and transfer of strategies from PD to the classroom? How do we structure, schedule, and monitor peer coaching?
Day 2 – Support Systems: What structures support implementation? How do we structure activities for teacher support as they encounter instructional challenges? How do we structure, schedule, and monitor the TLCs and PLCs?
Implementing Support Systems
All those taking part in the PD should participate in the support system’s establishment and sustainability. Again, turning to the federal guidelines provides the answer. “Schools must provide adequate professional development and follow-up training in order to prepare EL program teachers and administrators to implement the EL program effectively” (2015).
Teachers need to receive coaching by master coaches, administrators, and instructional support staff, plus conduct peer observations and self-reflective observations. Continuing the example from Virginia, the follow-up to the teachers’ and administrators’ PD in Loudoun County schools consisted of 26 days for us, the PD providers, to coach the teachers who had attended. As the trainers observed teachers in their classrooms, the WISEcard, our observation protocol, was used to coach each teacher and analyze data on the frequency and quality of implementation. The administrative team shadowed the trainers each time they conducted observations and feedback sessions. Next steps were written for the teachers and administrators after each visit, inclusive of teacher goals and administrator supporting goals.
Well-crafted support systems include refinement and revision of strategies and time for teachers to share lessons and implementation. For instance, in Albemarle County Public Schools, Charlottesville, Virginia, and Shelby County Schools, Memphis, Tennessee, they have held “renew, revise, and refresh” sessions for those who attended the initial training. These sessions add to the basic set of strategies as well as allow teachers to work with the experts who provided the initial training to refine the implementation of their lessons. They work with school and grade-level colleagues to analyze and revise lessons and implementation and assess ways to infuse even more academic language and literacy success for ELs into their subjects and lessons.
Revamping the Infrastructure of the School
Some schools find that they have to simultaneously address professional development and infrastructure. In another school district, we were asked to help with the following tasks, all focusing on EL success:
Revisiting the identification of EL students; charting their diversity (newcomers, SIFEs, students with limited or interrupted formal education, long-term ELs) for appropriate placement;
Providing dually certified ELs, those who receive special education services in addition to ESL services, with both types of services and hours equally—one does not supersede the other;
Mapping implications for scheduling, service, and staffing updates;
Revising ELs’ direct service hours/schedules to comply with federal requirements;
Analyzing existing school plans and making suggestions for updating;
Reviewing and acquiring curriculum for the diversity of ELs;
Building a safe, caring, and resilient context for all ELs;
Engaging families and community organizations.
Federal regulations as outlined by the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Civil Rights (USDOJ) currently require that ELs receive specific instructional services and specific hourly allocations for language development. For instance, ELs who have been assessed and found to be levels one and two on the WIDA ACCESS test (see www.WIDA.us) or a similar English-proficiency-level assessment should receive two class periods of ELD/ESL each day. ELs who are level three need one period of ELD/ESL per day. Students at levels four and five should receive one period at least three times a week, one class period being no shorter than 45 minutes. The remainder of the day for all ELs should be in core content classes with teachers who have been certified or endorsed with special credentials for teaching structured English language and content to ELs. Some states, such as Massachusetts, require all core content teachers to go through graduate-level coursework similar to what Virginia schools are using in order to renew, advance, or even obtain their teaching credentials to teach in Massachusetts. This requirement includes administration too.
The whole-school approach meets the USDOJ requirement that ELs must have equitable access to grade-level content, enabling them to meet college- and career-readiness standards. Districts are obligated to ensure that ELs have equal opportunity to participate in all programs—academic or otherwise—including but not limited to prekindergarten, magnet, gifted and talented, career and technical education, arts, and athletics programs; Advanced Placement courses; STEM/STEAM; clubs; and honors societies. Instruction and programing for ELs must reach the students where they are and build their language and literacy through content. This instruction must include all programs a school offers, supplemental or not (USDOE Tool Kit, 2016). Embracing a whole-school approach from here on satisfies all these guidelines.
Adequate Staffing
The USDOJ’s guidelines also emphasize “recruiting, developing, and retaining excellent educators as essential in order to ensure that EL program models successfully achieve their educational objectives. Local Educational Agencies (LEAs) must hire an adequate number of ESL/ELD teachers who are qualified to provide EL services and core-content teachers who are highly qualified in their field as well as trained to support EL students.”
While reviewing programs, schedules, service hours, and English learner needs, some districts have realized that they need additional staff and are working hard to fill those positions. In the interim, core teachers who have been trained in strategies for teaching ELs using their subject’s content help to bridge this gap and foster growth across the school. Shelby County Schools in Memphis, Tennessee, has gone one step further—this year, district office central administrators will be convening a cadre of trainers who will specialize in supporting the district in professional development based upon the intensive three-day training described earlier. Their goal is to supplement continuing outside professional development sessions and support those already trained in the components of teaching ELs while teaching their individual subjects. In addition, Shelby has started their third group of general education teachers and administrators in the same PD focused on successful teaching for ELs.
Below is a checklist based upon the above information and the guidelines from the USDOJ and USDOE. As a quick assessment, ask yourself:
Are our EL services and programs educationally sound in theory and effective in practice to meet the needs of each of our students?
Does our EL program enable ELs to attain both English proficiency and parity of participation in all aspects of our school/district’s instructional program within a reasonable length of time?
Does our school/district offer ELs sufficient services and programs until our ELs are proficient in English and can participate meaningfully in educational programs without EL support?
Does our level of service comply with the DOJ’s minimum suggested hours of service based upon each student’s ELD level and progress?
Does our program support and assist our ELs to fully engage at the same level of education as their non-EL peers, helping them to become college, career, and culturally ready?
For our dually identified ELs, does our program and level of service dovetail with appropriate special education services and related services at an equal degree of service, without one dominating the other?
As educators move toward new, uncharted challenges, engaging the whole school in this endeavor will facilitate positive changes and positive growth in students.

References:
Calderón, M.E. and Slakk, S. (2016). Expediting Comprehension for English Language Learners (ExC-ELL) Foundations Manual. Washington, DC: Margarita Calderón and Associates.
U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights, and U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division. (January 2015). “Dear Colleague Letter: English learner students and limited-English-proficient parents.” Retrieved from http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/letters/colleague-el-201501.pdf.
U.S. Department of Education. (November 2016). Tools and resources for providing ELs with a language assistance program. Retrieved from http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/ellresources.html.
The U.S. Department of Education released a non-regulatory guidance (NRG) about ELs and Title III of ESEA that is available at http://www2.ed.gov/policy/elsec/leg/essa/essatitleiiiguidenglishlearners92016.pdf. The text of ESEA, as amended by ESSA, can be found at http://www2.ed.gov/documents/essa-act-of-1965.pdf.

Dr. Margarita Calderón, professor emerita Johns Hopkins University, serves on national preschool–12th literacy panels and advisory boards (National Research Council, ETS, WIDA, National Center for Learning Disabilities, National Literacy Panel for Language Minority Children and Youth). She is a consultant for the U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division. Her research interest focuses on professional development, effective schools, and language and literacy development of English language learners. She has been a middle and high school teacher and has taught bilingual and educational leadership courses at the University of Texas, El Paso; San Diego State University; and University of California, Santa Barbara. She has over 100 publications, is an international speaker, is invited to give keynote speeches at major conferences, and conducts comprehensive professional development programs throughout the country.

Shawn Slakk is vice president of operations, director of trainers, a senior consultant, and a master coach at Margarita Calderón and Associates. He was Massachusetts’ Department of Elementary and Secondary Education coordinator of the Rethinking Equity in the Teaching of English Language Learners (RETELL) initiative, has taught ESL and Spanish, and has been a school administrator.

Want a Job? Study Says to Learn Another Language.

Those who speak other languages may want to highlight that fact on their resumes, as customers in the U.S. are becoming increasingly diverse and businesses seek to follow suit. According to a new report by New American Economy titled, “Not Lost in Translation, The Growing Importance of Foreign Language Skills in the U.S. Job Market”, the demand for bilingual employees is rising. The number of job listings aimed toward bilingual workers has doubled since 2010, when employers posted roughly 240,000 job listings. That figure has risen to approximately 630,000. The share of postings specifically seeking bilingual individuals has also increased, with the portion of online listings rising 15.7 percent.

Coming in at the third and ninth most spoken languages in the U.S., the demand for Chinese and Arabic workers has been rising. Employers posted more than three times more jobs for Chinese speakers in 2015 than they had five years earlier. At the same time the number of U.S. job ads for Arabic increased by roughly 150 percent. Spanish-speakers also saw increased demand, with 150 percent increase in job listings for them as well.

There is also a growing need for bilingual workers at both the lower and higher ends of the skill spectrum. 60 percent of occupations with the highest demand for bilingual workers in 2015 were open to individuals with less than a bachelor’s degree. Occupations in this category include titles like tax preparers, customer service representatives, and medical assistants. On the other hand, the category of listings for “high prestige” jobs is the fastest growing category for bilingual listings from 2010 to 2015. This category includes financial managers, editors, and industrial engineers.

Each state varies greatly when it comes to its demand for bilingual workers and the role that bilinguals play in its society. For instance, California accounted for 19.4 percent of all jobs seeking bilingual workers, and Arizona accounted for 4 percent of job listings while holding just 3 percent of working-age adult population in the U.S.. Other states have taken steps to promote biliteracy by passing laws that create a “Seal of Biliteracy” which is placed in high school diplomas to indicate that graduates from those states have achieved advanced language skills.

The types of employers varied depending on the languages they were seeking. The top three companies seeking Spanish-speakers were Advance Auto Parts, Wells Fargo, and Bank of America; for French they were International Services Incorporated (an insurance brokerage), Trinity Health, and the Peace Corps; Chinese listings were topped by Wynn Resorts, Bank of America, and Grifols (a pharmaceutical company); for Arabic the top listings were International Rescue Committee, Asi Constructors, Inc, and Lend Lease (a project management company). Across the board, demand for bilingual workers is especially high in certain industries like finance and healthcare.

Workers that are equipped to compete in today’s global economy are situated for success in the U.S. as an increase in demand for bilingual employees in a variety of sectors continues to grow.

Speaking of the Ice Age

University of Virginia linguistic anthropologist Mark A. Sicoli and colleagues are applying the latest technology to an ancient mystery: how and when early humans inhabited the New World.

New research, which uses “big data” techniques to analyze more than 100 linguistic features, suggests complex patterns of contact and migration among the early peoples who first settled the Americas.

The diversity of languages in the Americas is like no other continent of the world, with eight times more isolates than any other continent. Isolates are “languages that have no demonstrable connection to any other language with which they can be classified into a family,” Sicoli said.

Linguists have identified 26 isolates in North America and 55 in South America, mostly strung across the western edge of the continents, compared to just one in Europe and nine in Asia.

“The high number of isolates in America suggests that there may have been related languages that went extinct without documentation,” Sicoli said. “Linguists are now asking the question of how to infer the existence of these missing languages from their effects on languages they were in contact with.”

“Scientists in the past decade have rethought the settlement of the Americas,” Sicoli said, “replacing the idea that the land which connected Asia and North America during the last ice age was merely a bridge with the hypothesis that during the last ice age, humans lived in this refuge known as Beringia for up to 15,000 years and then seeded migrations not only into North America but also back into Asia.”

In a presentation Friday to the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Boston, Sicoli joined other scientists discussing Beringia and the dispersal of modern humans to the Americas. Since much of Beringia—theorized to have been located generally between northwest North America and northeastern Asia—has been under water for more than 10,000 years, it has been challenging to find archaeological and ecological evidence for this “deep history,” as Sicoli called it.

Recent ecological, genetic, and archaeological data support the notion of human habitation in Beringia during the latest ice age, between 25,000 and 14,000 years ago. The new linguistic research methods, which use big data to compare similarities and differences between languages, suggest that such a population would have been linguistically diverse, Sicoli said.

In “Linguistic Perspectives on Early Population Migrations and Language Contact in the Americas,” Sicoli’s analysis points to the existence of at least three now-extinct languages of earlier migrations that influenced existing Na-Dene and Aleut languages as they moved to the Alaska coast. The data comparing dozens of indigenous languages support phases of migration and multilingual language contact along the Alaska coast, which potentially involved languages related to current linguistic isolates.

In his presentation, Sicoli described several comparisons from computational work with multiple languages—for example, from the Yeniseian of Siberia, the Na-Dene family of North America, and Eskimo, Aleut, and Haida (an isolate) languages. He combined geographical maps with language networks from the database to show relationships between languages and where language mixing with the three “ghost” languages occurred.

“The computational methods give us traction on questions that have been unanswered,” said Sicoli, who is continuing to work with Anna Berge of the University of Alaska and Gary Holton of the University of Hawaii on early language contact. “They help us understand how people migrated and languages diversified, not simply through isolation but through multilingual contact.

“Such language contacts support that the mixing populations also mixed their languages as part of human adaptation strategies for this region and its precarious environment,” Sicoli said.

Anne E. Bromley,

University of Viginia Communications

Senate Votes Against Civil Rights of American Students

Sen. Elizabeth Warren

Despite a passionate appeal by Senator Elizabeth Warren, the U.S. Senate has voted in favor of rolling back critical regulations of the ESSA (Every Student Succeeds Act) by a narrow margin of 50 to 49. This is the same bill that passed with the bipartisan support of 85 senators less than 18 months ago.

“Today’s repeal undermines important civil rights protections under ESSA that NCLR and other civil rights groups have worked so hard to secure for Latino students, English learners and other underserved children,” said NCLR (National Council of La Raza) President and CEO Janet Murguía.

As states are still developing their ESSA plans, rolling back accountability regulations will bring chaos to the process. The regulations provided states, districts and other stakeholders with critical information, clarity and support for drafting state plans and systems that hold schools responsible for the success of each child. Without the regulations, states now lack guidance on how to best serve all children.

The narrow margin of one vote indicates that many senators believe these regulations are important for ensuring a fair education system. Senators Patty Murray (D–Wash.), Robert Menendez (D–N.J.) and Rob Portman (R–Ohio)—who broke with his party’s ranks to vote against the rollback—were also ardent champions of the guidelines.

“Our Affiliate organizations across the United States will continue ensuring that schools and districts are implementing plans that serve all kids well,” Murguía continued. “NCLR will continue working with partner groups and stakeholders to ensure that we are advocating for an education system that’s fair to all of our nation’s children. We urge President Trump to take into account what is in their best interests and veto the legislation.”

Apple’s Siri Learns Shanghainese in Ongoing Race to Dominate Voice-Assist

Last week we saw the release of Google Assistant, an electronic assistant that follows commands on mobile phones. While these tech super-giants are in a heated competition to close in the voice-assist market, Siri has the advantage of being able to speak 21 languages localized for 36 countries. The latest, Shanghainese, is a variety of Wu Chinese spoken in central districts of the City of Shanghai and its surrounding areas. This Sino-Tibetan language, like many other Wu variants, is able to be understood outside of the Wu region by speakers of other languages such as Mandarin.

It is a complicated matter for a voice-assist program to communicate effectively with speakers of other languages. One major hurdle that has to be overcome is that many words do not translate directly from language to language, so voice-assist programs must be able to pick up on words and phrases that are specific to certain languages in particular.

Apple tries to combat this by bringing in humans to read passages in a range of accents and dialects, which are then transcribed by hand so that the computer has an exact representation of the spoken text to learn from. Apple speech team leader, Alex Acero told Reuters that Apple also captures a small percentage of the audio recordings from these sessions and makes them anonymous. The recordings are far from perfect and are complete with background noise and human speech errors like mumbling. Other participants then transcribe these recordings. This process helps cut the speech recognition error rate in half. After enough data and recordings have been gathered, and a speech actor has been enacted in the new voice for Siri, Apple then estimates what the most common questions are, and once released, Siri can gather user data to see what real-world users are frequently asking.

All of this adds up to a still far-from-perfect, yet quite functional voice-assist program that can reach thousands of new users thanks to the inclusion of a new language.

Books and Events Celebrate International Women’s Day

Image from Women’s Strike LA

Nonprofit organization, Worldreader has announced that they have reached over 2.5 million women and girls with life-changing books since 2010. Worldreader works with over 4,500 girls at 25 schools across Tanzania that read e-readers through their partnership with Camfed. They also have given books to the Kibera School for Girls, a primary school in Kenya, a library of 12,500 e-books.

The nonprofit has launched a new initiative called Anasoma, which aims to increase the readership of women and girls through participation in mobile reading in hopes of shifting gender norms.

Those who want to continue to take action after today can look forward to the NAFSA’s Seminar on Peace and the Global Civil Society: Power of Women to Affect Social Change: Stories of Diverse Approaches to Peacebuilding and Conflict Resolution. The seminar is from May 28-29 in Los Angeles, CA. The event aims to enhance knowledge of global issues and conflict resolution through film and personal storytelling, and will highlight the ways in which women have managed and resolved conflict, along with ways that women are developing and building structures for a sustainable and peaceful society. Attendees will learn how to engage students by providing them with perspectives on how their actions can make differences globally, and how to manage these actions in classrooms and advising processes, along with how to incorporate film and other media into curriculum.

Language Teacher vs. Acquisition Facilitator



Fill in the blank with the correct form of the word.
Select the correct tense of the verb for the following statements.
Which subject pronoun is correct?

If this is reminiscent of your language study experiences, you are not alone. Over the past century, the majority of language study has resulted in little more than flashbacks of blank filling, memorized dialogue practice, and conjugation drills.
Traditionally, language instruction was driven by the notion that by simply memorizing grammar rules and vocabulary lists, students would be able to mechanically manipulate language enough to communicate. All learners needed was practice, but what worked in theory is not what actually happened in the classroom. All of that practice resulted in many good grades, but in little to no actual communication.
The contemporary definition of communication, according to Sandra Savignon (as edited by Dr. Bill VanPatten), is “the expression, interpretation, [and sometimes] negotiation of meaning [in a given context or social situation].” The language classroom is its own specific context, far different from the infinite number of authentic contexts and social situations that one encounters outside the classroom. Teachers are often trapped in the fixed context of the classroom and, as a result, tend to create contrived situations for the sake of practicing communication.
The notion that humans can somehow overtly practice memorized words and grammar rules and then move them into an unconscious linguistic system is like trying to jam a square peg into a round hole or like trying to meld water and oil. We plainly see that these physical items do not fit together, but understanding language acquisition is not quite so obvious, since we cannot see it, it is not a static process, and the rate of acquisition varies from person to person.
So how can language teachers facilitate “communicative” experiences that will lead to real communication and result in acquisition? The first step is to shift one’s mindset from that of being an instructor to that of being a facilitator, since explicit instruction will not result in unconscious acquisition. The second step is to recognize that acquisition can only be facilitated by providing sufficient doses of comprehensible input (CI).
There are a handful of contemporary communicative approaches that show great promise for facilitating acquisition, but there is also a great deal of debate about which one is best. There is danger in believing that a single approach is best for every group of learners every day of the year. The approach and the teacher’s adaptation of each approach should change based on the unique group dynamic of the learners who are in front of that teacher and the unique circumstances and personalities that pervade the learning environment. In addition to the uniqueness of learners—individually and collectively—another factor to consider is that brains crave novelty. Students need consistent access to comprehensible input, but novel ways to access it.
Although the approach one uses may change from day to day or week to week, there is one component of each approach that will not: comprehensible input. As a facilitator of acquisition, I strive to create communicative experiences that are natural, engaging, and so compelling that students focus exclusively on the message, not on the class or the task of learning. The approach I choose will be dependent upon the needs of learners and also on the purpose of the experience (e.g., teaching content/required information; discussing personally relevant situations; preparing for a communicative experience, such as a reading, a song, a visitor, a task; etc.).
If each experience is truly communicative, it will be rich in high-frequency vocabulary, which is the linguistic data (words and phrases) that are inherently part of everyday conversations. The presence of high-frequency words is not necessarily intentional, nor is it unnaturally constrained. It is simply the by-product of authentic communicative experiences. One cannot avoid them. There may be other content-specific and context-specific words that come into play, but the bulk of each communicative experience will be driven by everyday high-frequency terms.
As I plan curriculum and lessons, I first consider the needs of my students. As an ESL and Spanish teacher of professional baseball players, I have students with unique needs. They must be prepared to communicate about a variety of topics, including body parts, injury and health, and baseball-specific issues; to engage in appropriate locker-room talk; to order and shop for food; to meet and greet friends, coaches, and reporters; and to have everyday conversations with teammates and opponents. As I consider the wide variety of contexts and the vast amount of linguistic data needed for each, I evaluate which approaches will most effectively help me facilitate acquisition, and I build cohesiveness over time by focusing on one overarching theme. To illustrate, I will share what a complete unit based on multiple approaches and contexts looks like.
In 2013, my theme for all levels was civil rights. Keep in mind that under the veil of my theme, I am required to help my students communicate in a wide variety of contexts. We started by focusing on psychosocial aspects of language in an effort to help players get to know their teammates. To accomplish this, I organized various video exchanges to help foreign-born ESL students get to know their U.S.-born counterparts, who are also required to study Spanish. Each video introduction was brief, and each player spoke in his first language to provide authentic sound bites of CI in a relevant way. Each year, I ask a different question, based on the theme of the season. For civil rights, I simply had students state their names, their homes, and what they liked to do (e.g., dance, listen to music, play sports, watch movies, play video games, etc.). During subsequent classes, we watched a few of the video clips, compared and contrasted likes and dislikes, and determined if there was a cultural difference in preferences. We discussed that although listening to music is globally universal, the type of music preferred is not. We also learned that movie preference is more sensitive to gender than ethnicity. But most importantly, we all got to know each other and learned to appreciate cultural differences and similarities—all in the target language.
Whenever possible, I like to use what I call “human #authres” as a platform for providing CI and enriching our themes. My students and I have been blessed with visits from Felipe Alou, the first player to be recruited out of the Dominican Republic (DR) to play Major League Baseball, Orlando Cepeda, a Hall of Fame inductee from Puerto Rico, and even Hall of Famer Willie Mays. Admittedly, my beginning students struggle with understanding guest speakers. To improve comprehension, I ask guests to speak slowly, to pause between points, to allow me to interject comments and questions, and to invite questions from students. In spite of my efforts, much of the input is still not comprehensible enough for most novice-level students. In those cases, I increase comprehension by reviewing videotaped footage of the discourse, selecting key parts of the discussion in short increments of 30 to 60 seconds.
I begin class discussion by reviewing a few points that the speaker made, strategically embedding into the discussion the linguistic data used by the speaker. Following the review, we read a written transcript of the selected sound bite from the visitor’s discourse, discussing various points and making personal connections and comparisons as we read. We watch and rewatch the clip until learners have reached an acceptable level of comprehension. Depending on the interest level of students and the relevancy of the content, we continue to move on in a similar fashion to other sound bites from the discourse.
In addition to live guests, I also invite a large number of cyber visitors into the classroom, one of my favorites being Dr. Martin Luther King. I select level-appropriate sound bites from a speech, following the same procedure as described above. I strategically embed words (linguistic data) into class discussion, read and discuss the transcript, and listen and relisten to parts of the speech as many times as students need or desire. While ESL students are learning about MLK and other heroes of the civil rights movement, (U.S.-born) Spanish students are learning about leaders who were key figures in the civil rights movement in the Dominican Republic.
Because videos of all types are a powerful tool for engaging students and delivering CI, I use them in a variety of ways. One video-based approach that I use is a modified version of MovieTalk, a focal skills approach to teaching language created by Dr. Ashley Hastings to develop students’ listening comprehension skills. In terms of civil rights, I use the movie trailer for the movie 42 (the Jackie Robinson story) to hook students and teach U.S. history. Meanwhile, my Spanish students focus on the trailer for the movie In the Time of the Butterflies, about the Mirabal sisters, who were key figures in the civil rights movement in the Dominican Republic.
I begin by strategically weaving linguistic data from the movie trailer into class discussion, which is driven by scaffolded questions in the target language. (E.g., Does discrimination exist in [your country]? Have you been the victim of discrimination in the U.S. or [your country]? Which of the following are motives for discrimination: skin color, financial situation, weight, physical appearance, etc.? How do you respond to acts of discrimination?) As key linguistic data emerge from the discussion, I write words and phrases on the board and continue the discussion as long as I can sustain it, generally 20 to 30 minutes.
Following the discussion, I play a select portion of the movie trailer, muting the sound and starting and stopping the video, discussing what students see happening, making inferences about the possible content of dialogue, and making predictions about what will happen next. It is a process of playing a few seconds of footage, asking questions, making predictions, rewinding the video, and replaying the clip incrementally until the full clip has been played and discussed. Finally, I replay the entire clip without stopping and with the sound unmuted. For novice-level students, I have the transcript available to read and discuss before we view the entire clip. When available, I also like to include the movie subtitles (in the target language). In addition to movie trailers, I use video clips of hidden-camera pranks, TV commercials, public service announcements, news footage, movie shorts, and even home videos.
Music is another powerful tool for providing CI and for helping students develop cultural competence. We begin by linking meaning to the chorus of a song and, if the lyrics are level appropriate and relevant, we will incrementally discuss and make meaning of the lyrics as well. In relation to civil rights, I introduce ESL students to the song “Black and Blue” by Louis Armstrong and Spanish students to “Colores, Colores” by Bacilos. Each song is reflective of discrimination and diversity and contains relevant vocabulary (linguistic data).
In addition to videos and music, I use TPRS (teaching proficiency through reading and storytelling) to engage students, improve comprehension of key linguistic data, and in some cases build background knowledge of various topics or events. Some stories are original stories that students cooperatively created, as I ask hundreds (literally) of “story-asking” questions. Other stories are cooperatively developed from various sources, such as picture-based stories (from Tell Me More, Picture Stories for Beginning Communication, or Easy True Stories), news articles, legends, fairy tales, culture-based vignettes, content-based stories, and historical events.
All of the previous activities provide background information to prepare ESL and Spanish students to read the nonfiction book Felipe Alou: From the Valleys to the Mountains, a comprehension-based reader published by Fluency Matters. The book provides an overview of the historical events that encompassed the civil rights movements of both the U.S. and the DR while telling the true story of Felipe Alou.
The story is highly comprehensible to even beginning language students and is strategically written to provide repeated exposure to high-frequency vocabulary via a compelling story. Students are so engaged in the story (focused on the message) that they do not notice repetition of vocabulary and key phrases, nor do they consciously focus on learning language.
Although my thematic units are strategically planned, I am flexible in how they progress and evolve. I use my curriculum map as a guide, not an anchor, because true communication is spontaneous and therefore cannot be planned. If I have learned anything over the years, it is that true communication requires me to pay more attention to my students than to my curriculum. Never has this been this more apparent than a few years ago while I was teaching ESL in the DR. It was December, and I was charged with the task of preparing students to travel to the U.S. in the upcoming months. To accomplish this, I used the John Denver song “Leaving on a Jet Plane” as my theme.
Because it was December, I included a cultural comparison of Christmas in the DR and the U.S. I had asked numerous questions about what gifts students give to their fathers, mothers, and girlfriends. At one point, a student excitedly asked, “Teacher, how you say noche inolvidable (unforgettable night)?” After I gave him the answer, he went on to say, “I give my girlfriend present for unforgettable night.” As students were roaring with laughter, I quickly pulled up the music and lyrics to the song “Unforgettable,” sung by Nat King Cole and Natalie Cole.
As soon as students heard the music, they were completely captivated by the song. They hung on every word of the lyrics, wanting desperately to understand the message of the beautiful melody. They refused to leave class, wanting to listen to the song over and over again, and I let them—even though the song was not part of my thematic plan. Several days later, after a long week of intensive classes, my students were streaming away from our last class of the season when one student turned around and said, “Teacher, you [are] unforgettable.” That was an unforgettable reminder to focus on the learners in front of me, not on a method, a curriculum, or a plan.

Founder of Fluency Matters and organizer of the iFLT conference, Carol Gaab has been providing training in CI-based strategies since 1996. She was a presenter for the Bureau of Education and Research for nine years and a Spanish/ESL teacher for 25 years, most notably 20 years teaching/directing the San Francisco Giants’ U.S. and Dominican language programs. Carol also writes/publishes SLA-friendly resources for novice to advanced levels. Part two of this series will share practical and powerful strategies for sustaining continuous interaction with CI in multiple contexts. To see SLA-informed instruction in action and learn and practice strategies firsthand, visit the iFLT Conference in Denver, July 11–14. See FluencyMatters.com for details.

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