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 Register for the 2011 TESOL Academy: June 24-25 TESOL Share     University of Virginia, Northern Virginia Center Falls Church, Va., USA Register today! By attending the 2011 TESOL Academy, as ESOL professionals, you will have the opportunity to
TESOL contact for this program: edprograms@tesol.org or +1-703-518-2514
Register today for the next TESOL virtual seminar TESOL Share
Teaching Large Heterogeneous Classes in ELT Contexts Worldwide, by Penny Ur What is a large class? What is a heterogeneous class? What are the problems we encounter when we have to teach classes that are both large and heterogeneous? As with many educational problems, there are no easy solutions. The presenter proposes and discusses a series of practical teaching principles, illustrated by practical procedures, that involve very little (or no) extra preparation and that go some way towards providing opportunities for effective learning. Read more about the seminar; the deadline for registration is May 1. Thursday, May 5 at 10 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. Eastern time in the United States. (Thursday, May 5 at 2 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. GMT) Read about TESOL's other virtual seminars.
Contribute to the TESOL convention Slideshare page TESOL Share
Did you present at last month's convention in New Orleans? If so, please share your presentation and handouts on the 2011 TESOL convention SlideShare page! It's a quick and easy way to keep the spirit of the convention ongoing and to share valuable information with your colleagues. Go to Slideshare today to share your presentations and check out other presentations.   SUCCEED Act would unite our communities The Hill Share
Last April, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer's signature authorized SB 1070, imposing a set of harsh immigration enforcement laws that sought to reduce the undocumented immigrant population in Arizona. Rather than alienating immigrants, our country now has the chance to pass positive legislation with the Strengthen and Unite Communities with Civics Education & English Development (SUCCEED) Act, which would help immigrant populations integrate into American society. The SUCCEED Act would provide for English literacy instruction on the rights and responsibilities of citizenship, naturalization proceedings, civic participation and U.S. history and government. More
Feds soften 15-state requirement for new ELL tests Education Week Share
In their final notice calling for consortia of states to apply for federal funds to create English language proficiency tests aligned with the commoncore academic standards, federal officials say applicants will get extra points if they have at least 15 states as members, but they won't be disqualified if they don't. The notice calls the 15-state minimum a "competitive preference priority," not a requirement. That's a change from the notice that first proposed the $10.7 million grant competition for a new generation of English-proficiency tests to be created as part of the Common Core State Standards Initiative. More  How do Cantonese-speaking ELLs learn to read English? Education Week Share
Decoding words doesn't play as large of a role in how Cantonese-speaking children living in the United States learn to read English as it does for children who speak only English at home or English language learners who speak Spanish at home, according to a new study. The author of the study found that reading comprehension for Cantonese-speaking children is equally dependent on decoding ability and oral-language proficiency, as measured by tests of oral vocabulary and verbal memory. More
 Government failure to establish new English Learning Labs affect rural students in India The Times of India Share
India: The failure of collegiate education department to impart aural and oral skills in English language to students in government degree colleges has deprived thousands a chance to be globally acceptable. Be it employment opportunities either at call centers or marketing firms, the chances of these students making it to the interview-level look grim because of the failure of the government to establish even one new English Language Lab in the past two years. More  Newcomers face obstacles to learn English The Quad-City Times Share
The exercise is tedious to the point of being painful. For nearly 45 minutes, teacher Brandon Bufe stands at the front of a classroom occupied by 14 adult refugees, largely from Nepal, Burma and the Congo, explaining how to write a check. The name of the business to which money is owed goes here, he says. And your name goes there. Laboriously, the students write on the long line the name of the subsidized apartment complex where many of them live and their own name on the short line. But several transpose the two. More
China struggles with English The Wall Street Journal Share
China: Mandarin lessons may be the trend in the West, but the push in China is to study English. Now, two language-teaching companies have given China poor marks for its English abilities. China, according to two separate studies published recently, is distinguishing itself for the number of people studying, not for their skill levels. "China still has a way to go before it can consider itself adequately proficient in English," according to English First BV. Separately, California-based GlobalEnglish Corp. says many of the 11,000 people it recently surveyed in China wouldn't be able to keep up with a business meeting conducted in English. More
Anger over English lesson funding cuts The Guardian Share
Great Britain: Teachers have reacted with anger to the prime minister's call for immigrants to take English lessons, arguing that the coalition has cut funds for these classes. At a speech on immigration, David Cameron warned that immigrants unable to speak English or unwilling to integrate have created a "kind of discomfort and disjointedness," which has disrupted communities across Great Britain. But teachers of English said new rules, devised by the coalition government, would mean far fewer immigrants could afford to learn basic English. More  Evolution of language takes unexpected turn Wired News Share
It's widely thought that human language evolved in universally similar ways, following trajectories common across place and culture, and possibly reflecting common linguistic structures in our brains. But a massive, millennium-spanning analysis of humanity's major language families suggests otherwise. Instead, language seems to have evolved along varied, complicated paths, guided less by neurological settings than cultural circumstance. If our minds do shape the evolution of language, it's likely at levels deeper and more nuanced than many researchers anticipated. More
Study: All languages may originate from Africa PhysOrg.com Share
Previous language trees only go back as far as 9,000 years and linguists have believed that language was not able to be traced farther back than that. However, Quentin Atkinson's claims could have language going back as far as 100,000 years. In Atkinson's study he looks, not at words, but at phonemes which are the consonants, vowels and tones which make up language. By applying mathematical methods, he has discovered a pattern within the more than 500 languages throughout the world. More How the bilingual brain copes with aging ScienceDaily Share
Older bilingual adults compensate for age-related declines in brainpower by developing new strategies to process language, according to a recent study published in the journal Aging, Neuropsychology, and Cognition. Concordia University researchers studied two groups of fluently bilingual adults — aged from 19 to 35 and from 60 to 81 years old — and found significant age-related differences in the manner their brains interpreted written language. More |
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