| News for and about language educators |  |
- Mass. school sees benefits in switching to dual immersion
Milford Catholic Elementary School in Massachusetts will start a new bilingual education initiative for kindergartners this fall. The school is launching the curriculum through a program affiliated with the National Catholic Educational Association and Boston College. Students will start speaking Spanish 90% of the day, and the school will introduce more English into the school day each subsequent year. "At this age, children are like sponges," school board member Annette Smith said. "When they learn a language at a younger age they are more likely to become fluent." Milford Daily News (Mass.)
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- Some Hispanic churches in D.C. experiment with bilingual services
Churches serving Latin American immigrants in the Washington, D.C., area have started offering worship in English and Spanish. In past years, the trend had been moving toward churches offering more Spanish language services, but now many of the children of immigrants prefer to worship in English. At one church, the service is conducted in Spanish, while it is simultaneously translated into English for people wearing headphones. The Washington Post
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 | Differentiating Learning at Northern Valley Regional HS
Students at different learning levels, including some with IEPs and 504 plans, benefit from differentiated tasks and activities, thanks to Sony language lab technology. Jim Buoye, District Supervisor of World Languages at NVRHS in NJ, finds that the technology accommodates all learners. Download a brief article about the NVRHS language program and goals.
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| Technology & Trends |  |  |
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- Study sheds more light on causes of stuttering
Preschool students who stutter present different neural network patterns than peers who do not stutter, according to a recent study. "The present findings are the first to show that differences in electrophysiological measures of language processing occur near the onset of stuttering and thus may play an important role in the development of the condition," researchers said. News-Medical.Net
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- Technology raises questions over ownership of teachers' work
Teachers' lesson plans and students' class work would belong to the school district -- not the teacher or the student -- under a proposed copyright policy under consideration in Prince George's County, Md. The policy was developed to address the use of district technology by teachers to create curricula but also applies to lessons and materials developed using teachers' own materials on their own time. Critics say the unusual policy stifles creative endeavors and infringes on students' and teachers' rights. The Washington Post
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| Policy Watch | | |
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- D.C. officials opt to change language in health care law
The Obama administration is taking steps to make the Affordable Care Act more user friendly for Spanish speakers. The law will replace "exchanges" with "marketplace" because "exchanges" does not translate into Spanish. The government estimates about 12 million Spanish speakers are eligible for the health care coverage. The Hill
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| ACTFL News | | |
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Join us for the next ACTFL webinar on Wed., Feb. 13
During 'Providing Effective Feedback," presented by Bonnie Adair-Hauck and Francis Troyan, participants learn what research says regarding feedback, hear how teachers and learners together co-construct feedback, explore how to target expectations around what "meets the standard" in each mode of communication, and examine rubrics to evaluate performance. Learn more and register.
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ACTFL seeks requests for research priorities phase II partnerships
The purpose of Phase II of the ACTFL Research Priorities Project is to support empirical research on five priority areas that are critical to improving foreign language education. In this pre-proposal stage, ACTFL invites two groups of participants (researchers and site partners) to express their interest in establishing a research partnership that would potentially lead to submission of a full proposal in Stage 2. Deadline for Stage 1 submissions is March 15. Learn more and submit.
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