ELT World » united states

US: Researchers advise race to top applicants on ELLs while ‘Common Core State Standards Initiative’ takes effect

david — Sun, 23 May 2010 14:03:49 +0000

States need to give test developers explicit instructions on how to avoid unnecessary linguistic complexity when designing content tests, reports Education Week. They need to provide detailed guidelines to school districts on how to select and use testing accommodations for students. Those are two of the recommendations in a new research brief on how to include ELLs appropriately in academic content assessments.

United States: Teaching science to ELLs

david — Sat, 17 Apr 2010 10:04:35 +0000

The United States, notes the NSTA, has long been called a melting pot, a place where diverse people mixing and mingling. Learning the dominant language is a challenging part of the process, particularly when a student is trying to learn a new language and expand their content knowledge.

Read the full story here.

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English language learners making gains in the US

david — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 15:54:14 +0000

An associated press story notes that schoolchildren who are still learning English have made progress in state tests over the last three years, according to a report that may indicate tougher accountability standards have resulted in positive gains among a growing segment of the U.S. public school population.

Read the full story here.

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Debunking myths on US immigrant education

david — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 08:50:09 +0000

United States: Skirmishes over immigration often take place in the schoolyard, exclaims Rosemary Salomone in the Washington Post. Those opposed to immigration claim that bilingual school programs impair a child’s academic success and that school children who retain their foreign language are threatening the future of English in America.

New ‘lip’ research sheds light on foreign language learning

david — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 08:43:57 +0000

United States: Lip movements may play a key role in the learning of second language speech sounds, while hand gestures may not be beneficial, suggest two Colgate University professors:

For Japanese learners of English, there is difficulty producing distinct “r” and “l” sounds, as in “rake” and “lake.” In fact, these learners cannot even hear that these two words are different.

In turn, English speakers, to great comic effect, often mistake the short vowel sound in the Japanese word “shujin” [my husband] with the long vowel sound in “shuujin” [prisoner]. Native English speakers can confuse these two words and others because unlike Japanese, length of a vowel does not change a word’s meaning in English.

Read the full story here.

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Does the NCLB act promote monolingualism?

david — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 09:57:36 +0000

The United States is now eight years into the No Child Left Behind Act and educators, researchers, and advocates remain locked in heated debate over the effects of the law’s testing and accountability mandates on students, many from immigrant homes where a language other than English is spoken.

Edweek notes how two recently reported developments reveal that the NCLB Act is an impediment to fostering bilingual skills and bicultural understandings…

Read the full story here.

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United States: Winooski refugee influx brings praise and concern

david — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 08:39:57 +0000

Vermont: The Burlington free press reports that ‘History is repeating itself in Winooski in the form of a wave of new immigrants. About a third of the students in the Winooski public-school system are English language learners, School Superintendent Steve Perkins said last week.’

This, apparently represents a 20 percent increase when compared to the student population of four years ago. Perkins, refreshingly, regards the refugee influx as an opportunity and a challenge, not a negative, while the district has hired people to teach refugees English, and all teachers have had extensive training in overcoming language barriers, he said.

Read the full story here.

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United States: A new style of teaching

david — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 15:07:57 +0000

It’s a new style of teaching and reaching out to English-language learners. It uses charts and chants and turns students into “super scientists” and “experts,” putting them in control of their education, proponents say.

The teaching style is known as Guided Language Acquisition Development, or “GLAD,” and Newhall School District employed the program for the first time this summer with about 500 summer school students in 19 classrooms at Old Orchard Elementary School. The 10-year-old GLAD program is recognized by the state of California as an effective approach to teaching English-language learners, who make up a significant percent of Newhall’s students.

Read on…

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Japan & United States: Multicultural Awareness in Okinawa

david — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 15:10:41 +0000

The AmerAsian School in Okinawa (AASO) is unique in that it enrolls almost exclusively biracial American-Japanese students, and has developed an original bilingual, bicultural “double” curriculum. Founded in 1998 by five Okinawan mothers, the privately run, K-9 school of 80 students contends that “Amerasian” children have the right to study in both Japanese and English, and aims to secure governmental funding.

Although no official statistics exist, academics estimate that about 250 mixed race American-Japanese children are born every year in Okinawa, the result of the numerous U.S. military bases here. These children, the AASO argues, are often unsuited for public schools, which offer little language support and allow too much discrimination toward racial minorities.

Read on…

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United States:Learners with disabilities may not get right diagnosis & placement

david — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 06:30:00 +0000

Way back in 1985, a Cambodian refugee enrolled in the School District of Philadelphia was mistakenly placed in a special education classroom, based on the results of a test indicating that he was mentally handicapped. But the test had been conducted in English, which was not the refugee student’s native language. This student, whose initials were Y.S., was eventually one of several Asian student plaintiffs in a landmark 1986 class-action suit, Y.S. et al. v. School District of Philadelphia.

According to The NoteBook, that misdiagnosis of Y.S. has had enormous impact on the District’s attention to services for English language learners (ELLs). The suit is still alive, and many issues it raised about special education services for students who are also ELLs have yet to be resolved.

Read the full story…

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