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Scooped by
Dual Language Education of New Mexico
November 7, 2014 12:09 PM
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Published by The Guardian, November 7, 2014
Foreign language learning in Britain is frequently leaving young people barely with the skills to communicate, with almost eight out of 10 who have studied the most popular languages at school – including French and German – saying they can do no more than understand basic phrases.
According to a Guardian survey of young people and language learning, more than four in ten students of Spanish, Italian, Russian and Japanese say they would even “have difficulty understanding, speaking or writing anything”, and for Mandarin students almost half have not progressed beyond this level.
Yet the apparent failure of existing courses and qualifications to embed communication skills runs alongside a strong sense among young people of the benefits brought by languages. Almost three-quarters believe languages provide a valuable understanding of other cultures, and more than four in 10 say language skills bring better job prospects abroad, while over a fifth think they help career chances in the UK. Despite their reservations over their current skills, seven in 10 want to learn a foreign language in the future.
The Youth Voices research, conducted for the Guardian and British Academy by ICM, the polling organisation, was done against a background of crisis in language learning in the UK. Numbers of students taking modern language A-levels and undergraduate degree courses are in free fall, with language A-level entries down by almost a fifth since 2008 and acceptances for language degrees last year the lowest in a decade. GCSE entries have just begun to rise after a long decline following the introduction of government incentives for schools.
Published by Indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com, October 18, 2014
Something of the sentiment and thrust current in the American Indian/Indigenous world of the Americas was evident in a recent session in Lima, Peru. It wasn’t the United Nations in New York but, in its own way, it was multinational and thus international.
Via Charles Tiayon
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Scooped by
Dual Language Education of New Mexico
October 12, 2014 12:19 PM
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Published by The Telegraph, October 10, 2014
Our European neighbours shame us by their ability to converse in English. The Government would like that to be a thing of the past. So would Catherine Ford, head teacher of multilingual Moreton First Prep School.
Published by Euronews, September 25, 2014
Teaching of Spanish in Europe’s secondary schools has enjoyed a ‘remarkable increase’, new figures reveal.
The data, released to coincide with European Day of Languages on September 26, shows the percentage of EU pupils studying the language jumped by 64.9 percent in the seven years leading up to 2012.
Experts say Spanish attracts a wider range of students than French or German and is helped by the ‘increasing economic strength’ of Latin American countries.
English, overwhelmingly the most popular, was taught to 96.7 percent of pupils at ‘lower secondary level’, up 7.5 percent since 2005.
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Scooped by
Dual Language Education of New Mexico
September 13, 2014 10:59 AM
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Published by the Guardian, September 9, 2014
The number of UK students taking GCSEs in a foreign language rose 17% last summer, a turnaround welcomed by educationalists, who warned that interest in the subject area had plummeted over the past decade. Of the three main language GCSEs studied in UK schools, Spanish is the only one to be increasing in popularity year-on-year since 2011: while entries to French and German this summer remained steady, Spanish continued to soar. The number of students taking the subject is up by almost a third on 2012.
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Scooped by
Dual Language Education of New Mexico
September 9, 2014 4:33 PM
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Published by the British Broadcasting Service, September 5, 2014
A network of foreign language teaching hubs is to be set up across England to boost the language skills of teachers.
It follows fears that many teachers do not have the skills to implement the new curriculum which requires foreign language teaching in primary schools.
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Scooped by
Dual Language Education of New Mexico
September 11, 2014 3:18 PM
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Published by Stuff.co.nz, August 11, 2014
Language experts are "in shock" at a government report suggesting migrants should learn English at the expense of their mother tongue to better integrate into New Zealand.
The report on language and integration by the Department of Internal Affairs says employment rates and earning capacity of migrants correlate with their English language ability.
It also says despite mother language maintenance having positive integration outcomes for migrants, there is a negative correlation between conditions that promote acquiring English language and maintaining their native language.
Linguists believe the advice gives migrants a dangerous choice between learning English and a better chance at integrating or gaining benefits from maintaining their native language.
"That is what is being presented in this report; it's a zero sum game. If you want to have good English, you really ought to stop speaking your home language," Victoria University linguistics professor Miriam Meyerhoff said.
Publlished by The Conversation, July 14, 2014
It’s hard to know whether to laugh or cry every time (predominantly monolingual) politicians and policy makers lament the fact that we don’t have enough students in schools studying foreign languages…
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Dual Language Education of New Mexico
September 11, 2014 11:38 AM
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Published byThe Independent, June 13, 2012
Growing numbers of pupils around the world are learning a foreign language at an earlier age – with some starting as three-year-olds, says a major study released today.
At least 11 countries have lowered the age at which children start learning a second language in the past decade, with two of them – Spain and Belgium – introducing the subject for pupils aged three.
The first bilingual state primary school in England – St Paul's in Brighton – is also introducing lessons in Spanish for three-year-olds. The study, by language experts Teresa Tinsley and Therese Comfort for the education trust CfBT, offers a comprehensive insight into language teaching throughout the world. It coincides with the decision by Education Secretary Michael Gove, in his national curriculum review on Monday, to introduce compulsory language lessons for all children from the age of seven in September 2014. The report reveals that of 21 countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, England devotes the least time to teaching languages to nine to 11-year-olds.
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Scooped by
Dual Language Education of New Mexico
September 11, 2014 11:19 AM
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Published by The Guardian, September 30, 2011
The education secretary, Michael Gove, has proposed that every child aged five or over should be learning a foreign language, and promised to "pull every lever", including encouraging longer school days, to make it happen.
"Just as some people have taken a perverse pride in not understanding mathematics, so we have taken a perverse pride in the fact that we do not speak foreign languages, and we just need to speak louder in English. It is literally the case that learning languages makes you smarter. The neural networks in the brain strengthen as a result of language learning
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People living in Scotland are set to benefit from a new centre that will encourage and support speaking more than one language.
Published by the Times Colonist,October 5,2014
Forty years after its introduction, Canada’s nationalist concept of bilingualism will inevitably transform into an international concept. Learning any second language will increase a child’s . . .
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Dual Language Education of New Mexico
September 10, 2014 6:55 PM
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Published by the Tengri News, September 10, 2014
The European Commission's most recent survey, dating to 2006, showed 56 percent of Spaniards spoke no second language.
Five other EU countries ranked worse: Ireland, Britain, Italy, Hungary and Poland.
But with its huge tourism industry and millions of foreign visitors each year, some argued that Spain had no excuse.
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Dual Language Education of New Mexico
September 9, 2014 1:48 PM
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Published in the Independent, September 9, 2014 (United Kingdom)
Spanish will replace French as the most popular foreign language in schools, the head of the country’s biggest exam board said today.
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Dual Language Education of New Mexico
September 9, 2014 1:45 PM
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Published in the New York Times, August 24,2014
Japanese corporations are recruiting international students today to improve their ability to compete internationally.
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Dual Language Education of New Mexico
September 11, 2014 11:33 AM
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Published by the Cebu Sun Star, May 13, 2012
The DepEd’s full implementation of the bilingual education policy follows after successes in the piloting of using the local native tongue to teach in selected schools in the country.
It is expected that a seven- to nine-year-old child will need less adjustments in making the transitions between absorbed and acquired knowledge and skills when these are inculcated through language he or she has grown up hearing at home or being used in daily life.
Nurturing parents know that a normal and healthy child absorbs like a sponge all inputs, especially when these are repeated and encouraged, applied regularly and coursed through play, storytelling, make-believe, role-playing and other activities
that stimulate both the cognitive and the intuitive.
Even before the official implementation of the bilingual education policy, it has already been observed that the native tongue is spoken and heard constantly inside public schoolrooms. Teachers already pressured by huge classes, their students’ socio-economic backgrounds, attention deficits and even the instructor’s personal inadequacy with the English language often fall back on the native tongue to get the attention of their students, simplify lessons and stimulate interaction.
The official advocacy of bilingual education may not only significantly improve students’ achievements in the areas of oral language competency, phonological skills, book and print knowledge, spelling, handwriting, grammar awareness and reading comprehension
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Dual Language Education of New Mexico
October 17, 2014 11:22 AM
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Published by The Telegraph, November 6,2013
Bilingual free schools: wilkommen, bienvenue, welcome to class
A new wave of bilingual free schools is promoting the cultural and practical benefits of understanding more than one language.
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Scooped by
Dual Language Education of New Mexico
September 11, 2014 11:26 AM
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