Nick Seaton: School language teaching leaves children lost for words
AS with almost everything else they’ve touched in education, the present Government has made a pig’s ear of foreign languages in schools.
Read the complete news here: http://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/opinion/Nick-Seaton-School-language-teaching.5438889.jp Dhreima children hone
English language skills DOHA: Fifty-five children started training yesterday at the Qatar Orphan Foundation (Dhreima) to hone their English language skills. For the first time, Dhreima flew a five-member team of experts in teaching English from the UK to conduct the four-week-long Camp, Hassan Manan, an expert at Dhreima told The Peninsula at the conclusion of the press meet held to announce the programme. Also present at the press conference held at the Dhreima premises were Khalid Kamal, Director General of Dhreima and Jade Stevens, Director of Studies, British Council.
Read the complete news here: http://www.thepeninsulaqatar.com/Display_news.asp?section=Local_News&subsection=Qatar+News&month=July2009&file=Local_News2009070814857.xml
War against the English languag We live in the United States of America. We speak English. We do not speak Spanish. Not that you would know in some places in the U.S. It’s pissing me off that these days, I go into stores and the employees are speaking Spanish. The billboards are in Spanish. The wrappers on candy are in Spanish, with the occasional English subtitle thrown in. The English language is being subjugated. And it’s time to say enough. There’s a thin line people balance about racism. Wanting to be able to speak your own language in your own country and expecting others to speak it as well is not tipping over the edge. To put it kindly, I am very sick of having to ask for translations when I go to McDonald’s. I’m sick of miming questions that should take a person a few seconds to understand and not much longer to answer.
Read the complete news here: http://www.uiargonaut.com/content/view/8211/49/
Young N. American immigrants to be trained as English teachers In an increasingly globalized world, Israelis are feeling the pressure to improve their English proficiency – and their secret weapon may be new young immigrants from North America. A 14-month Teachers for Israel program, which has been developed by the Jewish Agency, Ministry of Education, Ministry of Absorption and Nefesh B’Nefesh, will allow North American students with a bachelor’s degree to immigrate to Israel while becoming English teachers. The program, in which students are supported by a stipend, launches this summer for the inaugural class of 50 students, who will begin a five-month Ulpan followed by teacher certificate courses and a paid internship in a small Israeli classroom.
Read the complete news here: http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1246443746598&pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull
Languages without the nuances
PIERRE Ryckmans, one of Australia’s most distinguished public intellectuals, has drunk deeply at the springs of East and West. The Belgian-born Sinologist, author of a suite of groundbreaking essays written in protest against Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution, is fluent in French, English and Mandarin. Ryckmans, who writes under the pen name Simon Leys, was formerly professor of Chinese at the Australian National University and the University of Sydney. He taught Mandarin to Kevin Rudd at the ANU.
In semi-retirement from academic life he has written, among other things, an exquisite novel, The Death of Napoleon, in his native tongue and a new translation of The Analects of Confucius. Book reviews and essays on subjects as diverse as novelist Andre Gide and the shipwreck of the Batavia flow from his pen, as he eschews the computer. A study of Stendhal, that most vivid and attractive 19th-century French novelist, is under way.
Read the complete news here: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25746992-16947,00.html
Pupils to study Twitter and blogs in primary schools shake-up
Children will no longer have to study the Victorians or the second world war under proposals to overhaul the primary school curriculum, the Guardian has learned.
However, the draft plans will require some children to master Twitter andWikipedia and give teachers far more freedom to decide what youngsters should be concentrating on in classes.
The proposed curriculum, which would mark the biggest change to primary schooling in a decade, strips away hundreds of specifications about the scientific, geographical and historical knowledge pupils must accumulate before they are 11 to allow schools greater flexibility in what they teach.
Read the complete news here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2009/mar/25/primary-schools-twitter-curriculum
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