Massachusetts’ Republican Governor Charlie Baker has signed the LOOK Bill into law which will allow the state’s schools to offer bilingual and dual-language education. According to the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, there are more than 90,000 English language learners (ELLs) in Massachusetts. The Massachusetts House and Senate earlier voted overwhelmingly to approve the…
Don Quixote and Sancho Panza monument with CervantesSpain’s Instituto Cervantes has released its annual report on the Spanish language: El español en el mundo 2017, revealing that more than 572 million people speak Spanish worldwide, of which 477 million people are native speakers — five million more than last year — and that there will…
Students (and teachers) should take advantage of the many travel deals on offer to see as much as they can of this diverse continent People planning to study in Europe should be sure to add some extra time to the trip so that they can experience more of the continent. Here are some tips: Transatlantic…
Exposure to diversity in the classroom tends to be associated with better collaboration skills., according to the first OECD PISA assessment of collaborative problem solving, and girls are much better than boys at working together to solve problems. The Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) collaborative problem solving assessment was given in 2015 and measured…
.Editorial by Dan Ward The constitutional crisis in Spain’s autonomous region of Cataluña highlights the new reality of identification in our globalized world. Although many Catalans consider themselves to be both Catalan and Spanish, speak both languages, and enjoy customs of both cultures, they are being forced by intransigent politicians to choose between them, as…
Congresswoman Cheri Bustos (D-IL) and Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) have introduced the latest incarnation of the bipartisan Senator Paul Simon Study Abroad Program Act. This bill would establish a competitive grant program, run by the Department of Education, for colleges and universities to expand study abroad opportunities for undergraduate students. It, like previous versions, is…
Last month’s Zurong Dialect Film Festival, one of China’s campaigns to preserve language diversity, received 582 entries featuring various dialects in just its second year. The number of entries doubled from last year, coming from all over the country. Zhao Yuhe received the Best Actress Award at the festival hosted by Zhanjiang, in south China’s…
The Florida Department of Education’s implementation plan for the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) has been roundly criticized as it relates to English learner students and Latino students by experts from UnidosUS (formerly National Council of La Raza) and TESOL-related organizations. In a letter to U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, UnidosUS has expressed strong…
For the seventh year in a row, Education First (EF), has released their annual report on English proficiency. EF, an international education company that specializes in language training, educational travel, academic degree programs, and cultural exchange, states in their introduction to the rankings, “In 2017, English is as essential to international communication as it has…
According to the 2011 census, just .03% of Americans speaks an African language. However, the United States was ranked third for capital investment in African countries in 2014 begetting the argument that more Americans should learn African languages. The Financial Times reported that, “the U.S. was the top source country by number of [African] projects…