Singapore: Ever heard about a book that has gone into a reprint even before it is launched? That's what is happening to volume two of the immensely popular Stomp book, English As It Is Broken. Such is the demand for the book that the publishers have decided to up production in order to satisfy Singaporean readers who want to speak and write better in English.
Texas, Washington: Last month, a Texas court ordered the Texas Education Agency to overhaul the state’s bilingual education system, citing low test scores and high dropout rates. In Seattle, an outside review of that public school district’s program for immigrant students deemed the program weak and in need of restructuring. As two different systems struggle to overcome the burden of low achievement among their English-language learner populations, one scholar recommends providing children with more language support before pushing them into English-only classrooms, among a few strategies that may help both systems.
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Massachusetts: A one-of-a-kind enrichment program for a group of first-generation English language learners from Central and South America, Africa and Asia is underway this week (8/18-8/22) at Berkshire Community College. The students, who will be entering the 10th through 12th grades at Pittsfield and Lee High Schools next month, have come together on BCC’s main campus for an intensive summer program. Funded by the Massachusetts Educational Opportunity Program, the students’ training will continue throughout the upcoming school year.
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Florida: Armed with English-speaking skills, 21 blue cap-and-gown clad graduates entered a new world Friday. The students, mostly 3 and 4 year olds, were the second graduating class of the Bonita Springs Literacy Council’s Moms and Tots program, which teaches English to little ones before they enter the first grade and gives the mothers an opportunity to learn with their children.
Israel: For the first time in its history, the Technion (Israel Institute of Technology) has decided to make English the language of instruction in one of its degree programs. Specifically, the master's program in business administration will now be taught completely in English. "The intention is to switch completely to using English - in the classroom, course material, drills, seminars, slides, documents, everything," explained Prof. Boaz Golany, dean of the Technion's faculty of industrial engineering and management. "We reached the conclusion that if we continued to train our students by teaching in Hebrew, we would be placing them in an inferior starting position, given the conditions of the global competition."
India: Indian High Commissioner Alok Prasad will hand-over 40 scholarships to 40 English teachers under the Presidential Initiative ‘English as a Life Skill’. The scholarships have been granted by the Government of India in support of the initiative taken by President Mahinda Rajapaksa to disseminate job oriented spoken/communicative English skills to the youth in all parts of the country.
Ireland: Teachers last night gave a guarded backing to calls for immigrant children who cannot speak English properly to be "segregated" in our classrooms. This followed a Fine Gael call yesterday for the Government to separate immigrant children with poor language skills from the rest of their classmates. The party’s education spokesman, Brian Hayes, said children should not be put into a mainstream class until they have a competence for it.
New York: In a city where more than 170 languages are spoken and over a third of residents are foreign-born, scores of New York public school students struggle to learn English. They are known as English-language learners (ELLs), students who speak a language other than English at home and score below a state-designated level of proficiency in English upon entering the New York City schools.
Oregon: A measure on the Nov. 4 ballot could make Oregon one of a handful of states with a cap on the amount of time spent teaching English-language learners in their native tongue and could curtail or end two-way language immersion programs such as those in Jackson County's Phoenix-Talent School District. Measure 58 (Initiative Petition 19) would limit the time non-English speakers receive instruction in their native language to one year for grades kindergarten through four, one-and-a-half years for grades five through eight and two years for high school grades.
United Arab Emirates: At the helm of a new academic year, principals,
teachers and mentors of the 50 Madares Al Ghad (MAG) or Future Schools
in the UAE pledged on Sunday for a renewed thrust on English language
and making its pupils more Internet savvy. Mathematics and Science
would be taught in English in these schools, for the first time.
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Arizona: Sunnyside and Tucson unified school districts will only partially comply with a state mandate they've vehemently disagreed with to segregate students not proficient in English into four hours a day of English immersion this school year. But instead of taking the issue to court, which appeared a possibility two months ago, state and district officials have settled on 2008-09 as a transition year.But instead of taking the issue to court, which appeared a possibility two months ago, state and district officials have settled on 2008-09 as a transition year.
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Pennsylvania: To stave off summer-vacation brain drain, some Berks County schools have set up summer courses for children studying English as their second language. The goal is to reinforce lessons taught during the school year and help prevent regression of English skills over summer break.
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United Kingdom: One in eight pupils speaks English as a second language, a report has revealed. The Government survey highlights the 'disunited nations' in classrooms as teachers battle to educate a massive influx of immigrants. In some areas more than 70 per cent of pupils arriving at the school gates do not speak English as their mother tongue.
South Carolina: As politicians debate the issues of immigration, many of the
people most affected by their words can’t even understand what they are
saying. While rhetoric about secure borders, temporary worker
programs and a national language swirls around the political arena,
rows of immigrants sit in a classroom in Greenwood studying an outdated
diagram of an office scene, struggling to interpret and pronounce words
like “stapler” and “receptionist.”
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South Africa: Western Cape Cultural Affairs and Sport MEC Cameron Dugmore has today announced that the closing date for nominations for Board Members for the Western Cape Language Committee has been extended to 21 August 2008, to provide more time for applications and nominations. Its mission is to actively promote multilingualism, to monitor the use of the three official languages and to support the development of the previously marginalized, indigenous languages of the Western Cape.
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