From the Atlantic

America’s Lacking Language Skills
Budget cuts, low enrollments, and teacher shortages mean the country is falling behind the rest of the world.

AMELIA FRIEDMAN MAY 10, 2015
Educators from across the country gathered in Washington, D.C., this past Thursday to lobby in the interest of world languages. It was Language Advocacy Day, an annual event on Capitol Hill that is aimed at garnering more federal support for language education.

As I sat in sessions and congressional conference rooms, I heard a persuasive urgency in these educators’ voices. Each year as national budget priorities are determined, language education is losing out—cuts have been made to funding for such instruction, including Title VI grants and the Foreign Language Assistance Program. And the number of language enrollments in higher education in the U.S. declined by more than 111,000 spots between 2009 and 2013—the first drop since 1995. Translation? Only 7 percent of college students in America are enrolled in a language course.

Please read more here.

From our friends at the Asia Society’s Chinese Language Initiative

A Road Map for Planning a Successful “DIY” Two-Way School-to-School Partnership Exchange Program: Part II

Timeline, Key Components and Other Tips

Please read more here.

I purely love these guys! And now their books are available in print format as well as e-readers.

Can you guess what my girls are going to be reading this summer?

http://mandarincompanion.com/blog/mandarin-companion-series-now-available-in-paperback/

Students practice language skills at fair
Dual language immersion brings students to UVU 0 Dual language immersion brings students to UVU 0 Dual language immersion brings students to UVU 0 Dual language immersion brings students to UVU 0 Dual language immersion brings students to UVU 0
Dual language immersion brings students to UVU 0
Sammy Jo Hester, Daily Herald
March 24, 2015. SAMMY JO HESTER, Daily Herald

OREM — College students aren’t really getting a lot younger. It just looked that way this week as nearly 2,000 fourth, fifth- and sixth-graders from across the state came to Utah Valley University’s campus. They were attending a world language farm for dual immersion language students.

Most days, those students attend classes in their schools, taught half a day in English and half a day in the language they choose to learn.

On two days this week, they participated in the fair, the first for those grade levels. Brigham Young University has hosted events for junior high and high school students.

“Dual language immersion has been going on about eight or 10 years now,” said Baldomero Lago, senior director of UVU’s International & Multicultural Studies department. “Some of the students wanted to participate at BYU, but that would make it way too large.”

Because of the age range, two approaches would be needed to provide the activities for all the students.

“I proposed that we do two programs to the state and the state assigned us to be the host institution for the dual language fair,” he said.

The State Board of Education invited UVU to host the fair more than a year ago, he said. Teams for several university departments have been planning and organizing the event since then.

Please read more here.

This is a superb course for teachers, especially those new to immersion. Taught by the great folks in Minnesota at the Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition.

The deadline for sign up is May 29, so tell your principals now.

==

June 22–26, 2015 (Teacher Session) June 22–23, 2015 (2-day Admin Session)
Target Audience: Pre-service and novice K–12 Chinese and Japanese immersion teachers, administrators, district personnel or policy makers, and specialist teachers in immersion schools. It is not meant for experienced immersion teachers.

New Chinese or Japanese immersion teachers and administrators will receive a research-based introduction to the challenges, options, and issues in the unique world of immersion education (K–12). Targeted institute participants include one-way (world language) and two-way immersion educators who teach subject matter through Chinese or Japanese for 50–100% of the school day and promote continued development of English (amount of instructional time in English varies by grade level).

On the first two days, the focus will be on issues of interest to new immersion teachers and administrators. Administrators and district personnel will have an opportunity to engage with key issues in immersion program design and implementation for character-based languages, and discuss strategies for meeting those challenges with an experienced immersion administrator. During the following three days, novice teacher participants will be introduced to effective practices that inform language and literacy-attentive curriculum development and instruction with non-cognate, character-based languages whose writing system differs from English.

More here.

Some parents have asked me about programs that require families to sign a contract, much as charter schools sometimes do, spelling out what’s expected of students and families at the beginning.

Here’s the webpage of a new Mandarin immersion program starting up in Garland, Texas.

As I’ve written in my book, families sometimes choose Mandarin immersion not so much for the language itself but for the type of students their children will be in school with. In Garland, it’s clearly going to be an academically focused, disciplined bunch of kids.

The Chinese Early Language and Immersion Network is asking for teacher input as it works to support Chinese in K – 12 programs. Please encourage your teachers and programs to go to their site and fill out the form.

http://asiasociety.org/chinese-language-initiatives/chinese-early-language-immersion-network