Having survived her war-torn homeland of Somalia, Deko Abdi Hussein is now trying to adjust to her new home — and a new language — in Indianapolis.

“The key to success if you want to live here,” Hussein said through an interpreter, “is you have to learn English.”

Hussein is learning English in a makeshift “classroom” at her apartment complex. She’s not alone.

Hussein is among a recent wave of refugees who have resettled in Indianapolis. More than 1,110 refugees are expected to make Indianapolis their home this year, an increase of more than 30 percent from last year. (more…)

The Wethersfield Library is sponsoring a conversation group for new adult English language speakers at 7 p.m. on Monday in the Shinn boardroom at the library, 515 Silas Deane Highway.

Residents who speak English as a second language are invited to come develop conversation and speaking skills in a friendly environment.

The program is free and open to the public. For more information call the library at 860-257-2811. (more…)

Ten community members requested to speak at Tuesday’s school board meeting to protect the adult English as a Second Language (ESL) class offered at Phoenix High School.

ESL classes are offered at the school as part of the adult-education program offered by the Western Placer Unified School District.

While not all 10 spoke Tuesday, their message was clear: don’t cancel the ESL programs.

“We came tonight because we will like to continue with more classes, to learn English and go to college,” said student Omar Rodriguez. “We feel sad because our teacher said our schooling may be closed forever. Hopefully that will not happen. We want to be part of this country and try to do the best.” (more…)

It was almost halfway though class on Tuesday when instructor Bryan Miley stopped himself in mid-sentence to get a point across to one of his pupils.

“Gentlemen,” Miley politely implored his students, “I need for all of you to speak in full sentences.”

This is not an uncommon occurrence for Miley, who is in his fourth year of teaching the English language to the Padres’ Latino players, an experience he finds as challenging as it is rewarding.

But this isn’t one of those classes and these are definitely not Miley’s standard students. (more…)

As census forms begin arriving in mailboxes this week, federal workers tasked with counting humans in the nation’s second-most populous state face their usual Texas challenge: how to account for immigrants who’d rather not be noticed.

It’s a problem with every decade’s census in a state that shares a 2,000-mile frontier with Mexico, but it’s not exclusively a border issue. In fact, U.S. Census Bureau officials also are targeting areas away from the border where large pockets of “hard to count” immigrants wind up after entering the country.

The Census Bureau considers Harris County and Dallas County the hardest to count in Texas. Harris ranks fourth nationally and Dallas 10th in the difficulty rankings that consider various factors, including how many surveys were returned in the 2000 census, language, education, mobility, poverty and employment. (more…)

There are segments of society that believe only English should be spoken in society, and certainly no other language belongs in public school classrooms. Those people don’t live in the real world of education in Texas. The administrators and teachers of Angleton ISD do and understand the value of students being bilingual when they don their purple caps and gowns and head into adulthood.

With more than a quarter of Brazoria County’s population of Hispanic/Latino origin, many of them first-generation Americans, being able to speak both Spanish and English will be a vital asset for the next generation of workers. It will open doors that could remain closed if they spoke only English or only Spanish. (more…)

In this paper, we present an application of computational biometrics based GDV for visual and quantitative evaluation of anxiety in the process of learning English as a Second Language (ESL). The integration of biometrics in the education paradigm has been investigated in a pilot study involving foreign students enrolled in the ESL course at the ESL Institute, VIT University.

We measured the electro- photonic emission (also called GDV-grams) of students’ fingertips before and after language activities, specifically listening comprehension tasks and showed that the anxiety index in listening comprehension paradigm corresponds to the increase of entropy level of left hand corresponding to the right hemisphere. (more…)

Meaghan Cussen just wanted to travel a little bit when she decided to take a six-month job teaching English as a second language in Ireland. But when a handsome Italian man walked into the classroom, her “working vacation” changed her life forever.

Whether by fate or chance, Cussen met Antonio Urbani, a lawyer from Pisa, when he, also on vacation, decided to take an English language class. Within months, Cussen had moved to Italy to be with him and found a job teaching English. The two married a few years later and moved to Florence, the regional capital of Tuscany. (more…)