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Cutting to the Common Core: Decoding Complex Text

Rebecca Blum-Martínez offers a strategy to help English learners cope with the more complex language requirements of the Common Core

The adoption of the Common Core Standards (CCSS) by many states has brought the issue of complex texts to the forefront. The questions for teachers, administrators, and teacher educators have become “How does one revise the curriculum so that complex texts are included as a part of everyday school life?” and “How does one teach students to interact with complex texts, particularly those who are struggling readers?” These questions are intensified for English learners (ELs), who now make up 21% or more of the public school population, depending on the region or school district (http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=96).

For the complete story, click here.

Seeing with Spanish Eyes

Musetta Reed and Lauren Rovin use film and TV to bring authentic content into the classroom

LoMásTV
LoMásTV: Spanish Immersion TV is a set of short videos (maximum of five minutes) by native speakers on a variety of topics, such as comedy or environmental issues.

These videos allow Spanish students the chance to hear native speakers of the language talking about something interesting in their own culture (English and Spanish subtitles are an option as well), and will greatly supplement their learning of Spanish or Latin American culture.

To read the full story, click here.

Brazil Beckoning

As the Brazilian economy booms, opportunities for Portuguese speakers abound, and picking it up may be easier than you think

Bahia
While many think of Rio or the jungles of the Amazon when they picture Brazil, Bahia, located in country’s northeast, offers students a unique glimpse of Brazil. As the heart of Afro-Brazilian culture, Bahia is the ideal place to learn about the Candomblé religion and capoeira. Bahian cuisine is reknowned all over Brazil for its delicious African flavors and creative uses of seafood.

Salvador, the capital of Bahia, is one of the most popular destinations for students studying Brazilian language or culture. Salvador was the first capital of Brazil and houses some relics of its colonial past, such as old mansions turned into museums and the colorful and cobblestoned neighborhood of Pelourinho. A vibrant cultural scene with live music and theater keeps students stimulated while the gorgeous beaches and fun nightlife let them unwind. Salvador is home to many binational centers, such as ACBEU, the Cervantes Institute, and the Goethe Institute.

Bahia’s 600 miles of coastline are dotted with charming beach towns, and the state boasts over 100 islands, some of which can be easily reached by boat. Bahia also boasts some of the most interesting festivals and cultural events, such as the festival of the Order of Our lady of the Good Death in Cachoeira.

Bahia also contains a part of what many authors and songwriters have chosen as the mythical and magical heart of Brazil, the desert backlands known as the sertão. The sertão has inspired many of Brazil’s literary giants, such as Graciliano Ramos and João Guimarães Rosa. The interior of Bahia has the awe-inspiring Chapada Diamantina, a range of mesas, caves, and rock formations in the desert, and charming villages such as the nearby town of Lençóis.
Bahia’s colonial history and thriving Afro-Brazilian culture are a must for any students interested in Brazilian culture.

$5 Million Boost for Languages at UK Universities

Next month, British universities will start receiving an additional £3.1 million ($4.8 million) to support a new program designed to encourage more young people of all backgrounds to study languages at university.
The program builds upon the achievements of the Routes into Languages activities by stimulating new ideas and partnerships to address the challenges arising from reforms in schools and higher education.
The idea is to encourage greater collaboration between universities, schools, and employers, with the aim of raising aspirations and attainment of students in high schools and higher education. Activities will include events, the appointing of student ambassadors, and sustained interventions such as programs of languages in context and a national language-related Spelling Bee competition. There will also be a focus on increasing participation in work and study abroad, and promoting career opportunities and employability for language students.
“Modern language skills are highly prized by employers. This additional funding will help thousands of prospective students learn more about the opportunities available, to gain a competitive edge in a global economy, “commented Britain’s Universities and Science Minister, David Willetts.

Overcoming Portunhol: Portuguese for Spanish Speakers

U.S. universities have been hip to the unique challenges that Spanish speakers face when they learn Portuguese. Many universities that offer Portuguese also offer a separate section of Portuguese for Spanish speakers, including Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, UCLA, and the University of Chicago. In Brazil, many languages schools are expanding their Portuguese as a foreign language course offerings by also offering Portuguese for Spanish speakers. Language Magazine got in touch with some Brazilian language schools to find out what makes Portuguese for Spanish speakers so special.

NELLE Escola de Línguas
NELLE is the language center of the Universidade do Vale do Itajaí, and has two locations in the state of Santa Catarina, located in Brazil’s south. Nelle has been offering courses in Portuguese as a second language since 1992, and the majority of Portuguese students are Spanish-speakers. The center receives so many Spanish- speaking students in part because of Santa Catarina’s close proximity to Spanish-speaking countries and partnerships with universities in Spain, Mexico, Chile and Argentina. NELLE coordinator, Cynthia Ebert, explained that courses are customized to meet the needs of Spanish speakers. “Among the challenges in teaching Portuguese to Spanish speakers, which are the focus of our programs, we can say pronunciation, the contractions of prepositions with articles, the use of prepositions in general, false cognates, and some issues with gender,” Ebert remarked.

BridgeBrazil
BridgeBrazil is located in the Centro of Rio de Janeiro among both colonial buildings and modern high rises. The school is a subsidiary of Bridge, and international language, education and travel company with centers all over the world. BridgeBrazil offers Portuguese for Spanish-speakers courses from beginner to advanced and they make a point of organizing these classes with an instructor who speaks Spanish. “The greatest difficulty learners face is being able to separate the Portuguese from the Spanish to avoid speaking ‘Portunhol,’” said BridgeBrazil’s Aaron Nathan. “Another main problem learners face is the nasal sounds in Portuguese as they don’t exist in Spanish.” Nathan cited the importance of Brazil as South America’s largest economy as one of the main factors that bring Spanish- speakers to BridgeBrazil to learn Portuguese.

Associação dos Amigos da Casa do Caminho Language Centre
Casa do Caminho was founded to financially support and assist the Casa do Caminho Orphanage, which houses about 35 children. All profit from tuition and course fees go directly to the orphanage. Casa do Caminho has two special courses for Spanish-speakers: a 15-hour intensive course completed in one week, or a 60-hour course completed in four weeks that covers grammar, pronunciation, and the differences between Portuguese and Spanish. By explicitly pointing out the differences between the languages, students might have the knowledge needed to avoid Portunhol. Many students choose to study at Casa do Caminho for the special contact they get with the children at the orphanage and the opportunity to use their Portuguese skills to play with the children.

Associação Cultural Brasil-Esados Unidos
ACBEU is located in the picturesque neighborhood of Vitória in Salvador, Bahia. Coordinator Clara Ramos explains, “Portuguese classes for Spanish speakers are distinct as these students correlate the two languages and acquire the concepts relatively quickly since they are so similar.” ACBEU offers special material especially for Spanish-speaking Portuguese students.

Do you have any tips or tricks for teaching Portuguese to Spanish-speakers? Tweet us @langmag.

Brazil Beckoning

As the Brazilian economy booms, opportunities for Portuguese speakers abound, and picking it up may be easier than you think.

Bahia

While many think of Rio or the jungles of the Amazon when they picture Brazil, Bahia, located in country’s northeast, offers students a unique glimpse of Brazil. As the heart of Afro-Brazilian culture, Bahia is the ideal place to learn about the Candomblé religion and capoeira. Bahian cuisine is reknowned all over Brazil for its delicious African flavors and creative uses of seafood.

Salvador, the capital of Bahia, is one of the most popular destinations for students studying Brazilian language or culture. Salvador was the first capital of Brazil and houses some relics of its colonial past, such as old mansions turned into museums and the colorful and cobblestoned neighborhood of Pelourinho. A vibrant cultural scene with live music and theater keeps students stimulated while the gorgeous beaches and fun nightlife let them unwind. Salvador is home to many binational centers, such as ACBEU, the Cervantes Institute, and the Goethe Institute.

Bahia’s 600 miles of coastline are dotted with charming beach towns, and the state boasts over 100 islands, some of which can be easily reached by boat. Bahia also boasts some of the most interesting festivals and cultural events, such as the festival of the Order of Our lady of the Good Death in Cachoeira.

Bahia also contains a part of what many authors and songwriters have chosen as the mythical and magical heart of Brazil, the desert backlands known as the sertão. The sertão has inspired many of Brazil’s literary giants, such as Graciliano Ramos and João Guimarães Rosa. The interior of Bahia has the awe-inspiring Chapada Diamantina, a range of mesas, caves, and rock formations in the desert, and charming villages such as the nearby town of Lençóis. Bahia’s colonial history and thriving Afro-Brazilian culture are a must for any students interested in Brazilian culture.

Australian Innovation

A new language which combines elements of English with traditional indigenous speech has been discovered in northern Australia, according to a new study published last month in the quarterly journal of the Linguistic Society of America, Language.

The language, now known as Light Warlpiri, is spoken by approximately 600 people in a remote desert community about 400 miles from the town of Katherine in Australia’s Northern Territory, said Carmel O’Shannessy, a professor in the department of linguistics at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor who authored the study.

Light Warlpiri is considered a “mixed language,” because it blends elements from Traditional Warlpiri, which is spoken by about 6,000 people in indigenous communities scattered throughout the Tanami Desert in the Northern Territory; Kriol, an English-based Creole language spoken in various regions of Australia; and English.

“The striking thing about Light Warlpiri is that most of the verbs come from English or Kriol, but most of the other grammatical elements in the sentence come from Warlpiri,” O’Shannessy told LiveScience.

In the Warlpiri language, words can be placed in any order, and grammatical interpretations are based on suffixes that are attached to the nouns. Light Warlpiri represents a mixture of these structural rules. “In Light Warlpiri, you have one part of the language that mostly comes from English and Kriol, but the other grammatical part, the suffixing, comes from Warlpiri,” O’Shannessy said.

An innovation of the newly discovered language is a word form that refers to both the present and past time, but not the future. For example, in English, I’m refers to “I” in the present tense, but Light Warlpiri speakers created a new form, such as yu-m, which means “you” in the present and past time, but not the future. In other words, this verbal auxiliary refers to the “non-future” time, which is a word form that does not exist in English, Kriol, or traditional Warlpiri.

“That structure doesn’t exist in any of the languages that this new code came from, which is one of the reasons we see this as a separate linguistic system, even though it comes from other languages that already exist,” O’Shannessy explained.

O’Shannessy thinks Light Warlpiri likely emerged in the 1970s and 1980s, when children went from switching between English, Kriol, and Warlpiri to speaking the mixed Light Warlpiri language on a primary basis.

Mixed languages are not altogether uncommon throughout the world, but the types of grammatical innovations seen with Light Warlpiri are considered rare. Other examples of mixed languages include Gurindji Kriol, a blend of Kriol and traditional Gurindji, which is spoken by communities in Australia’s Northern Territory, and Michif, which is spoken by communities along the U.S.-Canada border and combines verbal structures from Cree, an Algonquin language, and noun structures from Métis French, a type of Canadian-French dialect.

How to Become German

Since 2005, special courses have been helping German immigrants become familiar with the language and culture. Britt Beyer, a Berlin filmmaker, asks if they really work in her new documentary Werden Sie Deutscher (Become a German).

Beyer takes both a critical and humorous look at the integration courses while offering rare insights into the practical side of Germany’s immigration policy.

For many participants, the pressure to pass the final exams is enormous. Those who fail could have their social benefits cut or, in the worst cases, they could be deported. The integration programs are full of good intentions, and for just one euro ($1.30) per lesson, they are remarkably cheap. They are a way for German politicians to send the message that immigrants are no longer guests, but valued members of the community. But, as Britt Beyer says, “It took 50 years for anyone to make them this offer.”

Call for More German in Europe

German chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative coalition is calling for an increase in the use of German in Europe in its campaign program. If the conservative members are re-elected in September, they will push for the language to be treated on a par with English and French in the European Union (EU).

“We will push for a further strengthening of the German language in Europe. Our goal is that it is treated in the same way as English and French in the European Parliament, the (European) Commission and (European) Council,” states a draft manifesto from Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU).

German is the EU’s most frequently spoken native language and one of its three working languages, but English and French have been the dominant working languages of the EU in recent years, despite expansion of the union since 2004 from 15 to 27 members, mostly from Eastern Europe, where English is a more common second language and German is also more widely spoken.

Merkel’s coalition complained that German was not receiving equal treatment in its 2009 program, but Germany’s growing economic power within Europe since the outbreak of the eurozone debt crisis just over three years ago lends new meaning to the demand. Volker Kauder, leader of Merkel’s conservatives in parliament, caused a furor in 2011 when, at the height of the crisis, he boasted that “Europe speaks German.”

“According to a survey by the British broadcaster BBC, Germany is the most-liked country in the world,” claims the manifesto.

Babel Film Festival 2013

The Babel Film Festival is the first film competition for minority films that use minority languages, dialects, slang, or sign language. The aim is to appreciate and promote cinema related to linguistic minorities, giving voice to their history, culture, and language.

The minority language has to be used at least for the 60% of the dialogue and script. Movies must also include English subtitles and, if possible, Italian. For the purposes of the competition, entries can be accepted in all the minority languages and dialects which are not recognized as official languages of the countries in which the film is shot, as well as dialects and sign languages. Organizers rely on the European Charter of Minority or Regional Languages (1992) for their definition of minority or regional languages:

A. Traditionally spoken by people living in an area of a country who are numerically inferior to the rest of the people of that country, and different from the official language/s of that country; this/these does/do not include the language/s and dialect/s spoken by migrant people;

B. “Area in which a regional or minority language is spoken” is that geo- graphical area where this language is historically and traditionally present;

C. “Languages lacking in areas” are those languages spoken by citizens of that country different by the language/s spoken by the rest of the citizens living in that country but that, even if they are traditionally spoken in the country, are not linked to a certain geographical area.

The competition is organized into three sections: short film, feature film, and documentary. It is open to any filmmaker from any country, of any age, and registration is free. There are no suggested themes — the only bond being the expression of a linguistic minority, social or cultural.

Deadline for entries is Sept. 20, 2013. For more information, visit www.babelfilmfestival.com.

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