Astana, the modern capital of KazakhstanKazakhstan’s President Nazarbayev has announced a timeline to switch the country’s writing system over from the Cyrillic to the Latin script with full implementation occurring by 2025. According to the state-owned “Egemen Kazakhstan” newspaper, Nazarbayev has asked the government to start “preparatory work” and “create a schedule for the switch”…
Despite a passionate appeal by Senator Elizabeth Warren, the U.S. Senate has voted in favor of rolling back critical regulations of the ESSA (Every Student Succeeds Act) by a narrow margin of 50 to 49. This is the same bill that passed with the bipartisan support of 85 senators less than 18 months ago.“Today’s repeal…
The administration’s proposed FY 2018 budget seeks to cut the Education Department’s $68 billion budget by $9 billion, or 13%, while increasing defense spending by $54 billion. The two programs that would suffer the most—their elimination resulting in $3.3 billion in savings—are Title II grants for Teacher and Principal Training and 21st Century Community Learning…
Languages Develop Simultaneously But Independently in Young Bilinguals A new study of Spanish-English bilingual children by researchers at Florida Atlantic University published in the journal Developmental Science finds that when children learn two languages from birth each language proceeds on its own independent course, at a rate that reflects the quality of the children’s exposure to each…
One of eastern Canada’s maritime provinces off New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island (PEI), is fighting to protect French language schools for children. The island, which was originally a French province, has only 5,345 French speakers (4% of the population). The island is currently facing possible school closures involving English schools, which in…
Nearly half of the Netflix’s 93 million subscribers now come from outside of the US., so soon, English will no longer be platform’s dominant viewing language, the company said in a blog post.In the past five years, Netflix has expanded from three languages—English, Spanish, and Portuguese—to more than 20, including Arabic, Korean, Polish, and Turkish.Chris…
During the summer months, young children lose literacy gains made during the school year, a phenomenon known as “summer slide.” The most important thing teachers can do to reverse this trend is to help families adopt family literacy routines and promote opportunities for families to talk, read, and write together throughout the school year. Some…
Melanie Curl demonstrates how using youth-friendly databases helps increase literacy among English language learner In classrooms that include both English language learners (ELLs) and native English speakers, educators face the unique challenge of teaching these two groups at the same time. When teaching regular-paced lessons in English, educators can struggle with how to ensure their…
While boosting defense spending by $54 billion, the Trump administration’s proposed FY 2018 budget seeks to cut the Education Department’s $68 billion budget by $9 billion, or 13% in the fiscal year starting October. Requested cuts to the State Department and USAID would amount to another $10.1 billion, 28% reduction from the 2017 level.Although spending…
A new study, titled “Late Bilinguals Are Sensitive to Unique Aspects of Second Language Processing: Evidence from Clitic Pronouns Word Order,” asks whether English speakers who become highly proficient at a late age in Spanish can understand grammatical constructions that are present in Spanish but not in English. The study hinges on the longstanding question…