Language Study Mandatory In Years 6, 7 And 8 in Queensland, Australia

Language Study Mandatory In Years 6, 7 And 8
http://www.mysunshinecoast.com.au/articles/article-display/language-study-mandatory-in-years-6-7-and-8,17333

Education and Training Minister Geoff Wilson has reaffirmed the Queensland Government's commitment to the study of languages in years 6, 7 and 8.

Mr Wilson said 90 per cent of Queensland state schools would teach languages in years 6, 7 and 8 by the start of the 2011 school year, with the remainder of schools coming on board in 2012.

"A 21st century education needs to equip young people to participate and engage across an increasingly globalised world," Mr Wilson said.

"The Queensland Government believes that through learning languages our students gain intellectual, social and cultural benefits.

"Learning a language provides them with analytical and communication skills that will enhance their learning in other areas."

Mr Wilson said the languages taught in schools would be determined by the school principal in collaboration with the school community, and in response to student needs.

"Many of our schools currently offer languages in some form or another," he said.

"What we are doing now is ensuring there is consistency of learning across schools and in the key middle years of learning.

"Establishing the study of language in upper primary school provides a strong early foundation in language learning from which students can move forward into secondary school and continue their study in a setting that allows for deeper specialisation.

"Mandatory language study in years 6, 7 and 8 provides a good basis for those who will seek to continue to study languages until the end of high school and beyond."

Mr Wilson said the restoration of languages in the middle years would recognise that Indigenous languages and Auslan (sign-language) were also options for schools for language study.

"Asian languages are also an important option for our schools as a greater cultural understanding and the ability to engage with our regional neighbours in their own language will provide extensive future for individual students and Queensland," he said.

"As the Australian languages curriculum is developed over the next few years, schools will begin using the national curriculum where it is available in the language that is offered in their school.

"The introduction of this national curriculum will provide young people across Australia with an opportunity to learn languages through a consistent and world-class curriculum."

More information about Languages in Queensland state schools can be found at: http://education.qld.gov.au/curriculum/area/lote/index.html

Minister for Education and Training
The Honourable Geoff Wilson
29/05/2010

How to Talk on the Telephone in English

Prof. Larry M. Lynch is an EFL Teacher Trainer, Intellectual Development Specialist, author and speaker. He has written ESP, foreign language learning, English language teaching texts and hundreds of articles used in more than 135 countries. Get your FREE E-book, “If you Want to Teach English Abroad, Here's What You Need to Know" by requesting the title at: lynchlarrym@gmail.com Need a blogger or copywriter to promote your school, institution, service or business or an experienced writer and vibrant SEO content for your website, blog or newsletter? Then E-mail me for further information.

Accented teachers may be better for English language learners

The Washington Post
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/learning/accented-teachers-may-be-bette.html

A new study on how well students learn second languages from teachers with accents suggests that Arizona may be making a mistake by trying to remove heavily accented Hispanic teachers from classrooms filled with Hispanics trying to learn English.

School districts in Arizona are under orders from the state Department of Education to remove teachers who speak English with a very heavy accent (and/or whose speech is ungrammatical) from classrooms with students who are learning to speak English. Officials say they want students who don’t know much English to have teachers who can best model how to speak the language.

I wrote the other day about the difficulties in determining just how deep an accent has to be to be considered a problem, but here’s another side of the issue.

According to a new research study conducted in Israel, students learn a second language better from a teacher who speaks in the same accent as they do.

The study, published in the Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, said that students learning from a teacher with the same accent have an easier time understanding the material. They don’t have to spend time trying to understand the English in a different accent.

According to one of the report’s co-authors, Psychology Professor Zohar Eviatar, the concentration a student would have to summon to understand English in a different accent is considerably greater than if the student were a native English speaker.

In Arizona, that would mean that Hispanic kids studying English would learn better from teachers with Spanish accents.

The research, conducted at the University of Haifa, has implications not just for second language acquisition, but for how well students learn new subjects, Eviatar said.

The study was performed by researchers from different backgrounds. Dr. Raphiq Ibrahim is an Israeli Arab with an Arabic accent; Dr. Mark Leikin hails from the former Soviet Union and speaks with a Russian accent; Eviatar is a fluently bilingual Hebrew-English speaker. The team was both personally and professionally curious to know more about the accent effect.

Full text of this article available online at:

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/learning/accented-teachers-may-be-bette.html

Prof. Larry M. Lynch is an EFL Teacher Trainer, Intellectual Development Specialist, author and speaker. He has written ESP, foreign language learning, English language teaching texts and hundreds of articles used in more than 135 countries. Get your FREE E-book, “If you Want to Teach English Abroad, Here's What You Need to Know" by requesting the title at: lynchlarrym@gmail.com Need a blogger or copywriter to promote your school, institution, service or business or an experienced writer and vibrant SEO content for your website, blog or newsletter? Then E-mail me for further information.

Pimsleur Rated Best Language Course to Learn a New Language Fast

Pimsleur Rated Best Language Course to Learn a New Language Fast

http://www.prweb.com/releases/pimsleur-language-course/learn-a-new-language-fast/prweb3950984.htm

Language students consistently rate the Pimsleur language courses higher than most other programs on the market by recent blog and independent studies. The ability to learn a new language fast is greatly increased when Pimsleur is included with your foreign language study. A free downloadable lesson is also available for review.

Is it possible to converse in a new language in as little as 30 days? According to most Pimsleur language course users, it is. Various independent polls and blogs rates the Pimsleur language method one of the best language course programs on the market. Pimsleur-Language recommends that those looking to learn a new language fast should consider the Pimsleur Method of language training, a language course technique that can give users the ability to communicate with native speakers of a language in as little as 30 days, or 15 hours of language lessons.

Pimsleur Language Courses - Learn a New Language Fast

Pimsleur programs provide plenty of positive reinforcement that will keep learners on track, and we found that Pimsleur gave us more proficiency and confidence in speaking the new language than any of the other language programs we reviewed."AudioFile Mag
Developed by linguistic expert Dr. Paul Pimsleur, the Pimsleur Method is an audio based language course that helps students learn a new language using the same method we all learn our first language--by listening.

Because a traditional language course relies on repetition and written work, many people who want to learn a new language fast often consider the Pimsleur method preferable to other methods.

Pimsleur courses do not require any written work. Instead, it is based on four principles that work together to help achieve faster language comprehension and memorization. A Pimsleur language course helps a student to build a Core Vocabulary using audio-based Organic Learning in order to pick up on the correct grammar and accent.

In addition, language students who use Pimsleur courses will maximize their memorization using a method known as Graduated Interval Recall, which tests students on words and phrases they have previously mastered at varying intervals. Finally, Pimsleur's Principle of Anticipation challenges students to rely on their memories of previously mastered material in order to progress in more advanced language lessons.

It's never too late to learn a new language. Language Students who begin a language course today will be in a better position to travel the world or to meet work requirements. Also don’t forget to participate at this year's American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Language Expo Event (ACTFL) in Boston, MA November 19-21 where the Pimsleur language course has been featured many times.

Smartsource products offers Pimsleur language courses for more than 40 languages and offers buyers the chance to get a free downloadable Pimsleur lesson in order to hear how simple it is to learn a new language fast using this method. Some language course offerings are Arabic, French, Spanish, Mandarin, German, Italian, Portuguese, English, Russian, Japanese, Polish, Hebrew, along with some new offerings such as Urdu, Tagalog, Romanian, and some Native American Languages such as Ojibwe, plus many more.

About Smartsource Products:
Smartsource Products (www.Pimsleur-Language.com) was started to provide people with the ability to learn a new language for fun, for business, or for personal reasons. Because people are traveling far more often than they used to, there is no time to learn a language in the classroom or with a tutor. Smartsource Products offers language course programs that are based on the way the human mind works and the way we all learned our first language, which is by hearing.

Prof. Larry M. Lynch is an EFL Teacher Trainer, Intellectual Development Specialist, author and speaker. He has written ESP, foreign language learning, English language teaching texts and hundreds of articles used in more than 135 countries. Get your FREE E-book, “If you Want to Teach English Abroad, Here's What You Need to Know" by requesting the title at: lynchlarrym@gmail.com Need a blogger or copywriter to promote your school, institution, service or business or an experienced writer and vibrant SEO content for your website, blog or newsletter? Then E-mail me for further information.

Art From the Start

Grade-A ideas

From virtual-reality science instruction to meditation for teachers, these approaches aim to reinvigorate education for all ages.

Full text of this article available at:

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/magazine/articles/2010/05/02/grade_a_ideas/

The current rage in education is STEM, or science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. But creative types are working valiantly to turn STEM into STEAM – with the A standing for the arts. At the Boston Arts Academy, for instance, the arts are infused in every subject. While creative pursuits are often the first to go when budgets are cut, this high school continues to innovate as it engages students through the arts. The ninth grade just wrapped up a unit on African civilization with a multimedia celebration called “Africa Lives.” The students got their hands dirty. And they mastered the material.

“High school shouldn’t be a preparation for life,” says co-headmaster Linda Nathan. “It should be life.”

Nathan is not alone in her belief that the arts foster deep learning. Young Audiences of Massachusetts, a nonprofit that brings artists into schools, is inaugurating an arts integration program at the Salemwood Elementary School in Malden this fall. Visiting artists will help teachers incorporate the arts into the literacy and social studies curriculums. If the pilot program takes off, Young Audiences hopes to make it a model for other Extended Learning Time schools like Salemwood. Explains executive director Diane Michalowski Freedland: “We need to think big.”

Way Beyond Latin Steven Berbeco is a self-described “language nerd” who studied Arabic long before it became fashionable, and he was a pioneer when he began teaching the language at Charlestown High School a few years ago. Today, more and more public and private schools here and nationwide are offering Arabic, and classes at schools in Cambridge, Norwell, and other communities fill up as soon as they are offered.

While the teaching of French and German has decreased in high schools across the country, Arabic is on the rise. The federal government supports Arabic instruction through several grant programs. “They see it as a real necessity for security and diplomacy issues,” says Nancy Rhodes of the Washington-based Center for Applied Linguistics.

But some students also see it as a chance to stand out on college applications. “They want to be special,” says Berbeco. His students get to test their language chops, but they also gain a deeper understanding of other cultures. And being a high school Arabic student has its perks. Just last month, the Palestinian hip-hop band Da Arabian MCs played a concert at Charlestown High.

Making College Stick Today’s mantra about education is that students must be college- or career-ready when they graduate from high school. But nationally, 89 percent of first-generation college students drop out before receiving a diploma. That statistic horrified Dennis Littky, so last fall he and a colleague started College Unbound, a collaboration with Roger Williams University in Providence funded by the Lumina Foundation. Students spend 20 hours a week in an internship and study a curriculum that relates to their work. They live together while sharing chores and ideas.

Prof. Larry M. Lynch is an EFL Teacher Trainer, Intellectual Development Specialist, author and speaker. He has written ESP, foreign language learning, English language teaching texts and hundreds of articles used in more than 135 countries. Get your FREE E-book, “If you Want to Teach English Abroad, Here's What You Need to Know" by requesting the title at: lynchlarrym@gmail.com Need a blogger or copywriter to promote your school, institution, service or business or an experienced writer and vibrant SEO content for your website, blog or newsletter? Then E-mail me for further information.

Schools failing the disability test

REGULARS to Dominic Dimattina's cafe in Malvern East would never guess that its gregarious owner has grappled with comprehension and memory problems throughout his life.

For years this young man has masked his confusion with a broad smile, countering any irritation that might arise at his lack of understanding with a strong work ethic and a friendly demeanour.

Mr Dimattina's parents knew he had a learning difficulty of some kind from an early age. His mother, who had three older children, realised there was something wrong when he did not start speaking until age five. "If I was the eldest, I don't think she would have known there was a problem," he says.

His mother realised that her son had to be taught to express himself and often did not understand what he was told. But, as is often the case, this was not picked up by his teachers in early primary school.

Mr Dimattina's sociable nature helped him to get by for years, but by secondary school it was clear that he was struggling to comprehend the work and what was expected in class. He dropped out of school in year 10, aiming to become a builder's apprentice.

This was not to be. He worked for two builders but became depressed after finding himself unable to cope. "It wasn't the employers' fault," he says. "It was my fault because I couldn't handle the instructions and everything happening at once."
Mr Dimattina has found he can manage running his cafe because he can work in a logical way and the tasks are repetitive. He urges young people who feel defeated by their learning disability not to give up, but instead to find good role models. "It's OK to be you, and there is a future for you out there," he says.

Mandy Brent, the president of SPELD, a not-for-profit organisation providing support for dyslexia and other learning difficulties, attributes Mr Dimattina's success in building his own business to his tenacity and strong support and encouragement from his family. "That was a wonderful outcome," she says.

Many adolescents do not fare so well, dropping out of high school because their dyslexia or learning difficulty has not been identified. Even if it is recognised, the school is often unable to meet the students' needs for a more individualised program and for mentoring. Such students find language learning difficult, whether it is understanding and using spoken language or learning to read, write and spell.
"Language-learning difficulties occur despite the fact that the students are capable in many other areas of learning and life," says Ms Brent, a speech pathologist. "It is largely a result of the way the brain organises, sequences and stores language, and its sounds, word and sentence meanings. Some students cannot remember and understand instructions as well as others. Some students do not know the meaning of as many words as others and struggle to put their ideas on paper."

The full text of this article is available online at:

http://www.theage.com.au/national/education/schools-failing-the-disability-test-20100430-tyur.html?rand=1272609678713

Prof. Larry M. Lynch is an EFL Teacher Trainer, Intellectual Development Specialist, author and speaker. He has written ESP, foreign language learning, English language teaching texts and hundreds of articles used in more than 135 countries. Get your FREE E-book, “If you Want to Teach English Abroad, Here's What You Need to Know" by requesting the title at: lynchlarrym@gmail.com Need a blogger or copywriter to promote your school, institution, service or business or an experienced writer and vibrant SEO content for your website, blog or newsletter? Then E-mail me for further information.