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Congress Advised of Critical Need to Boost Language Study

Paul LeClerc, chair of the Academy’s Commission on Language Learning.

The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAAS) delivered its final report on the future of language education to the U.S. Congress, recommending “a national strategy to improve access to as many languages as possible for people of every region, ethnicity, and socioeconomic background.”

“America’s Languages: Investing in Language Education for the 21st Century,” which was produced in response to a bipartisan request from senators and representatives in 2014, recommends that we “value language education as a persistent national need similar to education in math or English, and to ensure that a useful level of proficiency is within every student’s reach.”

Congress will be pleased to hear that the report does not call for “massive increases in funding at the local, state or federal levels,” according to Paul LeClerc, director of Columbia University’s Global Center in Paris and chair of the Academy’s Commission on Language Learning.

“Our greatest challenge, as our final report highlights in detail, is one of teaching capacity,” said LeClerc. “The Commission recommends ways to organize existing resources so that we can teach more Americans to speak more languages at an earlier age. We also want to make sure that language education is available to people of every cultural and socioeconomic background.”

The Commission’s five recommendations are:

  1. Increase the number of language teachers at all levels of education so that every child in every state has the opportunity to learn a language in addition to English.

    • Encourage the coordination of state credentialing systems so that qualified teachers can find work in regions where there are significant shortages.

    • Attract talented and enthusiastic language teachers through federal loan forgiveness programs.

    • Develop and distribute online and digital technologies, as well as blended learning models, particularly in communities with a short supply of language teachers.

    • Provide new opportunities for advanced study in languages in higher education—for future language teachers as well scholars in other fields—through a recommitment to language instruction, blended learning programs, and the development of new regional consortia allowing colleges and universities to pool learning resources.

  2. Supplement language instruction across the education system through public-private partnerships among schools, government, philanthropies, businesses, and local community members.

    • Draw on local and regional resources by working with heritage language communities and other local experts to create in-school and after-school instructional programs.

    • Maintain support for state humanities councils and other organizations that create vital language and cultural resources for local communities.

  3. Support heritage languages already spoken in the U.S., and help these languages persist from one generation to the next.

    • Encourage heritage language speakers to pursue further instruction in their heritage languages.

    • Provide more language learning opportunities for heritage speakers in classroom or school settings.

    • Expand efforts to create college and university curricula designed specifically for heritage speakers and to offer course credit for proficiency in heritage language.

  4. Provide targeted attention to Native American languages.

    • Increase support for the use of Native American languages as the primary languages of education, and for the development of curricula and education materials for such programs.

    • Provide opportunities for Native Americans and others to study Native American languages in English-based schools with appropriate curricula and materials.

  5. Promote opportunities for students to learn languages in other countries, by experiencing other cultures and immersing themselves in multilingual environments.

    • Encourage high schools and universities to facilitate learning abroad opportunities for students.

    • Increase the number of international internships sponsored by businesses and NGOs.

    • Restructure federal financial aid to help low-income undergraduates experience study abroad during the summer as well as the academic year.

According to the report, the commission as a whole believes that instructional opportunities in other languages should be offered as early in life as possible. Its primary goal is that every school in the U.S. offer meaningful instruction of languages other than English as part of their standard curricula. Such a recommendation should have a significant effect on school boards considering the expansion of dual-language programs and the introduction of languages into the preK-6 curriculum.

The commission is also suggesting colleges and universities offer beginning and advanced language instruction to all students, and reverse recent cuts “wherever possible.” It also applauds recent efforts to expand undergraduate language requirements.

Currently, 44 states and Washington, D.C., report that they can’t find enough qualified K-12 teachers to meet current needs, but all districts respond to shortages in different ways, the commission says. So, it calls for federal loan forgiveness plans for Direct Loans to attract qualified teachers.


“The Commission’s work was thoughtful, extensive, and critical to the future of our nation,” said Martha G. Abbott, executive director of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL). “In the weeks and months ahead, ACTFL will work tirelessly along with the entire language profession through a national public awareness campaign, Lead with Languages, to encourage action by local, state, and federal leaders, as well as university, corporate and nonprofit partners, to gain a national commitment to language learning,” she continued.

The report, which is available at http://www.amacad.org/language, is a crucial step in the creation of an educational infrastructure capable of overcoming America’s monolingualism, and thus enable its citizens to reap the wide range of benefits associated with bi- and multilingualism.

UN: Multilingual Education is ‘Absolutely Essential’

Learning languages is a promise of peace, innovation, and creativity, and will contribute to the achievement of global development goals, the head of the United Nations agency for culture and education said last month to mark International Mother Language Day.

“There can be no authentic dialogue or effective international cooperation without respect for linguistic diversity, which opens up true understanding of every culture,” said UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Director-General Irina Bokova in her message on the Day.

“Access to the diversity of languages can awaken the curiosity and mutual understanding of peoples. That is why learning languages is at one and the same time a promise of peace, of innovation and of creativity,” she stated.

This year, the International Day, observed annually on 21 February, was devoted to multilingual education.

Ms. Bokova said the Day is an opportunity to mobilize for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and in particular Goal 4, to ensure inclusive and quality education for all and promote lifelong learning.

“Education and information in the mother language is absolutely essential to improving learning and developing confidence and self-esteem, which are among the most powerful engines of development,” she said.

As such, she appealed for the potential of multilingual education to be acknowledged everywhere, in education and administrative systems, in cultural expressions and the media, cyberspace and trade.

Ms. Bokova concluded with a passionate appeal, “We are beings of language. Cultures, ideas, feelings, and even aspirations for a better world come to us first and foremost in a specific language, with specific words. These languages convey values and visions of the world that enrich humanity. Giving value to these languages opens up the range of possible futures, and strengthens the energy needed to achieve them. On the occasion of this Day, I launch an appeal for the potential of multilingual education to be acknowledged everywhere, in education and administrative systems, in cultural expressions and the media, cyberspace, and trade. The better we understand how to value languages, the more tools we will have to build a future of dignity for all.”

International Mother Language Day was proclaimed by UNESCO’s General Conference in November 1999, and it has been observed every year since February 2000 to promote linguistic and cultural diversity and multilingualism.

 

Many Languages, One World

Many Languages One World 2017 -- “Share your ideas and be heard in the General Assembly Hall of the United Nations!"Deadline Approaches for 2017 UN Student Essay Contest and Global Youth Forum

ELS and the United Nations Academic Impact are sponsoring the fourth Many Languages, One World Student Essay Contest and Global Youth Forum. This year welcomes Northeastern University as the host of the Many Languages, One World Global Youth Forum and the sponsor and organizer of the Northeastern University Global Youth Conference.

Sixty winners will be selected as delegates to the 2017 Many Languages, One World Global Youth Forum, where they will create action plans related to the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development in one of the six official languages of the UN.

ELS Educational Services, Inc. will award each winner with an all-expense paid trip to Boston and New York City between 15-26, July 2017. At the Global Youth Forum, the students will create action plans addressing selected topics from the Sustainable Development Agenda, and will present their views at UN Headquarters in New York City. These international delegates will also have the opportunity to interact with invited international scholars and tour Boston and New York City. The deadline for essay submissions is 11:59 p.m. EST Thursday, 16 March, 2017.

At last month’s launch, Mr. Ramu Damodaran, chief, United Nations Academic Impact, Department of Public Information, said, “In recent months, through resolutions of its General Assembly and in the definition of the world’s sustainable development goals, the United Nations has affirmed the principle of global citizenship; of the international individual proud of her national and linguistic identity, and the pride enhanced by sharing it with others who choose to make the effort to listen and to learn. We are honored to welcome sixty of these young and receptive minds again this year.”

“The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reports that 65.3 million people have been forced to leave their homes due to conflict or disasters. Most of them will need to learn a new language in order to participate in education and work in any country that offers them asylum. Core values of global citizenship include tolerance and respect of other cultures and advocacy of peaceful coexistence, intrinsic to MLOW and the UNAI. These will be central themes of the 2017 MLOW Global Essay Contest and Youth Forum,” said ELS president emeritus and co-founder of Many Languages, One World, Mark W. Harris.

Northeastern University president Joseph Aoun added, “In our globalized world, there has never been a greater need for mutual understanding, and language remains our foremost tool for expression, connection, and creation. Northeastern is pleased to support this event that champions the written word in our global dialogue, and elevates understanding between students of all cultures and nations.”

To Participate:
Write an original essay (2,000 words or fewer) discussing global citizenship and cultural understanding, and the role that multilingual ability can play in fostering these.  The essay should reflect personal, academic, cultural, and national context. 

Many Languages, One World promotes the continued learning of the six official languages of the United Nations-Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish.  To qualify, essays must be written in an official language of the United Nations that is neither your first language (language(s) spoken at home) nor the medium of instruction in either your primary or secondary education (or a medium of instruction if attending a bilingual school). You will need to demonstrate both written and verbal competency in the language of the essay. You must be a full-time university student, referred and endorsed by a faculty member or university representative, and must be 18 years of age or older by the contest deadline.

For full contest details, rules and entry guidelines, visit ManyLanguagesOneWorld.org.

 

Colorado Senate Embraces Seal of Biliteracy

On the day after Valentine’s Day, Colorado’s bilingual advocates received a belated gift from their state senate. The Republican-controlled senate voted in favor of Senate Bill 17-123, the Colorado Seal of Biliteracy by a margin of 30-5. The measure now goes on to the House, controlled by Democrats, where it has bipartisan sponsorship and where it is expected to pass.

Since Colorado made English its official language back in 1988, the pendulum has swung in favor of bilingual education. In 2002, the anti-bilingual education Unz Amendment was defeated and now, the state is poised to join the District of Columbia and 19 other states in adopting a Seal of Biliteracy.

The Colorado Seal of Biliteracy journey began in 2013 when Jorge García, working for the BUENO Policy Center, began research and advocacy for a Colorado Seal. In April of the following year, García presented the concept at a state-sponsored conference for educators of emerging bilingual students. As a result of the session, Jessica Martinez from Eagle County Schools, Darlene LeDoux from Denver Public Schools, and Myrna Escalante from Adams 14 Schools in Commerce City, along with García, formed Team Colorado. They met, planned, and collaborated so that those three districts adopted their own Seals of Biliteracy. Team Colorado presented their work across the state including for the State Board of Education.

In 2016, a biliteracy endorsement bill suddenly appeared in the Colorado House sponsored by an outside group. It passed in the House but disappeared in the Senate as suddenly as it had appeared; killed by its Senate sponsor. Inspired by the bill’s success in the House, García (now executive director of the Colorado Association for Bilingual Education- COCABE) and Arthur Chou, an expert on the Seal, put together a coalition, including COCABE, Colorado TESOL, Colorado Congress of Foreign Language Teachers, and Higher Educators in Linguistically and Culturally Diverse Education, to push the bill forward. Senator Rachel Zenzinger (D) joined across the aisle with Senator Kevin Priola (R) to sponsor the bill, and House Rep James Wilson (R) was joined by Rep Millie Hamner (D) to sponsor the bill in that chamber. The Partnership for a New American Economy lent support from outside of Colorado providing a lobbyist to secure business sector support for the legislation.

English may be the official language of Colorado but if the current momentum continues, biliteracy will soon be acknowledged and rewarded with a Colorado State Seal.

Community Service

Jason Stricker explains how the Supporting Teacher Effectiveness Project helps create professional learning communities that work

Research suggests that one of the main factors influencing student achievement results is the effectiveness of teachers. Research also shows that developing great teachers can be complex and expensive. According to the New Teacher Project’s 2015 Mirage report, districts can spend upwards of $18,000 annually per teacher on professional development (PD) and are only seeing little improvement in teacher effectiveness. Too often, solutions to teacher development include the adoption of new curriculum that all teachers are asked to follow or the implementation of a new instructional strategy across a school without really testing the efficacy of that strategy.
The planning and implementation of these solutions often play out in schools’ professional learning communities (PLCs). Since first emerging in the 1960s, PLCs have been grounded in key principles, chief among them the belief that participation would ultimately lead to improvement in teacher practice and increases in student achievement. While there is plenty of evidence to support the fact that teachers and administrators enjoy participating in PLCs, there is very little real data to show the impact of this participation on teacher and student growth. School leaders often find themselves struggling to structure meaningful opportunities for teachers to work together.
In our own quest to find systems and structures that help solve some of these challenges related to teaching and learning, we uncovered some incredibly complex problems that the world has faced, and a common approach to solving them.

Introducing the Supporting Teacher Effectiveness Project (STEP)
In 2013, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) invited the Long Beach Unified School District (LBUSD), the American Institutes for Research (AIR), Kitamba, and my company, Insight Education Group, to work together to find solutions to the pressing issues that PLCs have been wrestling with.
1. How do we close persistent achievement gaps in order to ensure that all students are achieving at high levels?
2. How do we help prepare students for college and career success when the odds are stacked against them?
3. How do teachers get better when they are already doing everything they can to help their students succeed?
To answer these questions, we looked back to the early 1990s, when Jerry and Monique Sternin were faced with a perplexing challenge when leading Save the Children’s work to combat childhood malnutrition in the Vietnamese countryside. A horrifying 65% of all children in Vietnam under five years of age suffered from some degree of malnutrition. With limited resources and only six months to solve the intractable problem of childhood malnutrition in Vietnam or face being asked to leave the country, the Sternins had to design an improvement model that would simultaneously engage all stakeholders in the community and lead to the discovery of a sustainable solution. They used an approach based on the theory of positive deviance, which asserts that in every community there are certain individuals or groups whose uncommon behaviors and strategies enable them to find better solutions to problems than their peers, even if they have the same resources and similar or worse challenges.
The Sternins worked with the community to find families who, despite the odds, had children who were not malnourished. In trying to discover what these families were doing differently from others in their villages, they found a simple and powerful truth. By scooping soup from the bottom of pots, rather than the top, these families were serving their children more nutrient-rich food such as shrimp and potatoes—rather than simply pouring broth into their bowls.
The simple process of serving from the bottom of soup pots was the key to solving malnutrition. It did not require huge relief or aid efforts from others; it simply required careful examination and testing of serving practices. The Sternins then encouraged the community to adopt these positive deviant practices and brought about enormous change. After six months, more than 40% of the children participating in the program were rehabilitated; another 20% had moved from severe malnutrition to moderate malnutrition.

The Role of Positive Deviance
After learning about the positive deviance theory, we asked ourselves if we could use a similar approach to solve seemingly intractable problems in education. Our hypothesis was that in every school community, there are educators who have access to the same resources as their peers but use certain uncommon teaching strategies that enable better learning to occur in their classrooms.
Together with the AIR, Kitamba, and the team at Insight Education Group, we developed the Supporting Teacher Effectiveness Project (STEP), which at its core is designed to help teachers solve problems through discovering, testing, and sharing better practices. Drawing upon the wisdom and success of the Sternins’ work in Vietnam as well as improvement science and lessons from industries working in networked improvement communities, STEP brings together educators who face a shared challenge and facilitates their professional growth.

The STEP Framework
Now implemented in several districts and CMOs nationwide, the framework provides an opportunity for team members to cultivate expanded networks and resources that can inform their approaches to solving problems. Teachers develop an appreciation for the power of positive deviance and learn to discern when changes lead to improvement and when they do not. As a result, the process influences positive changes in culture, mindset, and relationships among teachers, students, and school communities.
The process is simple to explain and understand. Facilitators lead teachers through four phases as depicted in the provided graphic:

Seek: The first phase helps participants identify a common challenge that each member wants to solve and establish a measurable aim toward which they will work collectively in order to solve their challenge.
Discover: With a common challenge in their sights, teams then embark on a process to discover successful people and practices within their community. Using existing data and gathering new information as needed, teams look for successful outliers. Once outliers have been identified, teams engage in cycles of inquiry to discover the specific practices and strategies that are leading to the desired results.
Confirm: During this phase, teams confirm the promise of these new practices by trying them and measuring whether they make a difference. Only when the change brings about better outcomes can a new practice be considered a solution.
Share: Once they have confirmed potential solutions, teams share the results of their work with their communities. Teams work to design a process to share the effective practices they have uncovered with other colleagues in their schools and districts. When sharing a solution, teams may also share the process used to confirm the helpfulness of a new practice.

The Essential Elements of STEP
There are four essential, interconnected elements that support STEP. Each must be present in order for site-based teams to effectively implement the process.
Data: Data helps participants understand if the changes they are making to their practice are having the desired impact on helping them solve their challenge. STEP emphasizes the use of practical measurement of students’ educational indicators (behaviors, competencies, experiences), teacher practices, and teacher professional growth and effectiveness as these factors relate to the challenge the team identified.
Great Facilitation: Effective facilitation by trained coaches is the foundation of the work of all teams. Practical and no-nonsense methods are required to help participants navigate the four phases of the work while creating a safe space where teams feel empowered to engage, innovate, try new approaches, learn, and grow.
Content and Contextual Knowledge: Once a challenge has been identified, teams need to understand the knowledge, attitudes and beliefs, skills, and habits of mind necessary to identify potential solutions and implement them effectively. While relevant content knowledge often resides within the community, teams may learn that to effectively address their issues, they will need to enhance and extend their knowledge within the group.
Leadership and Culture: The initiative is committed to bottom-up change management and the top-down conditions that support and encourage bottom-up innovation. Unlike traditional top-down, expert-driven professional development, teachers drive this work. They are challenged to proactively address problems of practice by focusing not on what is wrong but instead on identifying what is working today.

Case Study: Lee Elementary School
“The answers are here” is a phrase that embodies the essence of STEP. But how do we begin to find these answers? This was the question the team at Lee Elementary School in LBUSD set out to answer in the fall of 2014. The team, led by a trained coach, included the school’s principal, its vice principal, and 13 teachers representing grades K–5.
During the first meeting, the team spent time getting to know each other and started working through a series of questions: What kept them up at night wishing that they could help their students do better? What really mattered in terms of making sure that their students were college and career ready? They came up with seven potential challenge areas. Next, the coach asked the team members to bring data to their next meeting that would help verify that the challenges they identified were real and shared across grade levels. They were encouraged to cast a wide net and bring in any assessments that they thought might help contextualize their problems.
The team rose to the occasion. At the next team meeting, the principal brought school-wide data from common end-of-unit math tests across all grade levels. Teachers brought several of their own artifacts, including quizzes, tests, exit tickets, and student work.
Over the course of the next several meetings, the team made collective connections between the data and their brainstormed challenges. Looking at the available data helped them eliminate some challenges altogether, either because the links between the challenge and college- and career-readiness standards seemed unclear or because there was not sufficient convincing data that clearly demonstrated that the challenges were shared across grade levels and student populations.
As a result of this review, they were left with three sizable focus areas: two related to math and one to ELA. To continue investigating these topics and help the team narrow its scope to a single challenge area, the STEP coach led the team through several activities that pushed them through further exploration and analysis of the problems they had identified. After careful discussion and examination, they decided that their most immediate challenge involved improving their instructional practices in math concepts and procedures and communicating reasoning in order to improve student outcomes.
With a narrowed area of focus, the team had to determine a clear end goal and opportunities to monitor progress along the way. They realized that they needed to gather more evidence about the challenge itself in order to understand the current state of teaching practices being used to teach math concepts and procedures and to help students communicate their reasoning. The team worked closely with the coach and the STEP data support liaison to design surveys: one for teachers at Lee to explore existing teacher practices and perceptions toward teaching math and collaborating to improve practice, and another for students to understand their perceptions of math. Team members also talked informally with parents and other teachers about current approaches to teaching math concepts and associated procedures. This informal, qualitative data was also used to validate and refine their challenges.
With this data in place, the coach led the team through the remaining phases. These included developing a succinct statement that clearly defined what they hoped to accomplish and helped express what success would look like, and examining baseline student outcomes data, together with their survey data, to provide early signposts for practices and outcomes. In the end, the team created a clear set of math practices that worked and that could be used school wide. STEP provided the framework and mindset for the educators at Lee to discover shared issues and find the solutions within their own building.

Empowering Teachers Brings Change
STEP is now being implemented in more than 20 schools (and growing) nationwide, including LBUSD, Aspire Public Schools, and Boston Public Schools. Participating teachers consistently share how the process has provided a meaningful way to collaborate with other grade levels and departments and encourage an open-door policy with their colleagues. In addition, teachers share how the initiative has provided them with the opportunity to develop common assessments, learn teaching strategies, and most importantly self-reflect on teaching practices.
STEP is designed to be a paradigm shift. Rather than telling teachers how to improve instruction, it empowers teachers to authentically select and hone the tools and mindsets that allow them to improve their practice and positively impact student learning.

References
Mirage. http://tntp.org/assets/documents/TNTP-Mirage_2015.pdf

Jason Stricker is a co-founder and CEO of Insight Education Group. With extensive experience in education as a teacher, coach, chief academic officer, and consultant, Jason brings to his work a deep understanding of educator effectiveness and organizational change and its impact on stakeholders at all levels. Follow him on Twitter at @stricktlyjason. Interested educators can learn more about STEP and hear from participants on the impact of the program in their schools at InsightEducationGroup.com/STEP.

Sign-Language Leads to Better Peripheral Vision

A new report in Frontiers in Psychology found that deaf adults who use British Sign Language (BSL) had significantly faster peripheral vision reaction time than non-deaf BSL language interpreters and that the interpreters had faster reaction times than hearing adults who do not speak BSL.

What is interesting about deaf individuals is that from having an altered cognitive experience, they clearly experience sensory and cognitive changes. This means that since deaf individuals are unable to hear, their vision and other senses change. Many deaf individuals also are immersed in some kind of sign language, which is a visual spacial language that has been proven to alter the conceptual and sensory visual system different than spoken languages.

During sign language conversation, fluent signing individuals tend to look at the face of who is signing to them. Because signers are looking straight ahead during sign language, they are more likely to stimulate visual stimulation in peripheral vision. To test the levels of reaction time, researchers gathered 17 people who had been deaf since birth or under 8 years old, eight qualified full-time BSL interpreters, and 18 participants with no hearing loss and no experience in sign language. The participants sat in a fixed position facing forward and used a joystick in their hand to identify the location of brief LED lights that blinked in different locations at different times.

That deaf participants had faster reaction times than hearing individuals was not a new discovery, as there have been many studies that prove that deaf individuals who sign have higher visual-spacial cognitive abilities than hearing non-signing individuals. What was surprising, however, was that hearing individuals who are fluent in signing had faster reaction times than hearing individuals who don’t sign. The implication is that, while the lack of hearing may increase the abilities of other senses (like sight), the actual act of signing also increases abilities.

While this was a small study done on a small group from one country, it may be precedent for further studies on the results.

 

The Weeknd Donates $50K for Ancient Language

The University of Toronto is continuing its courses on Ge’ez thanks in part to a $50,000 donation from the Grammy Award–winning musician The Weeknd. Ge’ez is an ancient South Semitic language that originated in the northern region of Ethiopia. It remains the main language used in certain church communities and is used in prayer and in scheduled public celebrations.
The Weeknd, whose birth name is Abel Tesfaye, was born in Canada and is the only child of Ethiopian migrants. His first language is the Semitic language Amharic, and he attended services at an Ethiopian Orthodox church (a type of church that is known to sometimes conduct services in Ge’ez). He was presented the Bikila Award for Professional Excellence in 2014 and donated the funds to the same organization, which is a Toronto-based Ethiopian community organization.
The donation was part of a larger fundraiser that began in 2015, when University of Toronto professor Michael Gervers pledged to donate $50,000 of his own money if the university and Ethiopian and Eritrean communities would help match his contributions.
The course is led by Professor Robert Holmstedt, who specializes in Biblical Hebrew and Northwest Semitic languages, and has 25 students enrolled. “We can try to make it as living as possible, but it’s an ancient language and so no one speaks it,” he said. Holmstedt had to invent his own materials for the course, since Ge’ez is so rarely taught. He told CBC Toronto that “the language’s obscurity doesn’t mean a better understanding of it can’t have a major impact” and that “it opens up a world of manuscripts.”

Language Key to National Identity

A new survey by the Pew Research Center reveals that language is a much more significant factor to national identity than birthplace. According to What It Takes to Truly Be ‘One of Us’, majorities in each of the 14 countries polled say it is very important to speak the native language to be considered a true member of the nation. Fully 70% of the U.S. public says that to be truly American it is very important to be able to speak English, and an additional 22% believe proficiency is somewhat important. Just 8% assert that English is not very or not at all important. U.S. generations differ on whether English proficiency matters to being an American. Among people ages 50 and older, 81% say such language ability is very important. Only 58% of those ages 18 to 34 place an equal premium on speaking English.

About 80% of Dutch, British, Hungarians, and Germans believe the ability to converse in their country’s language is very important to nationality. Canadians and Italians are the least likely to link language and national identity. Nevertheless, 60% of Canadians and Italians still make that strong connection.

“Debates over what it means to be a “true” American, Australian, German or other nationality have often highlighted the importance of a person being born in a particular country. But contrary to such rhetoric, the survey finds that people generally place a relatively low premium on a person’s birthplace. Only 13% of Australians, 21% of Canadians, 32% of Americans and a median of 33% of Europeans believe that it is very important for a person to be born in their country in order to be considered a true national.”

Why French?

New Bell Bilingual Lycée, Douala, Cameroon

Kathy Stein-Smith explains why demand is growing for French the world over.

There is one skill that is being learned around the world, with enrollments growing by 50% in Asia and Africa, while in the U.S. programs are being reduced and even eliminated. This highly sought-after global skill is not social media, data analytics, or coding; it is learning French. French is a language that reflects both the rich cultural and historical heritage of France and also that of the worldwide Francophonie. It is a language of international diplomacy, a global business language, and a top internet language, which points to the growing importance of French.

With deep historical roots in the U.S. and throughout North America and the Caribbean, it is also a local language. The ideas of the Enlightenment inspired the American Revolution, several of the Founding Fathers visited Paris to elicit French support of the revolutionary cause, and France has been considered America’s oldest ally.

In the 19th century, Americans flocked to Paris to visit the Louvre and to enjoy French fashion, and later, into the 20th century, writers and artists spent time in Paris, termed by Hemingway, “a moveable feast,” and Julia Child introduced the American home cook to French cuisine. Traditionally studied as a means to appreciate French literature and the langue de Molire, French is now also studied as a heritage language, in immersion programs, and as a business language. Building on this traditional foundation, the modern imperatives for learning French are numerous, including culture, career, and global citizenship, with experiential learning a key component for millennials.

France, renowned for its culture, cuisine, and lifestyle, has influence that extends beyond its borders and impact that exceeds that which would be expected based on its population. France is home to 41 of the 492 Unesco World Heritage sites in Europe and North America. Leading in international arrivals, France is the most visited country in the world, and is among the world’s most innovative countries.

Paris is home to the Louvre—widely considered the world’s best-known museum—is a global fashion capital, and the best student city in the world. France is a top destination for U.S. students studying abroad and for international students, with the largest number of international students after only the U.S. and the UK. French is one of six official languages of the United Nations, one of three working languages of the European Union, and one of two official languages of the Olympics. It is an official language of countless other international organizations, including NATO, and is spoken on every continent, with 220 million speakers, one of the ten most widely spoken languages in the world.

According to the OIF report, La Langue française dans le monde – 2014, French is spoken on five continents, and the population of its member nations approaches one billion. It is the second most widely studied language in the world, after only English. French is the third most important language for business, after only English and Chinese. OIF members comprise 16% of the world population and earn 14% of the global gross income, and partake in 20% of world trade. It is predicted that the number of French speakers will rise to 767 million by 2060. The OIF has observer status at the UN, where French is not only one of the six official languages, but is one of the two working languages, mastery of one of which is necessary to be employed at the Secretariat. In addition, the Group of Francophone Ambassadors promotes multilingualism and the role of French at the UN.

French in the U.S.
French (including French Creole) is the fourth most widely spoken language in the U.S., with over two million speakers over the age of five. It is the most widely spoken language, after English, in four states, and after English and Spanish in seven more, making the French language a significant presence in 11 of our 50 states. In addition, Canada is officially bilingual in French and English. Yet according to the 2014 OIF report, the study of French has only increased by 2% in the Americas in the most recent five-year period reported, far less than in many other parts of the world, and reports of potential and actual reductions and eliminations of French programs in the U.S. have been in the news. The disconnect between the actual relevance of French in North America and current enrollment at all levels highlights the importance of advocacy by educators and language enterprise partners in government and industry. French is not a foreign language, but rather an American language. . French influence has extended through a broad swath of the U.S. and from Quebec to Louisiana, with Minnesota’s state motto of l’Etoile du Nord and many place names across the U.S. signs of our French heritage.

French for Business and Careers
France is one of the world’s largest economies and one of most important trading partners of the U.S. Of the Fortune Global 500 2016, 31 are headquartered in France. France is one of the top five investors in the U.S., and over 4,600 French companies, providing over 650,000 American jobs, operate in the U.S. France and French-speaking countries are a major world economic factor, accounting for 19% of the global trade in goods. French is a global business language, and knowledge of French can lead to career opportunities. A 2011 Bloomberg study found French to be the third most useful language for international business, with only English and Mandarin Chinese more useful. According to 2013 British Council report, Languages for the Future, French is the third most useful language for British business. French language skills can also lead to careers in the language-services sector, valued at more than $25 billion per year and employing more than half a million in education and industry alone, and predicted to increase by 29% between 2014 and 2024. A 2014 global talent survey found that 11% of U.S. mid- and large-size companies are actively recruiting candidates with foreign language skills and 35% give an advantage to multilingual candidates.

Learning French
French is the second most studied language in the world, with 100 million students around the world—a huge market. Over a million students study French in the Alliance Française alone. A recent study by Duolingo, the mobile language-learning-tools provider, found that French is the second most frequently studied language, with only English having more learners. The English language has been profoundly influenced by French, with estimates of French loanwords in English ranging up to 45% of our vocabulary. French is one of ten languages ranked by the Foreign Service Institute as close to English and easy to learn for English speakers. In a globalized, interconnected world, foreign language skills are more important than ever before, and yet Americans do not tend to study foreign languages, with only 18.5% of K–12 public school students studying a foreign language and a mere 8.1% of college and university students enrolled in a foreign language course.

Advocacy
Effective advocacy for French is essential for sustainable French language study commensurate with the importance of French in the globalized world and workplace and includes efforts and initiatives by associations of French-language educators, foreign-language educators, and other partners. The American Association of Teachers of French has taken the leadership role in French language advocacy through its national organization, regional and state chapters, and national commissions, including its Commission on Advocacy. Other advocacy groups include the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages, the Modern Language Association, the Joint National Committee for Languages–National Council for International Studies, the American Translators Association, and the Association of International Educators. Through its Ministry of European and Foreign Affairs, the French government supports French language education around the world, deploying approximately 700 staff worldwide and providing funding of over six million euros per year. The OIF and the Centre de la francophonie des Amériques include advocacy within a broader agenda. The Council for the Development of French in Louisiana promotes the use of French in Louisiana. On an international level, the United Nations advocates for multilingualism, as does the Many Languages One World essay contest—an initiative of the UN Academic Impact and ELS Educational Services.

Trends
Current trends in French language education include immersion programs, interdisciplinary programs, partnerships, international education, and online learning. Even as traditional K–12 and postsecondary enrollment has been problematic, the French language has enjoyed a resurgence in terms of French heritage-language and immersion programs. A noteworthy example is La révolution bilingue in New York City and neighboring North Jersey, which offers both dual-immersion and French heritage-language programs within its public schools. In New Orleans, immersion programs are also on the rise. French language education also includes Noteworthy immersion programs include the Middlebury College Summer Language Schools and the Concordia Language Villages. Beyond specifically French language programs with an interdisciplinary approach, Culture and Language across the Curriculum and the Centers for International Business Education and Research are among the best known. French government support for French language and francophone culture includes La révolution bilingue, the French Language Heritage Program, the Institut français and Alliance Française, CampusFrance, its nonprofit partner, FACE (French American Cultural Exchange), and numerous additional programs through the cultural services of the French Embassy.

The Future of French
French may be not only the language of the past and the present but also our language of the future. A 2014 study by investment bank Natixis suggests that by 2050, French might be the most widely spoken language in the world, with a half billion speakers. The 2014 OIF report La Langue française dans le monde predicts that by 2060, there will be 767 million French speakers in the world.

French is considered an advantage in personal life, in culture, in travel, in education, in the workplace, and in terms of access to information around the world. With 900 million people learning French around the world, our relative lack of French language skills and knowledge of francophone culture may mean that we are falling behind and may put our futures at risk. So, for all of these reasons and many more, the question for most of us should no longer be Why French? but rather Why not French? and Why not now?

References
American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL). Foreign Language Enrollments in K–12 Public Schools. 
Bloomberg Rankings: The Languages of Business. 
France and the Promotion of French Worldwide. 
French at the United Nations. 
Fumaroli, Marc. When the World Spoke French. New York: New York Review Books, 2011.
Language Difficulty Ranking. 
La Langue francaise dans le monde 2014
Modern Language Association. Enrollments in Languages Other Than English in
United States Institutions of Higher Education.
North American Francophone and Francophile Cities Network. 
Organisation internationale de la Francophonie. 
Rivers, William P. The Language Enterprise in the U.S.: The View from Washington. 
Rivers, William P. Making the Case for the Language Enterprise in 2015: Forging New Connections.
Top Trading Partners 2015. 

Kathy Stein-Smith, PhD, is associate university librarian and adjunct faculty in foreign languages and related areas at Fairleigh Dickinson University—Metropolitan Campus, Teaneck, New Jersey. She is chair of the AATF (American Association of Teachers of French) Commission on Advocacy, and a member of the ATA (American Translators Association) Education and Pedagogy Committee. She is the author of two books and several articles about the foreign language deficit, has given a TEDx talk, The U.S. Foreign Language Deficit—”What It Is; Why It Matters; and What We Can Do about It”, and maintains a blog, Language Matters.

Language Magazine’s Short Guide to the Oscars Foreign Language Nominees

The annual awards ceremony is under way this month, and the race for best foreign-language film is under way. This year’s nominations have been in the news particularly more because of the Iranian director, Asghar Farhadi, who is among the thousands of people to be affected by President Trump’s ban on travelers from predominately Muslim countries. Here’s a short look at all of the nominations.

‘Tanna’, Australian-Vanuatuan

Romance. A true story of a couple in the South Pacific who decided to marry for love, rather than obey their parents’ wishes.

Showing: Here’s a list of locations to see the film.

‘Land of Mine’, Denmark

Historical Drama. This Danish-German film is inspired by real events and tells the story of German child POWs sent to clear mines in Denmark after World War II.

Showing: The film opens in theaters Feb. 10.

‘Toni Erdmann’, Germany

Comedy-Drama. A divorced hippie music teacher reconnects with his corporate-climber daughter in this comedy that encapsulates gender politics, family, and corporate life.

Showing: The film is currently in theaters. Here is a list of locations.

‘The Salesman’, Iran

Drama. From the acclaimed director of Oscar-winner “A Separation’ comes another tale of human relationships through the story of a young couple who re-tells the story of Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman”.

Showing: Here is a list of locations.

‘A Man Called Ove’, Sweden

Comedy-Drama.

This heartfelt drama follows 59-year-old Ove—the grumpiest man on the block who finds unexpected friendship after leaving his long-time career as president of the condominium association.

Showing: Here is a list of locations. The film is also available to rent at Amazon, Vudu, Google Play, and iTunes.

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