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The World Lights up for Int’l Literacy Day

UNESCO raises awareness for the importance of literacy to sustainable development.

On September 8th, communities from all corners of the world celebrated UNESCO’s International Literacy Day. The theme of this year’s celebration was “Literacy and Sustainable Development.” UNESCO started International Literacy Day in 1965 to raise awareness of the importance of literacy in achieving a more just world, and the effects are two fold: activities around the world highlight the joy of literacy, while the international media takes the day to reflect on the state of education and remind us that an estimated 67 million children worldwide lack access to primary school education and 175 million adolescents unable to read a sentence.

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Florida Fights Feds on ELL Flexibility

Governor Scott joins education officials in face-off with the Department of Education.

178402698Florida is facing off against the Department of Education over a denied request for giving English language learners (ELLs) two years in public schools before their assessment scores factored into school grades. While Arne Duncan’s office approved Florida’s waiver extension for some parts of No Child Left Behind, they refused the testing timeline that Florida proposed, stating in a letter, “Current law requires assessing all students in tested grades and including their results in accountability determinations in order to ensure that teachers and parents of ELs have information on students’ progress and that schools are held accountable for the academic achievement of ELs.”

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September 2014

September 2014 Cover

Testing Reformed
Lance Knowles explains how advances in technology and cognitive neuroscience allow us to assess and modify the quality of learning and practice

Animating All Kids
Gregory van Zuyen reports on the way Terry Thoren and Rudy Verbeeck are using cartoons to help teach language skills and learning habits in class

Arabic for America
Carine Allaf outlines the benefits and challenges of learning Arabic at K–12

Arabic at Large
They may be at opposite ends of the Arab world, but both Morocco and Oman offer international students the cultural experience of a lifetime within safe environments

Grading in a Perfect World
Myron Dueck, Paul Thomas, and Melissa Tomlinson offer their ideas of testing utopia

Testing Form and Function
Tests come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, so here’s a reference guide to help supervisors, administrators, and teachers choose Common Core–aligned assessments

Last Writes Richard Lederer and Caroline McCullagh on a star-spangled bicentennial

Reviews Jobshop Source and more.

New Chinese Dictionary Reflects Modern China

Additions include nouveau riche and the WeChat social media app.

466699263The Chinese language regulator has approved of a new edition of the Standard Dictionary of Modern Chinese that includes over 100 new words of increasing importance in contemporary China. The new additions are telling of how Chinese society has transformed amidst economic boom and technology age.

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UPDATE: Congress Considers Native Language Revitalization

 Language revitalization bills head to the floor.

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Bipartisan support for the Native Language Immersion Student Achievement Act (H.R.4214/S.1948) and The Native American Languages Reauthorization Act (H.R.726/S.2299) has led to both bills’ approval in the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs.  The bills will now be considered before the full Senate.

“Native Languages are vanishing at an alarming rate, and with them the culture, tradition and knowledge that are so important to the future of Indian Country,” said Senator Jon Tester (MT, S.1948 lead sponsor, S.2299 co-sponsor).  “This bill will not only revitalize Native languages, it will also keep kids in school and lead to greater pride, academic achievement and economic growth in Indian Country.”

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Duncan Gives an Inch to CCSS Schools

Secretary of Education offers extension for schools using testing in evaluations.

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As Common Core aligned assessments are rolled out all across the nation, Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan is taking heat and receiving complaints from parents, educators and administrators alike. In a back-to-school letter, he addressed concerns about standardized testing and announced new measures that offer more flexibility to schools to make the transition smoother. Duncan shared three principle complaints in the debate about assessment in schools.

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Operation Accent

Justyna Kozyra-Bober asks if later learners are on an impossible mission to sound like natives

After you get over the idea of sweet Felicity spying on the American government, the Cold War intrigues, complicated marriages, and fashion staples of the ‘80s make The Americans a dramatic and entertaining watch. But is it believable? With another season of FX’s political drama just around the corner, let’s look at the question from a linguistic point of view.

The Americans tells the story of two Soviet KGB spies living undercover, as an all-American couple. In flashbacks to their late adolescent years in the USSR, we can hear them speak English with heavy Russian accents. Yet the Jenningses, the perfect couple, are somehow able…

To read the full story, click here.

English Challenge in Morocco

 

467902955After saying that “French is no longer valid” back in April, Morocco’s Minister of Higher Education, Lahcen Daoudi, is now saying that Arabic is important only because it is the language of the Quran, and suggesting that students looking to join the professional and academic community learn English.

In a video posted on YouTube, the minister said that “only five languages will still be alive” in the far future, including Arabic, which “will be preserved not because it produces science but only because it is linked to the Quran.”

The minister added that “students who do not know English language have no future” because “the language that dominates the scientific fields in the world is English.”

Speaking about the importance of the English language as “the world language for scientific research,” Daoudi said that the Moroccan University will, from next year, recruit engineers to teach science students, and that the most important criterion upon which teachers will be accepted is their mastery of English.

Last March, the Secretary General of Morocco’s Independence Party, Hamid Chabat, called for the adoption of English instead of French as the country’s second official language.

Google Goes Multilingual

New search app code switches like most people.

175637725For polyglots, it can be an arduous task to manually change the language on a smart phone keyboard depending on the task— between texting friends and family in different language, emailing clients around the world, and reading international news, polyglots may switch languages hundreds of times a day. Unlike the polyglot brain that can seamlessly code switch, our smart phones have trouble detecting the language and when one neglects to change the keyboard with the language, wacky auto-correct nonsense ensues.

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Canada Calls for Bilingual Tweeting

Canada’s Foreign Minister under fire for favoring English on social media.

149216692Canada’s chien de garde des langues officielles, or language watchdog, Graham Fraser, is investigating the Twitter account of Canadian Foreign Minister John Baird. The investigation seeks to determine if Baird’s tweets preserve the “spirit” of the Official Languages Act of 1969 that makes both French and English official languages. Baird tends to tweet mostly in English.

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