Author: Elizabeth Weise

Encourage your principal/teachers to fill out the survey listed below. It’s crazy that so many of our programs struggle to reinvent the wheel so sharing curriculum that’s been developed for Chinese and Common Core only makes sense. Though those of you from schools that are part of the national Flagship-Chinese Acquisition Pipeline are ahead of the game here…

Utah language immersion teachers in short supply WEDNESDAY , JANUARY 28, 2015 – 1:45 PM “Elise Taylor and Jake Beus, from the U.S. Institute of languages, pack software into boxes for… By Dana Rimington Standard-Examiner correspondent 2 2 0 It is no easy task getting dual immersion teachers for the Spanish, Chinese, or French programs…

4 Reasons Why Your Child Is Passive Bilingual September 8, 2014 by Olena Centeno 15 Comments Have you ever met a family where parents speak to a child their heritage language but a child responds back in the community one? Or maybe this is the case in your multilingual family? It certainly could be frustrating: you were always…

A new study out finds that kids being read aloud to helps their reading overall. Sometimes parents with kids in immersion worry that their teachers shouldn’t sell be reading aloud to kids in upper grades. But it turns out getting read it helps reading overall. A key quote: But reading aloud through elementary school seemed to be…

Brain Research What speaking two languages does to the brain By Christos Pliatsikas Jan 13 2015 There is increasing evidence that bilingualism can affect how the brain works. Older, lifelong bilinguals have demonstrated better cognitive skills in tasks that require increased cognitive control. These cognitive effects are most pronounced in bilingual people who speak two languages in…

All the research about language learning boils down to two things—if you spend time speaking and reading, you’ll get better fast. But reading, for kids in immersion, isn’t a slam dunk because there simply aren’t all that many things available in Chinese simple enough for them to read. They’re starting to be published but it’s…

This is a book that might be of interest to teachers and program administrators, from the folks at the Center for Applied Linguistics. Developing Academic Literacy and Language in the Content Areas Published by Center for Applied Linguistics Based on a 21st century approach to academic literacy that is aligned with today’s rigorous standards, this…