In Maria Torres’ classroom at Willard Elementary School, every day is a multicultural experience as the students are taught in both English and Spanish. As part of District 65’s Two-Way Immersion program, an educational initiative aimed at promoting bilingualism in elementary school students, Torres’ class uses both languages fluidly on a daily basis.

The program will be expanding to the second grade next year, said Willard Principal Shelley Carey. The school plans to add a class for the next highest grade every year until all grade levels from kindergarten to fifth grade are represented. An even mix of children from English-speaking families and Spanish-speaking families make up the class, which allows Spanish speakers to gain exposure to English in both a classroom and social setting. (more…)

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The Central Falls High School partnership with the University of Rhode Island aimed at raising achievement levels of students has received a large boost from the Rhode Island Foundation.

The foundation will award the partnership up to $800,000 for a three-year initiative to bring tutors to the high school to help students with their school work, to use theater and music to improve the language skills of English-language learners, and to get more parents involved in the schools.

Pairing high school students with college students will help the high school students establish a relationship with a person attending college and help get them interested in going, Gallo said.

Denise Jenkins, a community philanthropy officer with the Rhode Island Foundation and former head of School One, in Providence, said one of the things that helps a student succeed is having a rapport with an adult at school. (more…)

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Texas state officials are reviewing Galveston public school district’s programs for Spanish-speaking students following a poor performance by those students on the state’s 2007 standardized exams.

Although the district was rated academically acceptable based on its 2007 scores, the district’s Spanish-speaking students, particularly those in middle and high schools, performed worse than their English-speaking peers in the district on math, science, social studies and reading portions of the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills, said Estelle Brooks, a Texas Education Agency program specialist. (more…)

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Early education is especially important for learning a language. Children are particularly tuned in to acquiring language and figuring out how language is built, said Michael Everson, an associate professor in the University of Iowa College of Education who specializes in foreign language acquisition.

“Very early, children can break this code that there are different sounds in the language,” Everson said. “(Nursery rhymes and poems) help kids develop … how the sound system of their language works.”

However, few schools integrate English as a second language education into preschool or elementary education. In some schools, students don’t have the opportunity to take a language until high school, leaving parents responsible for exposing their child to another language. (more…)

Beginning their second week of English classes, Rosa Garza and her nine classmates are learning the nuances of the language. Their volunteer teachers are reminded of them too.

“All the different meanings for the word hard,” volunteer Barbara Johnson says as an example. “You know these are things that we as English speakers don’t really think about, but they actually bring out a lot of things for us to think about too.”

This is the most basic English as a second language class at Vickery Meadow Learning Center in Dallas. The focus in this initial course is to teach basic vocabulary, like the different rooms in a house. (more…)

Due to the rise in the ethnic minority population in Utah, school districts around the state are feeling the need for better bilingual programs.

Utah’s ethnic minority population is on the rise, according to a recent study by the University of Utah’s Bureau of Economic and Business Research. Utah’s ethnic minorities make up 17.4 percent of the population, and 64.6 percent of the minority groups are Hispanic.

At Provo High School, nearly one-quarter of the school is Spanish speaking, making teacher’s communication with parents difficult. To combat such difficulties, Provo High recently hired a bilingual specialist to work in the Parent Center. (more…)

An extra £9m has been earmarked to help migrants learn and improve their English, with an emphasis on providing 7,000 more places for migrant workers, asylum seekers and refugees who want to attend English language classes. The funding will go towards colleges, community learning programs and the voluntary sector across Scotland.

In 2006 there were 19,000 people in English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) classes. This was an increase of 30% on the previous year and recent research indicated that most ESOL providers cannot meet current demand with waiting lists across the country. The cash was announced by the Education Secretary Fiona Hyslop. (more…)

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A podcast is an audio file that you download from the Internet. After you download it, you can listen to it on your computer or on an MP3/portable music player (for example, an iPod or iRiver). You can subscribe to a podcast so that it is delivered to you automatically each day, just like a newspaper.

The Learning Guide is an 8 – 10 page guide for every future podcast. The Learning Guide includes all of the following complete transcripts (ESL Podcast and English Café), definitions, sample sentences, comprehension questions, additional explanations, cultural notes, tips on improving your English.

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