California’s Santa Monica College is popular with international students The nearly 100,000 international students attending U.S. community colleges during the last academic year contributed $2.4 billion to the U.S. economy and supported more than 14,000 jobs.Contributions from international students at community colleges in California alone neared the $1 billion mark, and exceeded $100 million in…
Global California 2030 was launched at Cahuenga Elementary School in Los Angeles, which has a dual Korean/English immersion program and three separate programs to help English learners, especially students with Spanish as their first language.California’s Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson today launched Global California 2030, which is a call to action “to vastly expand…
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has returned 3,800 ancient artifacts, including cuneiform tablets, cylinder seals, and clay bullae, to the Republic of Iraq. The artifacts were smuggled into the U.S. in violation of federal law and shipped to Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc, a nationwide arts-and-crafts retailer. Many of the tablets can be shown to…
With languages it’s often said that if you don’t use it you lose it. San Quentin Radio and NPR present this story of an inmate slowing forgetting his language in prison, Vietnamese. The inmate, who has been incarcerated in prison for over 10 years, shares his story on language, identity, and forgetting. “Imagine if…
Isabel Haller-Gryc recommends using mentor texts to scaffold writing for English learners Writing is a struggle for many people, but it is especially difficult for English language learners (ELLs). ELLs face many challenges when writing, ranging from unfamiliarity with text structure to difficulty with grammar usage, word order, sentence structure, and syntax (Haynes). How can…
A new study reveals that bilinguals and trained musicians utilize fewer resources in their brains while doing tasks involving memory. This means that it’s easier for them to do so. As their brains use less effort to perform tasks, researchers infer that their musical and bilingual brains may protect them from the onset of cognitive…
José A. Viana at JNCL/NCLIS Language Advocacy DayAdvocacy groups are denouncing a proposed merging of the federal Office of English Language Acquisition (OELA) into the Office for Elementary and Secondary Education (OESE). Education Department officials have said that the restructuring plan would enable the Department of Education to merge English-learner support with services provided to…
A new tax deal set by the Danish government will place stronger conditions for entry to social welfare programs and payments for foreign citizens. The tax cut, which amounts to 5 billion kroner, aim to deliver 1,850-3,150 kroner to each Danish taxpayer, which is much less than the government’s original initiative of between 5,000-26,700 a…
CREDIT: MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR THE SCIENCE OF HUMAN HISTORYResearchers at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena, Germany and the Mint Minds and Traditions Research Group (a Max Planck research group) have released a new app that introduces a new way to study language evolution. The app aims to…
Although infants do appreciate the coos of their parents, they seem to prefer to hear sounds from other babies, according to a new Canadian study. Even at the pre-babbling stage—before they can form sounds resembling syllables like “ba ba ba” —infants recognize vowel-like sounds, but they tend to dwell on these sounds when from the…