If you have a large number of Chinese, Korean, Japanese, or Vietnamese students in your English-as-a-second-language classes, you might want to purchase the summer copy of MultiCultural Review (a single copy is $25) or find one in a library. The issue, which isn't free online, contains an article, "Asian ESL Students and Literacy Development," that tells about the learning styles of Asian students and summarizes some differences between several Asian languages and English. It's written by Peter Edwards, a professor of education at Shenandoah University in Winchester, Va., and Hui-Chin Yang, a professor of education at Marist College in Poughkeepsie, ...

Over the last few years, the Los Angeles Unified School District has succeeded in dramatically increasing the percentage of English-language learners who are reclassified as fluent in English each year, even though, on average, California school districts have not. One reason: Last school year the Los Angeles district dropped its requirement that for ELLs to be declared fluent in English, they had to reach an achievement bar in math. The percentage of ELLs in Los Angeles who were reclassified as fluent in English during the past school year was 13.4 percent, up from 9.5 percent the previous year, ...

Florida Governor Charlie Crist vetoed a bill this week that would have decreased the number of in-service hours in the area of English as a second language required of reading teachers who work with English-language learners. "I am concerned that this reduction may impede these students' academic, social, and cultural progress," he said of the measure in his June 28 letter explaining his veto. The bill would have reduced the amount of required professional development to 60 hours from 300 hours. (I've taken the link to the veto letter from the Institute of Language and Education Policy site.) Gov. Crist ...

They're not "new" any more, but under the "What's New" section of the Institute for Language and Education Policy site are two videos produced by a teacher decrying how New York state was required by the U.S. Department of Education to stop using its English-language-proficiency test instead of the regular reading test for some English-language learners. If you've been following this blog, you know that Virginia was also required to make the same change in testing policy. Cristian Solorza, who says on one of the videos that he is a native of Argentina and a dual-language teacher in the ...

Remember the $21 million in federal fines that the state of Arizona racked up more than a year ago because state legislators and Gov. Janet Napolitano couldn't agree on how to meet a federal court order to adequately pay for the education of English-language learners? An appeals court later decided the state wouldn't have to pay the fines. But the legislature isn't out of hot water yet, according to an article published today in the Arizona Republic. Lawmakers adjourned last week without resolving the issue, and the federal judge in the long-running case, Flores v. Arizona, has rejected their request ...

While on vacation--and kayaking down a Maryland river--I unexpectedly met some English-language learners and heard about an innovative extracurricular program they participated in at a Baltimore high school. A fellow paddler kindly gave me some paper so I could conduct interviews and bring this blog item to you. The five ELLs were from Digital Harbor High School and were taking part in a kayaking and camping trip down the the Patuxent River organized by a local environmental group, the Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay, that my husband and I also participated in. For the teens from Morocco, Mexico, Vietnam, and ...

I haven't been so influenced by my workaholic peers inside the Beltway that I can't take a vacation. I'll be on break for two weeks, starting June 8, so don't look for any new entries on this blog until the week of June 25. Vacation for me means taking a break from technology--computers and telephones--as well as from reporting. I'll do that on a 5-day paddling and camping trip down the Patuxent River in Maryland....

Some of you have e-mailed me to say that the first time you ever posted a comment on a blog was on Learning the Language. Thank you for trying something new, so that other readers and I could learn from what you have to say. Here's something else to try--Webcasts about research on English-language learners co-sponsored by CREATE and SchoolsMovingUp, an initiative of WestEd. (CREATE stands for the Center for Research on the Educational Achievement and Teaching of English Language Learners.) On June 14 at noon, Diane August, a senior research scientist at the Center for Applied Linguistics, will review ...

Twenty-one of the 41 valedictorians of Boston high schools this school year were born outside of the United States, according to a June 3 article in the Boston Globe. The newspaper has posted a gallery with a photo and short quote from each valedictorian online. Among them is Nagina Khudaynazar, the valedictorian of City on a Hill Charter High School in Boston, who was born in Afghanistan, fled a civil war, and moved to the United States six years ago. "It was really hard for us to start a new life in America, especially not knowing English," she says in ...

A report released yesterday by the Washington-based Pew Hispanic Center shows that the test scores of English-language learners will have to be improved A WHOLE LOT, if that group of students is to meet federal mandates under the No Child Left Behind Act. Richard Fry, a senior research associate for the center, who authored the report, notes that while he examined test scores from the 2005 National Assessment of Educational Progress, rather than those from the various state standardized tests used for accountability under NCLB, the scores on the nationwide test give a good indication of where ELLs stand. In ...