ELL News Headlines

By his own admission, the novelist Junot Díaz is an agonizingly slow writer and a chronic procrastinator. Over the past two-plus decades, he has published just three books: two short-story collections and his 2007 novel, "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao," which won the Pulitzer Prize. He once spent about five years working on a 15-page story. But even by Mr. Díaz's glacial standards, his latest book, "Islandborn," is long overdue — about 20 years past deadline. And it's a mere 48 pages long.  "Islandborn" is a picture book — Mr. Díaz's first work of fiction for young readers. It grew out of a promise that he made to his goddaughters two decades ago, when they asked him to write a book that featured characters like them, Dominican girls living in the Bronx.

The steps along the road toward bilingualism can help a child's overall facility with language. And early exposure to more than one language can confer certain advantages, especially in terms of facility with forming the sounds in that language. But parents should not assume that young children's natural language abilities will lead to true grown-up language skills without a good deal of effort. Erika Hoff, a developmental psychologist who is a professor at Florida Atlantic University and the lead author of a 2015 review article on bilingual development, said: "For everybody trying to raise a bilingual child, whatever your background and reason, it’s very important to realize that acquiring a language requires massive exposure to that language."

An all-girls team from Afghanistan finally reached the U.S. to participate in a robotics competition. Their visas were denied twice by American officials until public pushback prompted President Trump to intervene. Special correspondent Kavitha Cardoza talks with some of the girls and Jeffrey Brown discusses how their story plays into wider immigration questions with Alan Gomez of USA Today.

Organizations that represent the nation's school principals are blasting a House appropriation bill that eliminates about $2 billion in funds meant to support teachers and school leaders. In a joint statement, the National Association of Elementary School Principals, the National Association of Secondary School Principals and the American Federation of School Administrators, called the House decision to put forth a spending bill that would zero out the funding stream known as Title II, Part A "unconscionable." (Politics K-12 has the full run-down on the House bill.)

A change to how a widely used English-proficiency test is scored has led to thousands of students being retained in English-language-learner classes and created budgeting and staffing challenges for some school districts.

Nearly a thousand high school kids from all over the world are in Washington, D.C., this week for what is being billed as the first-ever international robotics competition. And it's truly international. Some teams are coming from remote islands, others from areas without reliable Internet or places of conflict. NPR's Kat Lonsdorf went to check it out.

The Wisconsin Global Education Achievement Certificate (GEAC) was created with help students be "responsible citizens in a global society." Gerhard Fischer, a dual German and US Citizen who has worked for forty years in the global and world education language field, writes, "Students who complete this certificate, known as Wisconsin Global Scholars, learn languages, enroll in coursework that emphasizes global inquiry, and write reflections on world literature or film. Finally, they document their participation in global school activities such as student exchange programs and interaction with students and families in their communities with different cultural and linguistic backgrounds. Students who graduate with this set of experiences are expected to see the world from different points of view as described in Educating for Global Competence….The overall goal is to educate our students to be responsible citizens in the global society Howard Gardner refers to. Some of them may end up shaping the course of world history the way Europe's and US political leaders did after World War II."

Jhalak Singh slipped her boat, created out of aluminum foil, into a plastic container filled with water. Then she watched as Amber Smith-St. Louis began to fill it with blue marbles, counting aloud each time one dropped in. The foil boat test was part of a summer camp for girls called FOCUS, held last week at George Mason University. The camp for middle-school students, in its fourth year, centers on science, technology, engineering and mathematics, known as STEM, disciplines in which women have traditionally been underrepresented. It aims to show girls that these fields can be cool and fun — and open to them.

Zyanya Cazares, a sixth grade teacher who is starting a new assignment this fall teaching in a bilingual education program in Los Angeles, grew up speaking Spanish. But she was recently reminded that the casual, conversational Spanish she spoke at home is not the same as the formal form of the language she's now being asked to teach.  Cazares was one of a dozen current and aspiring bilingual education teachers who gathered at Cal State Dominguez Hills to learn about the latest teaching methods and also, for many teachers like Cazares, to fill in gaps in their language skills.

Schools like International Academy at Cardozo Education Campus in Washington, DC have been growing in popularity across the country in recent years as an alternative to educating newly arrived immigrant students in traditional public schools, where students who are learning English often trail their native-English-speaking peers academically and are at high risk of dropping out. The approach has taken off in the D.C. area, with the opening of five international high schools and one middle school since 2012 to meet the needs of a growing population.