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The Key to Balanced Bilingualism

Bilingual education, especially in an immersion setting, is much more than just learning a second language: it’s a gateway to cultural and cognitive growth. As Vannina Boussouf – Assistant Head of School and Director of Primary at Lycée Français de New York (LFNY) – explains, several factors need to be considered to make sure this type of program succeeds, like the language environment of the country, the quality and amount of exposure to both languages, and the teaching expertise needed to guide students on their language journey.

One of the first things to think about in language immersion is the students’ language environment. In a country where the main language is different from the one taught in school, it’s important to make sure there’s enough exposure to the second language, and that it is high quality. This means more than just spending a lot of time speaking in the minority language (often the language of instruction in an immersion program); it also requires support to help students develop strong skills in both languages.

Language immersion relies on the idea that the more a child is exposed to a language, the better they will learn it. In this sense, combining varied interactions with stimulating learning environments is the key for students to truly grasp a second language.

One challenge teachers face is the “language insecurity” students can feel. When students are immersed in a classroom where the language spoken is different from what they use at home, they might feel uneasy. It is important to create a safe space where making mistakes is part of learning, and where students are encouraged. Thus, a positive learning environment helps not just with language learning but also with building thinking and cultural skills.

Besides, teachers need to be trained to spot when students feel insecure and respond with the rightstrategies, all while keeping the immersion experience engaging. This might include using visual aids, gestures, repetition, and interactive activities that help students participate, even if they’re still mastering the new language.

In reality, bilingual education through immersion is an ambitious goal, but when designed well, it offers great benefits to students. To make it work, it is necessary to consider the language environment, ensure high-quality exposure in both languages, and support students’ learning with care and expertise. Educators are responsible for creating spaces where both languages can thrive, while respecting the unique needs of each student. In addition, they can refine an approach where language immersion is balanced with support and excellence. In this bilingual journey, each student becomes an active participant in their own learning, opening doors to a multilingual, inclusive world.

Source: https://frenchly.us/the-key-to-balancedbilingualism/

Accessed on November 13, 2024. [Adapted]

American Students Test Well in Problem Solving, but Trail Foreign Counterparts

Fifteen-year-olds in the United States scored above the average of those in the developed world on exams assessing problem-solving skills, but they trailed several countries in Asia and Europe as well as Canada, according to International standardized tests results released on Tuesday.

The American students who took the problem-solving tests in 2012, the first time they were administered, did better on these exams than on reading, math and Science tests, suggesting that students in the United States are better able to apply knowledge to real-life situations than perform straightforward academic tasks.

Still, students who took the problem-solving tests in countries including Singapore, South Korea, Japan, several provinces of China, Canada, Australia, Finland and Britain all outperformed American students.

"The good news is that problem solving still remains a relatively strong suit for American students," said Bob Wise, former governor of West Virginia and president of the Alliance for Excellent Education, a national policy and advocacy group focused on improving high schools. "The challenge is that a lot of other nations are now developing this and even moving ahead. So where we used to, in an earlier era, dominate in what we called the deeper learning skills — Creative thinking, criticai thinking and the ability to solve problems — in terms of producing the workers that are increasingly needed in this area, other nations are coming on strong and in some cases surpassing us ."

The new problem-solving exams were administered to a subset of 15-year-olds in 28 countries who sat for the Program for International Student Assessment, a set of tests every three years commonly known as PISA and given by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a Paris-based group whose members include the world's wealthiest nations. Almost 1,275 American students took the exams.

Critics of the rankings on International tests have tended to characterize the high performance of Asian countries in particular as demonstrating the rote learning of facts and formulas. But the problem-solving results showed that students in the highest-performing nations were also able to think flexibly. Even on Interactive tasks, the American students' strength, all the Asian countries that participated in this round of exams outperformed the United States.

"To understand how to navigate a complex problem and exercise abstract reasoning is actually a very strong point for the Asian countries," said Francesco Avvisati, an analyst on the PISA team at the O.E.C.D.

(Adapted from http://www.nytimes.com)

Additional Factors That Affect Sleep Comfort

By Richard A. Staehler, MD

The type of mattress one uses is not the only factor for patients with pain and sleep difficulty. Many other factors need to be considered that may affect sleep, including;

- medication side effects;

- irregular sleep patterns;

- caffeine/alcohol/tobacco use;

- sleep apnea;

- anxiety/stress.

If comfort is not the only thing making sleep difficult, it is advisable for the patient to consult his or her family physician to discuss other possible causes and treatments for sleeplessness.

If anyone experiences significant or persistent back pain, there may be an underlying back condition that has nothing to do with the mattress. It is always advisable for people with back pain to consult with a health care provider for a thorough exam, diagnosis, and treatment program.

As a reminder, sleep comfort is first and foremost a matter of personal preference. No one should expect that switching mattresses or beds will cure their lower back pain, and changes in the type of bed or mattress used should be made solely for the sake of comfort,

(Adapted from http;//www.spine-health,com/wellness/sleep/additional-factors -affect -sleep-comfort )

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India's luxury airline Vistara flies into the sunset

Indian full-service carrier Vistara will operate its last flight on Monday, after nine years in existence.

A joint venture between Singapore Airlines and the Tata Sons, Vistara will merge with Tata-owned Air India to form a single entity with an expanded network and broader fleet.

This means that all Vistara operations will be transferred to and managed by Air India, including helpdesk kiosks and ticketing offices. The process of migrating passengers with existing Vistara bookings and loyalty programmes to Air India has been under way over thepast few months.

"As part of the merger process, meals, service ware and other soft elements have been upgraded and incorporates aspects of both Vistara and Air India," an Air India spokesperson said in an email response.

Amid concerns that the merger could impact service standards, the Tatas have assured that Vistara's in-flight experience will remain unchanged.

Known for its high ratings in food, service, and cabin quality, Vistara has built a loyal customer base and the decision to retire the Vistara brand has been criticised by fans, branding experts, and aviation analysts.

The consolidation was effectively done to clean up Vistara's books and wipe out its losses, said Mark Martin, an aviation analyst.

Air India has essentially been "suckered into taking a loss-making airline" in a desperate move, he added.

"Mergers are meant to make airlines powerful. Never to wipe out losses or cover them."

To be sure, both Air India and Vistara's annual losses have reduced by more than half over the past year, and other operating metrics have improved too. But the merger process so far has been turbulent.

The exercise has been riddled with problems − from pilot shortages that have led to massive flight cancellations, to Vistara crew going on mass sick leave over plans to align their salary structures with Air India.

There have also been repeated complaints about poor service standards on Air India, including viral videos of broken seats and non-functioning inflight entertainment systems.

The Tatas have announced a $400m (£308m) programme to upgrade and retrofit the interiors of its older aircraft and also a brand-new livery. They've also placed orders for hundreds of new Airbus and Boeing planes worth billions of dollars to augment their offering.

But this "turnaround" is still incomplete and riddled with problems, according to Mr Martin. A merger only complicates matters.

Experts say that the merger strikes a dissonant chord from a branding perspective too.

Harish Bijoor, a brand strategy specialist, told the BBC he was feeling "emotional" that a superior product offering like Vistara which had developed a "gold standard for Indian aviation" was ceasing operations.

"It is a big loss for the industry," said Mr Bijoor, adding it will be a monumental task for the mother brand Air India to simply "copy, paste and exceed" the high standards set by Vistara, given that it's a much smaller airline that's being gobbled up by a much larger one.

Mr Bijoor suggests a better strategy would have been to operate Air India separately for five years, focusing on improving service standards, while maintaining Vistara as a distinct brand with Air India prefixed to it.

"This would have given Air India the time and chance to rectify the mother brand and bring it up to the Vistara level, while maintaining its uniqueness," he adds.

Beyond branding, the merged entity will face a slew of operational challenges.

"Communication will be a major challenge in the early days, with customers arriving at the airport expecting Vistara flights, only to find Air India branding," says Ajay Awtaney, editor of Live From A Lounge, an aviation portal. "Air India will need to maintain clear communication for weeks."

Another key challenge, he notes, is cultural: Vistara's agile employees may struggle to adjust to Air India's complex bureaucracy and systems.

But the biggest task for the merged carrier would be offering customers a uniform flying experience.

These are "two airlines with very different service formats are being integrated into one airline. It is going to be a hotchpotch of service formats, cabin formats, branding, and customer experience. It will involve learning and unlearning, and such a process has rarely worked with airlines and is seldom effective," said Mr Martin.

Still, many believe Vistara had to go − now or some years later.

A legacy brand like Air India, with strong global recognition and 'India' imprinted in its identity, wouldn't have allowed a smaller, more premium subsidiary to overshadow its revival process.

Financially too, it makes little sense for the Tatas to have two loss-making entities compete with one another.

The combined strength of Vistara and Air India could also place the Tatas in a much better position to compete with market leader Indigo.

The unified Air India group (including Air India Express, which completed its merger with the former Air Asia India in October) "will be bigger and better with a fleet size of nearly 300 aircraft, an expanded network and a stronger workforce", an Air India spokesperson said.

"Getting done with the merger means that Air India grows overnight, and the two teams start cooperating instead of competing. There will never be one right day to merge. Somewhere, a line had to be drawn," said Mr Awtaney.

But for many Vistara loyalists, its demise leaves a void in India's skies for a premium, full-service carrier - marking the third such gap after the collapse of Kingfisher Airlines and Jet Airways.

It's still too early to say if Air India, which often ranks at the bottom of airline surveys, can successfully fill that void.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5ygp1w5eq7o

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Brazil’s Supreme Court to vote on decriminalising abortion

By Katy Watson

Brazil’s Supreme Court has started voting on whether to decriminalise abortion. However, the session was quickly postponed after a minister called for the vote to take place in person instead of via video – and no new date has yet been set.

Currently, abortion is only allowed in three cases: that of rape, risk to the woman's life and anencephaly – when the foetus has an undeveloped brain.

If the Supreme Court votes in favour, abortion will be decriminalised up to 12 weeks of pregnancy. [...]

Disponível em: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-66881900. Acesso em: 25 set. 2023. Adaptado.

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Do Leveled Books Have Any Place in the Classroom?

“The little turtle can see the grass. The little turtle can see the trees. The little turtle can see the flowers”. These are the opening lines to one popular reading program’s leveled books: short, predictable texts designed for beginning readers. The patterned sentence structure – centered on the phrase “the little turtle can see" – invites students to rely on repetition and context clues to identify words they can’t sound out.

Leveled books have been a staple in early elementary reading instruction for more than two decades. But as the “science of reading” movement has spread, leveled books have come under fire. Initially, they encourage students to guess at words rather than use their phonics skills, researchers say, which can prevent children from mapping the letter-sound connections that allow them to become fluent readers.

A second problem is how they sort students into levels. Studies have shown that leveling systems are frequently inaccurate. These systems are usually created by the books’ publishers, which purport to match students with books that have a just-right alignment with their reading comprehension abilities.

In classrooms that are switching to a science of reading approach, educators are now wary of leveled books, because of the damage that they did, said Wiley Blevins, an educational consultant. In his opinion, when children are still learning the code of written language, it is required a “tight connection” between the letter-sound correspondences they’re learning and the text they’re reading, so that they have opportunities to practice. But leveled texts can’t do this job. Blevins said that the textdifficulty levels also don’t offer much practical use because they don’t tell educators what skills students still need to master – which doesn’t necessarily mean kids can’t ever pick up these books.

But what are leveled texts anyway? In many of the most popular reading programs of the last decade, leveled readers were some of the main texts that children worked with. Teachers used books for instruction, grouping students by their level and assigning them reading strategies to practice in the text. They have also been used for assessment since teachers listened to students read these books aloud, keeping a running record of their errors.

Publishers claimed that the text-leveling system could match students with books that were just right for their abilities – challenging enough to help them practice new skills, but not so challenging as to be frustrating or inaccessible. This idea is based on outdated theories about how children learn. Studies show that students can read books that are above their level with teacher and peer-provided support. They also indicate that restricting students to text at lower reading levels can actually widen achievement gaps.

However, other research has found that the leveling system isn’t even that accurate. A 2014 study showed that data from leveling assessments correctly predicted students’ reading ability only about 50 percent of the time.

The big problem with these books, though, is that they don’t help students develop their decoding skills, that is, their ability to sound out words by connecting letters tospoken sounds, said Kari Kurto, the National Science of Reading Project director at The Reading League – a group that advocates for evidence-based reading policy and classroom practice. Kurto complemented by saying that many of the words in these books aren’t written with constrained sound-spelling patterns, so “there’s no other strategy that a kid can use other than guessing,” Kurto said.

With all of this being said, one question pops up: how teachers can repurpose leveled readers?

As some districts have shifted their reading instructional practice, they have moved from leveled to decodable text – books written to give students practice with the letter-sound correspondences that they are learning in phonics lessons. However, decodable books shouldn’t be the only books that students ever see because at some point they will have to move on to more complex literature, said Blevins. In his point of view, teachers shouldn’t worry about matching students with a particular level, but rather see if they can find books that include some phonics patterns children know.

But can leveled texts build background knowledge? Some educators have repurposed leveled texts in a different way, using them to help students develop content knowledge about a subject. Research shows that students’ background knowledge is a key component of their reading comprehension ability.

According to Kurto, having more books available that might tap into kids’ different interests is valuable. Still, she draws the attention to the fact that many leveled books are written with simple themes and basic vocabulary and syntax. She said, “a lot of the leveled texts are just a little fluffy. If all [students are] getting beyond decodable text is leveled text, then it’s likely that they’re not being exposed to high-quality language and language structures.”

Although the debate about this matter is extensive and opinions are diverse, one thing is worth keeping in mind: what students read in class really matters.

Source: https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/doleveled-books-have-any-place-in-the-classroom/2024/10 Accessed on November 13, 2024. [Adapted]