Author: Elizabeth Weise

Bilingualism Fine-Tunes Hearing, Enhances Attention Dual language speakers better able to encode basic language sounds and patterns By Wendy Leopold EVANSTON, Ill. — A new Northwestern University study provides the first biological evidence that bilinguals’ rich experience with language “fine-tunes” their auditory nervous system and helps them juggle linguistic input in ways that enhance attention…

News and Opportunities from the Field 2012 National Chinese Language Conference: The program and speaker line-up is now online! This year’s NCLC will be packed with expert and helpful sessions on immersion and early Chinese language learning, technology and innovation in language education, arts and culture, plus networking opportunities and a very special performance by I…

From the Asia Society newsletter enlarge image Nikada/iStockphoto, Jimmy Wang/NYTimes.com, Fan Kuan As a Chinese and Japanese language teacher, I’ve always had a secret antipathy for sushi and dumplings. It’s not that I don’t like to eat them. It’s just that, in my first experiences teaching these languages, I was often confronted by skeptical colleagues…

The Mandarin immersion program at Broadway Elementary school in Venice, Calif (Los Angeles Unified) still has space on its waiting list for Kindergarten and principal Susan Wang encourages parents who are interested to ome in and sign up. “The priority windows were closed on 4/20, but after that we take everyone on the first come  first…

Myself, I have no idea. But I spent a lot of time last week talking to teachers at a Chinese language conference and they all were quite clear that while programs like this might be helpful to get kids to practice more (which helps them remember what they’ve learned) it’s not such a great way…

Spanish Is Faster Than English, But Mandarin Is Slow Some languages sound faster than others, but most convey information at the same rate By Anne Pycha  | April 15, 2012 | 12 “Speakers of some languages seem to rattle away at high speed like machine-guns, while other languages sound rather slow and plodding,” wrote linguist Peter Roach in 1998. A…