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Creating a Supportive SEL Forum for English Learner Lesson Contributions


The Need for Re-engaging English Learners Socially and Academically
As K–12 educators transition to in-person instruction after two years of pandemic disruption, careful attention is rightfully being devoted to addressing students’ social–emotional learning (SEL) needs and academic voids. Schools are striving earnestly to provide safe and supportive havens for re-engaging youths who have suffered tremendous learning loss and social isolation. English learners count among the students who have been most victimized by distance education, leaving them at profound risk of intractable learning loss. The prolonged social isolation they experienced interrupted their development of English language, literacy, and subject matter (Sugarman and Lazarín, 2020). English learners have additionally endured high levels of stress and formidable challenges developing meaningful relationships with their peers and teachers (Williams and Marcus, 2021). To foster self- and social awareness, concerned educators are dedicating time at the top of their lessons to noncurriculum-aligned reflection, discussion, and interpersonal skill-building. Resources for writing and discussion prompts linked to the core SEL competencies are readily available from CASEL, the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (https://casel.org). The extensive CASEL SEL reflection prompts can be utilized in whole-class or small-group discussion and provide rich opportunities for learning about peers and strengthening classroom relationships.

Challenges of Assigning SEL Prompts without Conscientious Preparation
Despite the decided merits of devoting class time to activities with a focus on personal growth and positive relationship-building, English learners all too often remain on the sidelines. CASEL acknowledges the importance of considering students’ cultural and ethnic backgrounds and stresses that more research needs to be conducted to determine modifications that can make SEL lessons more accessible and impactful for different populations (CASEL, 2015). For English learners to participate willingly in a lesson discussion intended to promote a critical SEL competency such as self-awareness, teachers need to offer more than a relevant bell-ringer prompt and quiet journaling time. Equipped solely with a quick write, an English learner is unlikely to feel emboldened to disclose personal experiences and perspectives, whether in a small-group or whole-class context. Similarly, a brief “think–pair–share” interaction with an elbow partner won’t be the deciding factor that entices an otherwise reserved English learner contributor to step up to the plate and volunteer. While it isn’t imperative for every student to share a reflection in an SEL lesson forum, if English learners hardly ever hazard a response, their peers and teachers gain little insight into these linguistically and culturally diverse class members’ attributes, experiences, and perspectives.

Years of supporting English learners in K–12 and college settings have helped me understand the instructional scaffolds that can safely transition a reticent English learner from habitual class discussion spectator to engaged participant and attentive listener. English learners at all proficiency levels benefit from careful attention being devoted to 1) their conceptual and linguistic preparation for contributing to an SEL-focused interaction; 2) opportunities to rehearse with a trusted peer; and 3) facilitation of the ensuing whole-class discussion.

Essential Discussion Scaffolds for English Learners

Assign Initial “Community-Building” Discussion Prompts
Many English learners approach class discussions across the curricula with apprehensions about their grasp of the subject matter and their ability to convey those understandings in a second language with appropriate word choices and sentence structures. Well-intentioned teachers may refrain from calling on English learners out of concern that doing so may cause these vulnerable learners undue stress and elevate their affective filter, thereby blocking cognitive engagement and language acquisition (Krashen, 1986). As an unfortunate consequence, English learners may have a limited track record of positive prior experiences participating in class discussions of any nature.
This is worth noting because SEL-focused topics and prompts can require far greater personal reflection, linguistic agility, and risk-taking than volunteering an answer to a math problem or a key detail in a lesson text.
The SEL framework includes five core competencies: 1) self-awareness;
2) self-management; 3) social awareness; 4) relationship skills; and 5) responsible decision-making (https://casel.org). Each presents a range of opportunities for students to introspect about their own strengths and challenges. Like all students, English learners benefit from a complexity progression, moving from discussion topics that are more accessible and affirming to those that require greater interpersonal exploration and risk-taking.
To initiate English learners to take a more dynamic and accountable role in lesson discussions, begin with daily brief, supported experiences that enable them to share positive things about themselves and gain insights about their peers. Highly scaffolded and routine five- to ten-minute interactions focused on individual attributes, interests, and identity can strengthen classroom relationships. With more promising classroom interaction experiences under their belts, tentative contributors will build confidence and stamina for more complex questions.
In district initiatives and research endeavors, I have witnessed English learners at all grade levels actively engaged in introductory lesson discussions with an aim of building community. Prompts that support self-awareness and relationship skills lend themselves particularly well to forging positive classroom connections. Following are some of the prompts I have used successfully with partner educators in schoolwide efforts to increase the quality and quantity of students’ interactions while improving classroom relations.

Sample Initial Discussion Prompts to Build Community
What are some of your best characteristics?
How do you describe yourself and why?
What is a (book, movie) you would recommend to a peer?
Who is someone you respect in your family or community?
What is something you have done to make your family proud?
What are the benefits of being bilingual?
What are the characteristics of a lesson partner with whom you work effectively?
How does an effective lesson partner demonstrate attentive listening?

Provide Response Frames and Precise Word Banks
To become fluent and confident in academic interactions, English learners must be equipped with appropriate language tools to respond competently. As we usher them into discussion contexts with increasingly complex topics, addressing either SEL or core curricula, English learners are more likely to contribute if they perceive they are up to the task. Educators across disciplines can increase students’ perceptions that they are prepared conceptually and linguistically by providing targeted language support. English learners understandably need a myriad of opportunities throughout the school day, within and outside of the classroom, to interact informally with peers using their natural language resources. However, when critical lesson topics become more challenging and competent communication is paramount, English learners deserve more than encouraging words to confidently enter a lesson forum.

A response frame is a highly effective tool for supporting English learners in responding more willingly and capably during lesson discussions. A response frame resembles a sentence starter in that it launches a response to an authentic, open-ended question that can be completed in a variety of ways. It is not a formative assessment item, with only one correct or desired means of completing the frame. Although a well-crafted response frame invites original content and phrasing, it specifies the grammar and precise vocabulary targets for a competent contribution. This places the teacher in a strategic position for effective modeling, a prerequisite for English-learner language advancement and lesson engagement. Form-focused modeling and explicit guidance help novice English speakers and writers notice language features in meaningful content (Dutro and Kinsella, 2010).

The response frame in Table 1 requires addition of meaningful content, a verb phrase beginning with a strong action word, a base verb that has no inflected ending (e.g., -s, -ed, -ing).
The grammar cue that a base verb is required is the preposition to. Creating a response frame that supports my students in responding more adeptly also enables me to display and explain my model response. This proves to be far more productive than simply modeling aloud a strong response and entrusting comprehension to English learners’ auditory processing and on-the-spot language analysis.
A precise word bank is used in tandem with a response frame to activate word knowledge and demonstrate to students how to move beyond the everyday words that immediately come to mind as they consider a discussion response. An equally vital role is to build background and stimulate idea generation for students who need a conceptual boost. A final function of a precise word bank is to reduce performance anxiety for students when asked to contribute alongside classmates they perceive as more capable.

Structure Partner Interaction Prior to Class Discussion
After assigning a response frame, provide silent and uninterrupted think time for students to consider what they’d like to share and craft their responses in writing. Once students have completed their responses, structure an A/B partner interaction so students have a chance to rehearse their responses and receive feedback prior to the unified class discussion. Assign A/B partners and cue which partner you would like to share first. This will maximize the interaction time, ensure each student contributes, and prevent passive individuals from sitting idle and not reaping the benefits of the lesson activity. Encourage students to each share their response twice: first to rehearse, second with expression. Repeated sharing builds oral fluency and confidence while also promoting more accurate and accountable listening.
Post directions for partner interactions and class discussions with clear guidance for responsible speaking and attentive listening. Visibly displayed directions help English learners understand and remember expectations for more advanced or complex lesson interactions with embedded content and language targets such as accountability for responding in a complete sentence, comparing, and elaborating.

Facilitate Equitable Class Discussion
Recognizing that English learners are likely to approach class discussions with some trepidation, caring educators often invite their contributions but refrain from ever requiring participation. While a degree of empathy is well warranted, if we limit inclusion in class discussions to volunteers, we may spend the entire school year never hearing from many of our linguistically and culturally diverse class members. With a goal of strengthening classroom relationships through SEL prompts and courageous discussion, we must strive to include perspectives and experiences that represent the diversity of the classroom community.
If we build their confidence with community-building discussion prompts, response scaffolds, and partner rehearsal, English learners will have a more productive mindset about contributing within a unified class forum. There are practical classroom-tested strategies educators can use at any grade level to reduce student anxiety and enlist a more eclectic array of responses. To broaden the response pool, don’t rely on “professional participants,” those who habitually raise their hands when you solicit participation. Similarly, refrain from resorting to digital devices, as random selection tools can preoccupy students with whether they will be chosen, preventing attentive listening and authentic engagement.
The four strategies for eliciting responses detailed below have a proven track record in linguistically and culturally diverse classrooms. They strike a balance between preselected, random, and voluntary responses while giving students’ agency to initiate contributions and validate their peers.

Strategies for Eliciting a Range of Responses
Preselected Initial Reporters
After assigning a reflection/discussion prompt, monitor independent writing and partner interactions. Preselect two students with somewhat representative, not exceptional, responses to launch the discussion. Advise students early on that you will enlist discussion assistants throughout the year and that they will all have opportunities to be the “discussion jump starter.” Preselecting two initial contributors breaks that awkward silence when no one steps up to volunteer and reduces pressure for teachers and students alike. When preselecting students, speak softly to minimize disruption with brief, neutral phrasing: e.g., I plan to call on you first to share your point of view. As you start the class discussion, acknowledge you have preselected initial reporters with affirming phrasing: I’ve asked Name and

Name to start our discussion. They have (points of view, experiences, examples) you will appreciate.

Student-Selected Reporters
Ask a preselected reporter to select a reporter from a different table or part of the room. Specify that the selector must do so efficiently using an assigned sentence starter: I select Name; I’d like to hear from Name. The selected student contributes and then chooses another classmate. Enlist two or three student-selected contributions before segueing to partner nominations, another productive strategy for engaging students in the reporter selection process.

Partner Nominations
Briefly recap the initial lesson contributions. Invite students to indicate with a raised pen/pencil if their partner shared a different idea. Assign a sentence starter with a citation verb: Name shared with me that . Name pointed out that . Call on a couple of volunteers to report their partners’ ideas and commend their attentive listening. This strategy is more effective when the content is affirming, relevant to many students, and involving less personal risk-taking. Otherwise, the actual contributor should be responsible for sharing if they so desire.

Voluntary Final Reporters
Open the discussion to students who have not yet had an opportunity to contribute. Clarify options for voluntary contributions: 1) your own idea; 2) your partner’s idea (with recognition: I’d like to share my partner Name’s idea). While monitoring writing and partner interactions prior to launching the discussion, invite one or two students with strong or exceptional responses to volunteer using encouraging phrasing: I would really appreciate it if you raised your hand when I call on volunteers. I know your classmates will benefit from hearing your response.

Concluding Thoughts
Developmentally appropriate SEL prompts, response scaffolds, and partner rehearsal will bolster English learners’ confidence, but reticent contributors must also perceive that their teacher is genuinely committed to hearing from a range of students. Varying our strategies for eliciting responses will democratize and enrich discussions while helping teachers and students alike develop greater empathy and appreciation for diversity.

References
CASEL (2015). CASEL Guide: Effective Social and Emotional Learning Programs: Middle and High School Edition. CASEL.
CASEL (2022). “SEL Reflection Prompts.” https://casel.org
Dutro, S. and Kinsella, K. (2010). “English Language Development: Issues and implementation in grades 6–12.” In Improving Education for English Learners: Research-Based Approaches. CA Dept. of Education.
Kinsella, K. (2020). English 3D Language Launch. Teaching Guide. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Krashen, S. (1986). Principles and Practices in Second Language Acquisition. Pergamon Press.
Sugarman, J. and Lazarín, M. (2020). Educating English Learners during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Policy Ideas for States and School Districts. Migration Policy Institute.
Williams, C. P. and Marcus, M. (2021). Pandemic Response to Pandemic Recovery: Helping English Learners Succeed This Fall and Beyond. Century Foundation.

Kate Kinsella, EdD (drkate@drkatekinsella.com), writes curriculum, conducts K–12 research, and provides professional development addressing evidence-based practices to advance English language and literacy skills for multilingual learners. She is the author of research-informed curricular anchors for English learners, including English 3D, Language Launch, and the Academic Vocabulary Toolkit.

UWorld Grant

UWorld, a provider of online learning to prepare for high-stakes exams, is accepting applications for its AP Success Grant for the 2022-2023 school year. The UWorld AP Success Grant is designed to help schools and districts build equity in their AP programs by providing high-quality teaching and learning tools to support all AP teachers and students. US high schools and K-12 school districts can apply by March 31.

Student performance in AP courses and on exams are indicators of college readiness, according to the Redefining Ready initiative of AASA, the School Superintendents Association. However, 40% of students who take an AP exam do not earn a passing score, and a performance gap persists between white students and their minority counterparts. In the inaugural year of the grant program, UWorld awarded $62,000 in AP instructional resources to schools for the 2021-2022 school year.

“UWorld grants are an extension of the mission we’ve had since our founding: to empower people to achieve their goals through education,” said Chandra S. Pemmasani, M.D., UWorld’s founder and CEO. “At a time when educators, students, and schools are facing significant pandemic-related challenges, the UWorld AP Success Grant can help remove barriers to success and provide critical assistance, and we hope, a little peace of mind.” 

The grant recipients will receive access to UWord’s online Learning Tools for AP Courses for all available AP subjects for the 2022-2023 school year. The Learning Tools make the rigor of AP curriculum understandable for students, manageable for teachers, and provide valuable program insights to administrators. Tools include content for students; assignment tools and progress monitoring for teachers; and assessments and reporting at the student, class, campus, and district levels. Schools will also receive personalized implementation training and ongoing support.

To learn more, visit CollegePrep.UWorld.com/educators or UWorldCares.UWorld.com.

Rebound: Turning Our Attention to Acceleration

Pandemic teaching was hard. It stretched and pulled us. We worried about our students and their well-being. But we did it. We supported students’ learning to the best of our ability and worked hard to ensure that students knew we cared about them. Throughout the experience of remote, distance, hybrid, hyflex, and simultaneous teaching, we did learn a lot. Unfortunately, the narrative does not focus on the unexpected learning that we all experienced. Yes, there is unfinished learning that needs to be addressed, but so many of us (and our students) learned things that we did not expect to learn. When we ask about this, we tend to hear about three main topics: technology, social and emotional learning, and self-care. But we also learned a lot about what works to engage students in learning.

In this article, we will focus on what we learned about accelerating learning. The research evidence pre-dates the pandemic, but we have found it useful to revisit this information as we strive to address unfinished learning. Importantly, we are not focused on remediation, which is deficit-oriented thinking that focuses on gaps and loss and might result in lowered expectations. The surface logic of remediation might be: they didn’t learn what they needed to in 2020–21, so they can’t learn what they need to this year. There’s a long-term danger in this line of thinking, because we’re not just talking about the 2021–22 school year. This faulty logic could be perpetuated for every year that this cohort of students is in school.

Instead, we focus on acceleration. We acknowledge that there is unfinished learning and that we teachers have the power to impact students’ learning. We’ll focus on aspects of acceleration that we can all use to ensure students learn more and better.

Identify skills and concepts that have yet to be learned. We need to assess students to figure out what they already know and what they still need to learn. There is evidence (e.g., Nuthall, 2007) that, on average, 40% of instructional minutes are spent on content students have already mastered. We do not have time to spend on skills and concepts that students already know. But it’s not as simple as cutting out 40% of the stuff we normally teach. Different students know different things, and we need quick tools to identify what they know and what they still need to learn. For example, we could use an A–Z chart for students to identify all the terms they know about a topic before teaching it. Matteo’s list of words about life cycles can be found in Figure 2. These are all the terms he knew before the lessons started. Now imagine if all the students in the class had egg and larva on their charts. We don’t need to teach that. And what if 33% of the students had pupa on their charts? It’s time to design small-group lessons. When considering what students already know and what they need to know, remember that not all the content is critical. As our colleague John Almarode likes to say, “There are things that students need to know and things that would be neat to know.” With your team, identify the nonnegotiable, essential, critical content and focus more time on that. After all, a lot of the content standards cycle and recycle, while deepening.

Build key aspects of knowledge in advance of instruction. Learning theorists suggest that we go from the known to the new. Background knowledge is important and mediates who learns what. We all learned how to make interactive videos during pandemic teaching, and we can continue to collect or produce these resources for students. When students need background knowledge or vocabulary, we can create videos and load them into our learning management system for students to access. Systems like PlayPosit and EdPuzzle allow students to interact with the content and provide teachers with data about students’ interaction with the videos. Let’s harness the technology learning educators and students have gained and use it during face-to-face instruction. Wide reading also helps build background knowledge and vocabulary, and we need to get more reading materials into students’ hands and support them to read outside of the school day. When we ensure that students develop key aspects of knowledge in advance of instruction, the lessons can move faster and students will acquire deeper understandings.

Increase the relevance of students’ learning. For some students, school is boring. When students do not see relevance in their learning, they are much less likely to self-regulate. And self-regulation is important, as we all want students to focus, set goals for their learning, manage their time, remain on task, and ask for feedback. One key to ensuring that students engage in self-regulation is to guarantee that they see relevance in the learning. We use three clarity questions with students:
What am I learning today?
Why am I learning this?
How will I know that I have learned it?

The first question requires that teachers clearly explain what students will be learning that day. These learning intentions serve to focus the class on the topic at hand but do not necessarily need to be announced at the outset of the lesson. But at some point during the lesson, students should know what they are learning. The second question allows the teacher to discuss the relevance and importance of the learning. Relevance may involve using the learning outside of the class or it may be for something interesting in class. Or it may be an opportunity to learn about yourself and how your brain works. For example, a geometry teacher teaching about midsegments of triangles noted that volcanologists used this information to determine the size of volcanos and later in the lesson noted that props for a play could be measured using this information, and she gave an example. The third question requires that teachers be clear about what success looks like. What does it mean to have learned something? A video of teachers talking about learning intentions and success criteria can be found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqBdPjSE–g.

Create active, fast-paced learning experiences. The pace of the lesson is important. In remediation, the temptation is to slow down. That’s the opposite of the acceleration research, which suggests that the lesson needs to be fast-paced and active. This concerns some educators, as they worry that students will be left behind. We are not suggesting rushing through lessons trying to “cover” all of the curriculum, but rather that the pace keep students engaged and moving in their learning. Of course, it’s also important to maintain wait time. There are points in the lesson at which students are provided time to listen, process, perhaps translate, and build the courage to respond. And there are times when the teacher is ensuring that the pace is engaging. Watch a first-grade teacher’s pace with half of the students learning remotely and half in the classroom. Notice the pace and the value of learning intentions and success criteria.

Rebuild student confidence. Some students have a damaged relationship with learning. Not all of them. Many students still love learning and are confident in their progress. And some students did quite well over the past couple of years. But some students are not confident and they do not understand the impact of their efforts on their success. When students do not have a strong sense of agency, they begin to exert less effort. Figure 1 contains a list of ways to build student confidence. In addition, watch as teacher Sarah Ortega meets with one of her students to build agency. Importantly, Ms. Ortega noticed that her student did not realize that what she did impacted her own growth in reading. Ms. Ortega provides details about the actions her student took and attributes the success to those actions.

Our students are where they are. And it’s our turn to accelerate their learning. There is good evidence that we can use to address the unfinished learning that some of our students have as we contribute to the rebound of our learners. As a final note, take pride in the impact you have on students’ learning and social–emotional development. You are making a difference, and students are benefiting as a result of your efforts.

References
Nuthall, G. (2007). The Hidden Lives of Learners. NZCER Press.

Nancy Frey and Doug Fisher are professors of educational leadership at San Diego State University and teacher leaders at Health Sciences High. They are the co-authors of Rebound and How Tutoring Works.

Living Languages – Lenguas Vivas – Línguas Vivas

On International Mother Language Day, the first international, open access, electronic multilingual journal entirely dedicated to the revitalization and sustainability of Indigenous and minoritized languages was launched.


This year marks the first year of the International Indigenous Languages Decade, which will run from 2022 to 2032, as designated by the United Nations. Living Languages was launched in celebration of the decade designation, with the goal of “promoting scholarly work and experience-sharing in the field of language revitalization.” Founding chief editor and University of Oregon associate professor of linguistics Gabriela Pérez Báez explained the concept to the University’s publication, Around the O, “As many of us in Living Languages are Latin American, we do feel the pressure of English taking over the academic publication venues, and we find ourselves often having to publish in English about languages that are spoken in Latin America. By doing so, we’re working against the fair dissemination of information to the very members of the communities we are writing about. So we wanted to make sure we could publish in a variety of languages.”
Victoria Sanchez, of the UO’s College of Arts and Sciences, reports that the primary focus is on bringing together language revitalization practitioners from a diversity of backgrounds, whether they’re steeped in academia or not, within a peer-reviewed publication medium that’s inclusive of a diversity of perspectives and forms of expression.


The journal is not just for academics, so submissions from all language revitalization practitioners are encouraged. It will be published in multiple languages, including the Indigenous languages which are being discussed. The journal’s first volume is now live and can be downloaded in Kaingang and Chikashshanompa’ in addition to Portuguese, Spanish, and English. The journal is open source, so all content is freely available without charge.


“Living Languages is designed to be as inclusive as possible,” Pérez Báez said. “We hope that the way we’ve conceived the journal will invite all of these voices so that these experiences can be shared around the world, because that helps us all learn how to be active in sustaining linguistic diversity around the world.”


https://scholarworks.umass.edu/livinglanguages/

New Mexico Bill Promotes Native Language Education

A bill that would help preserve Native languages and fairly compensate teachers who hold a Native American Language Certificate passed the New Mexico House of Representatives last month with a unanimous vote.

The bill, HB-60, would make teachers who hold certifications in “Native language and cultures” eligible for higher salaries, known as a level two license salary. Level two licensed teachers typically have a starting salary of $50,000 per year. 

The New Mexico bill would also allow tribes and pueblos to create the criteria that determines the “proficiency criteria and renewal procedures” for the certifications. The bill aims to further aid in preserving Indigenous cultures. 

“Without language, culture does not survive. Native languages must be respected, honored and preserved,” bill sponsor Rep. Derrick Lente (D) said in a press release. “Teachers of these languages must receive fair compensation for their important contributions.”  
The bill now moves over to the Senate.

Live at TESOL: Advocating for All: Addressing Social Justice and Linguicism in ELT

Visitors at TESOL should head to the panel by Ayanna Cooper, Ed.D., editor of Language Magazine‘s Pass the Mic Series. The need for social justice in every area of society, including language and education, has become more apparent than ever. This panel discusses ELT from different perspectives, including anti-Blackness, homophobia, and linguicism. The panelists serve as social justice advocates in ELT contexts worldwide. The panel presentation at TESOL is on Friday, March 25th @ 11am. 

Iranians Protest Mother Tongue Marginalization

In advance of Mother Language Day, about a thousand Iranians who grew up speaking a minority language took to Twitter to express their sense of loss and frustration at the marginalization of their mother tongue.

The #Manofarsi (Me and Farsi) hashtag soon went viral, with speakers of minority languages across Iran, from Azeri to Arabic, uniting in their discontent at the structural discrimination they experience in their home country for being born into a language other than Persian.


Sevil Suleymani, a Turkish-Azerbaijani civil rights activist and co-founder of the End of Monolingualism campaign, told IranWire that “the campaign aimed to spread awareness of the systemic relegation of non-native Persian speakers espoused by the Islamic Republic.”  She herself grew up in Parsabad in Ardebil province, northwestern Iran, where not one of her 35-strong cohort in the first grade spoke Persian at home.

“Our first grade teacher was a young woman from Tabriz,” she recalled, “who had come to Parsabad immediately after finishing vocational school. She had come to do what she’d been instructed to do there: to teach us Persian. She thought we could all speak fluent Persian already, and the reality was the opposite. In the early days, when she was brandishing her cane, she called out my name and I wet myself with fear, because I did not know any Persian.”

Behrouz Bouchani, a well-known Kurdish writer currently teaching in exile at the University of Sydney, wrote of the campaign on Twitter: “#Manofarsi is one of our most important events in the field of public culture. In the last few hours, hundreds of excruciating stories of the degradation, insulting and racist treatment of Gilaks, Turks, Arabs, and other minorities have been recorded via this hashtag. If you want to know where the real Iran is, follow it.”

Pro-government media outlets have discounted the movement as an attempt by “Persian-language broadcasters in Britain and the United States” to “sow the seeds of discord in a society that is still co-existing despite deep political, ideological, and economic fissures.”

UNESCO Sees Role of EdTech in Multilingual Learning

The theme of last month’s International Mother Language Day, “Using technology for multilingual learning: Challenges and opportunities,” raised the potential of technology to advance multilingual education and support the development of quality teaching and learning for all.

According to a statement released by UNESCO, “Technology has the potential to address some of the greatest challenges in education today. It can accelerate efforts towards ensuring equitable and inclusive lifelong learning opportunities for all if it is guided by the core principles of inclusion and equity. Multilingual education based on mother tongue is a key component of inclusion in education.

“During COVID-19 school closures, many countries around the world employed technology-based solutions to maintain continuity of learning. But many learners lacked the necessary equipment, internet access, accessible materials, adapted content, and human support that would have allowed them to follow distance learning. Moreover, distance teaching and learning tools, programs and content are not always able to reflect language diversity.”

Audrey Azoulay, Director-General of UNESCO, on the occasion of International Mother Language Day released the following statement:
“When he expresses his desire to reacquaint himself with his language, Hamet, the boy created by the writer Diadié Dembélé, is expressing a universal and fundamental need.

Indeed, every language has a certain rhythm, a certain way of approaching things, of thinking about them. Learning or forgetting a language is thus not merely about acquiring or losing a means of communication. It is about seeing an entire world either appear or fade away.

From the very first day of school, many schoolchildren have the ambivalent experience of discovering one language – and the world of ideas which comes with it – and forgetting another one: the language they have known since infancy. Worldwide, four out of ten students do not have access to education in the language they speak or understand best; as a result, the foundation for their learning is more fragile.
This distancing from the mother tongue affects us all, for linguistic diversity is a common good. And the protection of linguistic diversity is a duty.

Technology can provide new tools for protecting linguistic diversity. Such tools, for example, facilitating their spread and analysis, allow us to record and preserve languages which sometimes exist only in oral form. Put simply, they make local dialects a shared heritage.
However, because the Internet poses a risk of linguistic uniformization, we must also be aware that technological progress will serve plurilingualism only as long as we make the effort to ensure that it does. The designing of digital tools in several languages, the supporting of media development, and the supporting of access to connectivity: all this needs to be done so that people can discover different languages without giving up their respective mother tongues.

The International Decade of Indigenous Languages, which began this year, should, by channeling the efforts of researchers, broadcasters, and speakers, give new momentum to the protection of these invaluable repositories of know-how and worldviews. As the lead agency for Decade-related work, UNESCO is fully committed to this cause.

On this international day, I thus call on everyone able to do so to defend linguistic and cultural diversity, which makes up the universal grammar of our shared humanity.”

Académie Française Rails Against ‘Californisms’

France’s official authority on the vocabulary and grammar of its language has targeted a new threat: “les Californisms.”

That’s the name the Académie Française (or in English, the French Academy) has come up with to describe the many tech-related loanwords from English that have entered the French language. In a 30-page report that the academy recently published online, six members of the academy identified and denounced the use of several widespread English-derived loanwords, including, but not limited to, Californisms.

“Many anglicisms are used in place of existing French words or expressions, inevitably leading to the gradual erasure of the French equivalents,” the report reads. Californisms that the academy has shunned include words that are particularly prominent on the internet, such as cookies, hashtag, and millennials. Additionally, the report notes that the use of many English loanwords has been accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic. The report shows particular disdain toward the French government’s active use of many of these terms in official government communications.

There are also claims that many words’ use is not “justified by any necessity” as there are already existing French-language equivalents. Examples of these words include mix, post, and network. The academy sees the use of such words as a sign of the French language’s “degradation,” which it argues is avoidable.

Still, linguistic experts generally regard language change—whether that means borrowing new words from other languages or gradual shifts in certain phonological features—as natural and inevitable.

The Académie Française has served as the official authority on the French language for centuries—it was created in 1635, with the explicit goal of “(fixing) the French language, giving it rules, rendering it pure and comprehensible by all.” It’s notorious for taking a conservative stance on language shift.

For example, in 2017, it claimed that the French language was in “mortal danger,” due to the growing use of non–standard, gender-inclusive language in certain written contexts.
AW

Developing Machine Translation for ASL

Though automatic translation engines like Google Translate are far from perfect, they have become useful tools to help individuals communicate, particularly for high-demand language pairs like English and Spanish. However, machine translation for signed languages like American Sign Language (ASL) lags far behind spoken and written languages.

That could be changing soon, though—the COVID-19 pandemic has spurred the development of artificial intelligence-based technologies that can translate sign languages into written language. Most recently, an engineering student at the Vellore Institute of Technology in Tamil Nadu, India, went viral on social media for her efforts to develop an AI model that can translate basic ASL phrases into English with high accuracy rates. In a now-viral LinkedIn post, Priyanjali Gupta shared the model, receiving more than 60,000 reactions on the platform.
Gupta’s AI model made headlines on Feb. 15 for its ability to identify simple ASL phrases with accuracy rates hovering around 90% or higher. While it doesn’t work as an all-purpose machine translation model (it can only identify six different phrases right now), Gupta’s model serves as a testament to the increased interest in developing automatic translation for signed languages. She plans to work on expanding the model to improve its ability to identify additional signs.

“The data set is manually made with a computer webcam and given annotations. The model, for now, is trained on single frames,” Gupta told Interesting Engineering. “To detect videos, the model has to be trained on multiple frames, for which I’m likely to use LSTM. I’m currently researching on it… I’m just an amateur student but I’m learning. And I believe, sooner or later, our open-source community, which is much more experienced than me, will find a solution.”

Unlike written languages, machine translation for signed languages requires a given model to be capable of identifying specific gestures—that is, the placement, shape, and movement of an individual’s hands—with high precision.

This means developers must have knowledge about computer vision in addition to their knowledge about machine translation and sign language. As a result, it’s more difficult than developing machine translation for written languages, which generally have a standardized set of already-digitized characters.
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