The Scottsdale Unified School District has announced that it will begin teaching world language in its elementary schools. SUSD realizes the importance of ensuring that its students are prepared to meet future academic and industry demands. Read More…
Category: Articles
The Superior Social Skills of Bilinguals
BEING bilingual has some obvious advantages. Learning more than one language enables new conversations and new experiences. But in recent years, psychology researchers have demonstrated some less obvious advantages of bilingualism, too. For instance, bilingual children may enjoy certain cognitive benefits, such as improved executive function — which is critical for problem solving and other […]
LangCred: Discovering Pathways to Japanese Language Credentialing
By Mayeen Farooqui MA Ed., Anthony Ortizo MA Ed The CLASSRoad LangCred team recently provided an online course, LangCred: Discovering Pathways to Japanese Language Credentialing, to individuals interested in learning more about pathways to credentialing for teaching Japanese language and culture. Underwritten by a grant from the Japan Foundation, the interactive course provided an opportunity […]
SFUSD Board Approves Pilot Program Expanding Instruction In Mandarin; Other Languages To Follow
San Francisco school children could soon have more opportunities to learn a language other than English in elementary school under a pilot program approved Tuesday night. A resolution approved unanimously by the San Francisco Unified School District board Tuesday asked the district to prepare a pilot program offering Mandarin language instruction at elementary schools that […]
School district may increase foreign language class options
The Yorkville School District is exploring more foreign language class options. Director of Teaching and Learning Kelley Gallt told the Board of Education on Monday that administrators are considering adding German I at the Yorkville Middle School where Spanish I is already offered. Both languages are now taught at Yorkville High School. In addition, during […]
For a Better Brain, Learn Another Language
There’s a certain sinking feeling one gets when thinking of the perfect thing to say just a moment too late. Perhaps a witty parting word could have made all the difference. There is no English word to express this feeling, but the French have the term l’esprit de l’escalier—translated, “stairwell wit”—for this very phenomenon. Nor […]
Five Phases of Professional Development
The North Central Regional Educational Laboratory has developed a research-based professional development framework that promotes ongoing professional development and encourages individual reflection and group inquiry into teachers’ practice. In practice, the five phases overlap, repeat, and often occur simultaneously: Building a Knowledge Base. The purpose of this phase is to acquire new knowledge and information […]
Bilingualism
By Paweł Zieliński The aim of this article is to present a short compendium of theories concerning bilingualism and bilinguals. Firstly, one needs to provide a clear definition of a bilingual. The most common, or rather a layman one would claim that a bilingual is a person with a command of two languages. A person […]
Can Having Highly Developed Cognitive Skills Stand in the Way of Learning a New Language?
By Rish Tanna Learning a new language offers benefits that extend well beyond the social and cultural realm. Evidence suggests that in a bilingual’s brain, both language systems are active when he or she is using or communicating in one. While this was once viewed as a disadvantage, studies indicate that this interference actually forces […]
Does Your Language Shape How You Think?
Seventy years ago, in 1940, a popular science magazine published a short article that set in motion one of the trendiest intellectual fads of the 20th century. At first glance, there seemed little about the article to augur its subsequent celebrity. Neither the title, “Science and Linguistics,” nor the magazine, M.I.T.’s Technology Review, was most […]