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400 Million Chinese Still Can’t Speak Mandarin

97777813About 30% of the Chinese population, or 400 million people, cannot speak Mandarin, according to figures recently released by China’s Ministry of Education, despite government efforts to promote a common language. Of the remaining 900 million Chinese who can communicate in Mandarin, also known as “putonghua,” many do not speak it well, and the country still needs to invest in promoting the language, said Xu Mei, the ministry’s spokeswoman, at a press conference.

Over 90% of the population is Han Chinese who have some 1,500 dialects, some of which are so different they are considered distinct languages.
Chinese leaders have long striven for “linguistic unity” and recent leaders have seen a common tongue as one way to establish a stable, strong, unified China. To further this goal, the government passed a law in 2000 requiring that Mandarin be the official language in all major media and that governments “popularize putonghua.”

The campaigns appear to be working since a study published in 2004 found that only  53% of the population could communicate in putonghua, compared to 70% now.

When officials announced the figures, Xu also announced that this year’s September Mandarin push will focus on the remote countryside and areas inhabited by ethnic minorities. age campaign in the countryside. One former official of China’s Ministry of Education proposed canceling English classes in primary schools to make room for more Mandarin. Maybe his proposal was prompted by the fact that experts estimate that the the current number of Chinese learning to speak English is that same figure of 400 million.

English Language Learners: Shifting to an Asset-Based Paradigm

VUE37_0(Estudiantes del Idioma Inglés: Valorizando los Aportes Que Brindan)

The 37th issue of the Annenberg Institute’s magazine, VUE (voices in urban education) focuses on the benefits that English Language Learners (ELLs) lend to the whole school populations and experience.

Guest editor Rosann Tung, director of Research & Policy at the Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University (AISR), explains the approach, “Rather than view educating English language learners as a problem, the innovative practitioners, scholars, and policy analysts writing in this issue of VUE urge us to embrace and value ELLs as bicultural, bilingual leaders of the future.”

The issue examines different aspects of asset-based education for ELLs – authors share unique aspects of their school models, which all highlight the value the English language learner students bring to their school communities. In addition, in the dual-language models, native English speakers learn how it feels to be language learners.

Perspectives from administrators and community organizations are also presented, along with professional development advice. To download a copy click here.

All Students Benefit from Bilingual Education

boys read all togetherBilingual education programs have a very positive effect on the native English speakers attending schools with such programs even though they do not take part in them, according to a groundbreaking study published in the Journal of Public Economics.

Texas elementary students who speak English as their home language and were enrolled in schools with bilingual education programs performed much better on state math and reading tests than native English-speaking students at schools without bilingual education programs.

The study did not explore the reasons why, but it could be because the English-speaking students received more direct instruction while the Spanish-speaking students were receiving bilingual education in a separate setting.

While much research has examined the effects of bilingual education on Spanish-speaking students, this study is one of the first to investigate the spillover effects. “What this says is that simply focusing on how these programs affect the students who use them is missing a large part of the picture,” said Scott Imberman, study co-author and Michigan State University associate professor of economics and education. “Whenever you create education programs you have to think beyond the people they’re targeted to, and think about the other students as well.”

In Texas, districts with 20 or more students in the same grade who have the same native language are required to offer those students bilingual education. The researchers compared Texas elementary schools just below and just above the 20-student cutoff. They found that scores on standardized math and reading tests for native English speakers were significantly higher at schools with the bilingual education programs.

English learner students in schools with the bilingual education programs also scored higher on the tests, although there weren’t enough students in the sample for the finding to be conclusive.

Overall, Imberman said, the findings bode well for proponents of bilingual education, “As far as the question of whether bilingual education or ESL is better, this study provides some evidence suggesting that bilingual education is more helpful than ESL.”

Imberman’s fellow researchers were Aimee Chin of the University of Houston and N. Meltem Daysal of the University of Southern Denmark.

 

Free Online PD Program Focuses on CCSS & ELLs

“Constructive Classroom Conversations: Mastering the Language of the Common Core State Standards” is the title of the massive online open course (MOOC) which is being produced by Stanford University’s Understanding Language initiative.

Language Magazine contributor and co-director of the initiative, Kenji Hakuta will teach the MOOC with colleagues Jeff Zwiers and Sara Rutherford-Quach who are language experts, from October 21 through December 9.

This short course looks closely at student-to-student discourse and addresses how to facilitate student engagement in the types of interactions required by the new standards. It organizes a massive collaboration of educators who wish to support students, particularly English Language Learners, to co-create and build upon each other’s ideas as they interact with the content. Starting with the notion that in order to improve the quality of student discourse, educators need to listen closely to existing talk, the course asks participants to gather, analyze, and share examples of student conversations from their classrooms. The overall goal is for participating educators to better understand student-student classroom discourse and use what they learn to facilitate higher quality interactions that build disciplinary knowledge and skills.

The four main objectives of this course are for participants to:

1/Develop a practical understanding of academically-engaged classroom discourse, with emphasis on what this looks like in linguistically diverse classrooms that are focused on teaching Common Core State Standards;
2/Listen more carefully to student talk and use a discourse analysis tool to analyze student discourse, focusing on how interactions build disciplinary language, knowledge, and skills;
3/ Learn and practice practical teaching strategies for building students’ abilities to engage in constructive face-to-face interactions;
4/ Collaborate with other educators and build professional relationships that result in an online community focused on improving students’ abilities to engage rich academic discourse across disciplines and grade levels.

Click here For more information and to sign up.

Bilinguals More Mentally Flexible

Bilingual speakers can switch languages seamlessly, likely developing a higher level of mental flexibility than monolinguals, according to Penn State linguistic researchers.

“In the past, bilinguals were looked down upon,” said Judith F. Kroll, Distinguished Professor of Psychology, Linguistics and Women’s Studies. “Not only is bilingualism not bad for you, it may be really good. When you’re switching languages all the time it strengthens your mental muscle and your executive function becomes enhanced.”

Fluent bilinguals seem to have both languages active at all times, whether both languages are consciously being used or not, the researchers report in a recent issue of Frontiers in Psychology. Both languages are active whether either was used only seconds earlier or several days earlier.

Bilinguals rarely say a word in the unintended language, which suggests that they have the ability to control the parallel activity of both languages and ultimately select the intended language without needing to consciously think about it.

The researchers conducted two separate but related experiments. In the first, 27 Spanish-English bilinguals read 512 sentences, written in either Spanish or English — alternating language every two sentences. Participants read the sentences silently until they came across a word displayed in red, at which point they were instructed to read the red word out loud, as quickly and accurately as possible. About half of the red words were cognates — words that look and sound similar and have the same meaning in both languages.

“Cognate words were processed more quickly than control words,” said Jason W. Gullifer, a graduate student in psychology, suggesting that both languages are active at the same time.

Participants in the second experiment performed the same tasks as those in the first experiment, but this time were presented one language at a time. The second experiment’s results were similar to the first, suggesting that context does not influence word recognition.

“The context of the experiment didn’t seem to matter,” said Gullifer. “If you look at bilinguals there seems to be some kind of mechanistic control.”

Paola E. Dussias, professor of Spanish and head of the Spanish, Italian and Portuguese, department also collaborated on this research.

The National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health supported this work.

This report was written by Victoria M. Indivero on behalf of Penn State University.

Taiwan Goes Native

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The Taiwanese Ministry of Education has announced that programs in the nation’s native languages will be compulsory from 2016.

The country’s Minister of Education Chiang Wei-ning (蔣偉寧) said that the 12-year compulsory national education program would include Taiwanese (Hoklo), Hakka, and Aboriginal languages with students in Grades 1 through 6 having at least one class a week.

Under the current program, native languages are optional in junior-high, where they are usually taught as extracurricular classes.

French Writer Wins Guadalajara Award

Yves Bonnefoy has been awarded the 2013 Guadalajara International Book Fair Prize in Romance Languages for a work dedicated to “the great pillars of poetic modernity,” including Baudelaire, Celan, and Rimbaud.

The jury awarded the prize unanimously noting the writer’s “sophistication of his poetry, in contrast to the simplicity of his language.”

The French novelist, essayist, critic and,  translator of English will receive the prize, including US$150,000, in November at the inauguration of the 27th Guadalajara International Book Fair, probably the most important such event in the Spanish-speaking world.

Bonnefoy, who has never attended the fair,  said it was “a privilege to receive a prize in Mexico,” that it meant a lot to him and that he considered it “a sign of friendship and unity.”

Gutierrez Vega said the jury’s plan was to “expand the scope of the award,” adding a Frenchman to previous winners in Spanish and Portuguese.

Thirty-six candidates were entered for the prize, of whom 12 were writers in Spanish, another 12 in Portuguese, six in French, five in Italian, and one in Romanian.

Recent winners include Chilean Nicanor Parra (1991), Cuban Eliseo Diego (1993), Guatemalan Augusto Monterroso (1996), Brazilians Nélida Piñón (1995) y Rubem Fonseca (2003), and Spaniards Juan Marsé (1997) y Juan Goytisolo (2004).

Celebrate International Literacy Day 2013

121350642Gift a book!
Read to a child!
Donate to a literacy organization!
Learn a new word!
Visit a library!

Literacy is a right and a foundation for lifelong learning, better well-being and livelihoods. As such it is a driver for sustainable and inclusive development.

“Literacy is much more than an educational priority – it is the ultimate investment in the future and the first step towards all the new forms of literacy required in the twenty-first century. We wish to see a century where every child is able to read and to use this skill to gain autonomy, ” Irina Bokova, UNESCO Director General.

Click here for more

Leveling the Playing Field with High-Speed Internet

Tina Walker sees the closing of the digital divide as key to overcoming the achievement gap

President Obama’s ConnectED Initiative calls for 99% of America’s students to be connected to the internet through high-speed broadband and high-speed wireless within five years, and this fall, an increasing number of students are returning to schools taking large strides toward achieving that goal.

“In 2013 and going forward, digital literacy is an essential subject that must be taught,” says Leo Gómez, president of the National Association for Bilingual Education.

To read the full story, click here.

Language Learning Alters Brain

According to a joint study by the Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital – The Neuro at McGill University and Oxford University, the age at which children learn a second language can have a significant bearing on the structure of their adult brain.
The study concludes that the pattern of brain development is similar if you learn one or two languages from birth. However, learning a second language later on in childhood after gaining proficiency in the first (native) language does in fact modify the brain’s structure, specifically the brain’s inferior frontal cortex. The left inferior frontal cortex became thicker and the right inferior frontal cortex became thinner. The cortex is a multi-layered mass of neurons that plays a major role in cognitive functions such as thought, language, consciousness, and memory.
The study suggests that the task of acquiring a second language after infancy stimulates new neural growth and connections among neurons in ways seen in acquiring complex motor skills such as juggling. The study’s authors speculate that the difficulty that some people have in learning a second language later in life could be explained at the structural level.
“The later in childhood that the second language is acquired, the greater are the changes in the inferior frontal cortex,” said Dr. Denise Klein, researcher in The Neuro’s Cognitive Neuroscience Unit and a lead author on the paper published in the journal Brain and Language.

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