The Jones Library is facing possible cuts to its materials budget and its English as a Second Language program. The board of trustees has scheduled a public hearing on spending cuts for the next fiscal year. It will be March 13 at 7 p.m. in the trustees room on the library’s third floor. The board must cut about $70,000 from its $2.1 million proposed budget, which would achieve the level of increase that would spare voters from needing to approve an override of state tax limits.

The board voted 4-2 Monday to delete $20,000 from its $240,500 proposed budget for buying new materials. Beth Girshman, the adult services librarian, told the trustees that this cut is “the lesser of many evils.” She explained that many materials the library buys go to serve people in other towns through interlibrary loans. The money could be cut “with less impact on the community than you might think,” Girshman said. Trustee Will Bridegam disagreed. He said that many library materials – children’s and young adult books, films, books on professions and hobbies, and books on tape – are not available at the campus libraries. “They are critical to the basic mission,” he said. “They are what makes it a library rather than an information service.” (more…)

rA new computer lab at Napa Valley College is giving English as a Second Language and foreign language students some high-tech tools, and putting a twist in the way teachers offer instruction. The fledgling Language Lab is on its freshman run at the college; workers put the finishing touches on it in time for the spring semester. Since the semester began, teachers such as ESL Instructor Lorraine Segal have utilized the lab to integrate state-of-the-art pronunciation software and Internet and multimedia capabilities with traditional books, papers and pens.

For ESL students such as Luce Navarrete, Luis Pedraza and Guadalupe Vera, the Language Lab offers a unique way of learning to speak English. In class, they are not allowed to speak their native Spanish. “It’s better now because you can communicate with the teacher and you can hear your own voice,” Navarrete said. “And you can hear your mistakes,” added Vera. Segal set up an exercise using the computers’ pronunciation software and handed students a worksheet asking them the correct pronunciation of words ending in “ed.” Each of the students put on their headsets and listened to their teacher’s voice, pausing only to circle the correct answer on their worksheets. Learning English is important to them, the students said. “First of all, we are here in the USA, and the official language is English,” Pedraza said. “It’s a challenge for me to learn.” “In my case, I have two teenagers and I have to learn to communicate with them (in English),” Navarrete said. “For me, I think it’s a challenge to speak English,” Vera said. “For me, it’s to find a better job.” (more…)

search for : English as a Second Language

Everyone knows that children pick up a second language faster than adults. Except they don’t, says Samuel Ortiz, an associate professor of psychology at St. John’s University. Children are just better mimics, he said. Their brains are wired to give feedback on how to produce the sounds being heard. That changes around age 10, he said, when the brain starts to devote resources to other types of learning, Ortiz said. “(The brain) just assumes it’s heard all the sounds that it needs to hear. And it becomes very difficult – not impossible but difficult – for most people to be able to reproduce those later on in life.”

A kindergartner coming in without English is automatically five years behind that process and needs help in the native language in order to keep on par, Ortiz said. Bilingual education remains highly controversial, but Ortiz said the science consistently supports quality bilingual education over English immersion. A long-term study by researchers Wayne Thomas and Virginia Collier found even greater success in dual-language instruction, where English- and Spanish-dominant children share a classroom and spend half the day in each language. But many educators remain unconvinced. “Logic and common sense tells me if you want to learn something, you have to do it,” said Lucille Guttman of White Plains, a retired school psychologist and psychology teacher. “It may be painful at the beginning. It probably is. But they have to learn it,” she said. (more…)

search for : Bilingual education, English immersion