Can't make it to New Orleans? You can still access presentations
TESOL
TESOL's Computer-Assisted Language Learning Interest Section (CALL-IS) will be Webcasting selected TESOL 2011 sessions from its Electronic Village on Friday, March 18, and Saturday, March 19. In addition to seeing and listening to the presentations, participants can also submit questions via text and voice chat. These sessions are free and open to everyone. For a complete schedule and information on how to participate, click here.

After the convention, the TESOL Online Learning Center will have recordings of all sessions as audio-synchronized PowerPoint presentations and as downloadable MP3 files that you can upload onto your iPod. Attendees receive a discounted package of presentations as a special benefit, but the presentations will be available to everyone after the convention. Watch the TESOL Web site and the TESOL English Language Bulletin for details.More

TESOL executive director to be interviewed on Education Talk Radio
TESOL
Education Talk Radio host Larry Jacobs will interview TESOL Executive Director Rosa Aronson at noon EST, Monday, March 21. This is Dr. Aronson's second interview on the station. Her first interview, on Feb. 2, focused on K-12 ESL education in the United States. You can listen live to the March 21 interview here or in the archives at the Education Talk Radio blog, which also contains Dr. Aronson's first interview.More

President Obama to urge reform of 'No Child Left Behind'
POLITICO
President Barack Obama will renew his push to overhaul the nearly decade-old federal education law, calling on Congress to finish a rewrite of No Child Left Behind by the start of the next school year. Pushing an issue that administration views as ripe for bipartisan cooperation, Obama will use a visit to an Arlington, Va., school to praise the efforts by Republican and Democratic lawmakers to fix the law and outline his own priorities, top administration officials said. More

Bill would make English official language of US government
CBS News
Two conservative Republican lawmakers, Congressman Steve King, R-Iowa, and Senator Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., introduced the English Language Unity Act of 2011, a bill that requires that all official United States government functions be conducted in English. "A common language is the most powerful unifying force known throughout history," King said. "We need to encourage assimilation of all legal immigrants in each generation. A nation divided by language cannot pull together as effectively as a people." The bill would also establish a uniform language requirement for naturalization and oblige federal government officials to encourage people to learn English.More

China makes unprecedented English language push
Indianapolis Business Journal (Commentary)
China: It's conceivable that by 2025 the number of English-speaking Chinese will exceed the number of people speaking English as a first language in the rest of the world. Skeptics abound this will happen. But what's undeniable is that China has made educating its population in English a big priority. More

30 percent of Canadian students need ESL
CBC News
Canada: Almost 29 percent of elementary school students served by the Peel District School Board need help with their English despite being born in Canada. The board serves 87,807 elementary students in Peel region, west of Toronto. Of those, the numbers suggest 39,062 need extra English instruction. Of those, 25,227 students were born in Canada. Those students are labeled English Language Learners (ELL) — those whose first language is not English and who require additional help to gain proficiency in the language.More

DeLisi launches English skills program
The Himalayan Times
Nepal: United States Ambassador of Nepal Scott H. DeLisi launched the U.S. Government-funded English Access Microscholarship Program in Kathmandu, Nepal. According to the U.S. Embassy in Kathmandu, the program provides a foundation of English language skills to talented, but economically or socially underprivileged 14- to 16-year-olds through after-school classes and intensive summer learning activities over a period of two years.More

English program a hit in Quebec schools
CBC News
Canada: In the Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean region of Quebec, where scarcely anyone speaks English, the high-school pass rate for English as a Second Language has soared to 94 percent. Educators at the Lac-Saint-Jean school board are crediting the mandatory sixth-grade intensive English program that was introduced into all 21 elementary schools in the region in 2003.More

Students' English misses the mark
The Wall Street Journal
More than a third of New York City students who entered first-grade in 2003 identified as English language learners couldn't pass an English-language proficiency test last year when they were in the seventh-grade, according to Department of Education data. More

Massachusetts law makes it easier for charters to recruit ELLs
Education Week
A charter school operator in Massachusetts is taking advantage of a requirement in a new state law that public schools must turn over contact information of parents and the languages they speak to charter operators. Alan Safran, who runs MATCH Public Charter School in Boston, says that the new requirement has enabled his organization to get a document about schooling options to parents who were hard to reach previously. More

Budget cuts raise questions about federal commitment to literacy
Education Week
The elimination of most federal aid for literacy programs at the U.S. Department of Education is raising new questions about the future of the federal commitment to promoting literacy, a role that's had a bumpy ride in recent years. Even though some of the more than $350 million in cuts to those programs this month could be reversed, as Congress and the White House wrangle over the budget, some education advocates say the Obama administration doesn't seem to treat the issue as a high priority. More

Cutting Pell Grant funding
The Hill
Pell Grants are the foundation of our student aid system, which seeks to make sure that students with low and moderate incomes can afford a college education. Right now, Pell Grants are helping more than 9 million people go to college. There is no doubt that the cost of the Pell Grant program has been rising rapidly. The single most important factor has been growth in the number of eligible students. Between 2008 and now, the number of students receiving Pell Grants has increased by more than three million. More

Teaching the alphabet effectively to adult ESL students
LiteracyNews
Many adult ESL students have had limited educations and, even in their native languages, have limited literacy skills. For many, the concept of alphabetical order is unknown. Yet alphabetical order is a basic organizing system of our society, and one that everyone who lives in the society needs to master. We use it to organize names in the phone book, to organize files in file systems, to organize inventory in our businesses, to organize parts in our repair shops. More