Not only does Craig Hale volunteer approximately 20 hours a week at the English Language Center, he also spends time away from the center with the students teaching them gardening or taking them to cultural activities.

Hale also organized and taught free English as a Second Language classes in Washington, D.C. before he retired. Hale worked with the CIA in Washington, D.C for 31 years.

On KVNU’s Crosstalk show Wednesday, Hale said he has found Cache Valley to be even more diverse than Washington was.

“I would say about half of our students are Spanish speakers,” Hale explained. “The other half would speak one of several Asian languages or European languages or African languages typically. (more…)

Columbia Public Schools is preparing this fall for its largest number of students who call English their second language, reflecting the increase of immigrants seeking a new life here.

The situation has complications and benefits for the school district. A limited knowledge of English typically means students have a harder time in class and might need more school resources than other students. But the district also gains from the new cultures these students bring with them from their home countries, such as China, South Korea and Iraq. (more…)

School districts never publish the cost of providing second language skills, interpreters or special teachers to accommodate people who don’t speak English. Local police departments are forced to hire Spanish-speaking officers to handle arrests within the Spanish community.

When I started school in 1938, there was a heavy influx of Italian immigrants in Mount Kisco. Some of my classmates came to school with little or no English language. There was no provision for them to be treated separately. And, lo and behold, it wasn’t long before they were speaking English with alacrity, and going home and teaching their parents as well. There were no Italian radio stations, and television hadn’t yet come on the scene, so in order to participate in the world of entertainment, language became important. And labels weren’t printed in Italian; so to read directions, they had to learn English. And they did. (more…)

When teachers Kristin Li and Donna Reardon meet daily at Cole Manor Elementary School with 11 first-graders, they emphasize reading, writing, listening and speaking.

The young, enthusiastic learners are challenged because English is the second language they are learning. The Norristown Area School District, which serves Norristown, East Norriton and West Norriton, had 707 English as a Second Language students in the past school year.

Most of the ESL students are Latino — the favored designation of the district, which includes countries of origin such as Mexico, Puerto Rico and several Latin American countries. (more…)

Maria Abad, principal of The International School in Portland, which offers immersion education in Spanish, Japanese and Mandarin Chinese for children as young as 3, said exposing children to more than one language is “never confusing.”

It doesn’t matter whether a child actually understands that she’s hearing more than one language, Abad said. “Exposing the child to a different language is a gain in any way.”

Abad said exposure to multiple languages spurs brain growth and development, resulting in long-term, permanent intellectual gains. “We see in our children (at The International School) that in the later years, they always exceed in English, they exceed in math, and it’s because their brain has been developed more.” (more…)

Six-year-old Jessica Fransisco came to Stansbury Elementary School last fall with no schooling, and she didn’t speak any English. Now she reads at the same level as most of the first-graders in her class.

“What would normally take about a year for the kids to get conversational, they are now conversational in English in about six months,” says Stansbury Elementary Principal Ernie Broderick.

Stansbury Elementary uses a program developed by Imagine Learning, a Utah-based company that provides language software to schools in Los Angeles, New York and Miami. It is now beginning to do business with China and Korea. (more…)

Anyone who has visited a foreign country knows the difficulty of buying products in a foreign language. This confusion can be overwhelming, whether haggling on the street or buying online.

But, for ecommerce merchants considering language translation, determining which countries and languages to focus on can be daunting. Even coming up with an estimate for the number of speakers of the world’s most popular languages is difficult, as the numbers often become outdated as soon as they are published. Wikipedia cobbles together estimates from Encarta, Ethnologue and other sources, but these estimates are based on previous numbers and do not often include bilinguals. (more…)

Ten minutes into her kindergarten teacher’s math lesson, 6-year-old Kari Thompson has figured out she is supposed to make a picture book. She knows she should use the book to demonstrate her understanding of “growing patterns,” and she knows she should use her crayons to make it colorful. She doesn’t, however, have a clue what her kindergarten teacher just said.

“I can’t really understand her,” says the little brunette with a matter-of-fact shrug. “I don’t speak Spanish.”

Thompson is one of thousands of Utah elementary school students enrolled in a foreign language immersion program. For half the day, when working on reading and writing, these students study in English. For the other half, when studying math, science and social studies, they take class in Chinese, French or Spanish. In theory, students should be fluent in a foreign language by the time they graduate high school. (more…)