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"Maps that show us who we are (not just where we are)

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Danny Dorling: Maps that show us who we are (not just where we are)

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What does the world look like when you map it using data? Social geographer Danny Dorling invites us to see the world anew, with his captivating and insightful maps that show Earth as it truly is -- a connected, ever-changing and fascinating place in which we all belong.

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"What's Going on Inside the Brain of a Bilingual Child?"

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At the same time, one of the hottest trends in public schooling is what's often called dual-language or two-way immersion programs.

Traditional programs for English-language learners, or ELLs, focus on assimilating students into English as quickly as possible. Dual-language classrooms, by contrast, provide instruction across subjects to both English natives and English learners, in both English and in a target language.

The goal is functional bilingualism and biliteracy for all students by middle school.

New York City, North Carolina, Delaware, Utah, Oregon and Washington state are among the places expanding dual-language classrooms.

The trend flies in the face of some of the culture wars of two decades ago, when advocates insisted on "English first" education. Most famously, California passed Proposition 227 in 1998. It was intended to sharply reduce the amount of time that English-language learners spent in bilingual settings.

Proposition 58, passed by California voters on Nov. 8, largely reversed that decision, paving the way for a huge expansion of bilingual education in the state that has the largest population of English-language learners.

Some of the insistence on English-first was founded in research produced decades ago, in which bilingual students underperformed monolingual English speakers and had lower IQ scores.

Today's scholars, like Ellen Bialystok at York University in Toronto, now say that research was "deeply flawed."

"Earlier research looked at socially disadvantaged groups," agrees Antonella Sorace at the University of Edinburgh, in Scotland. "This has been completely contradicted by recent research" that compares more similar groups to each other.

So what does recent research say about the potential benefits of bilingual education? NPR Ed called up seven researchers in three countries - Sorace, Bialystok, Luk, Kroll, Jennifer Steele, and the team of Wayne Thomas and Virginia Collier - to find out.
Attention
It turns out that, in many ways, the real trick to speaking two languages consists in managing not to speak one of those languages at a given moment - which is fundamentally a feat of paying attention.

Saying "Goodbye" to mom and then " Guten tag" to your teacher, or managing to ask for a crayola roja instead of a red crayon, requires skills called "inhibition" and "task switching." These skills are subsets of an ability called executive function.

People who speak two languages often outperform monolinguals on general measures of executive function. "[Bilinguals] can pay focused attention without being distracted and also improve in the ability to switch from one task to another," says Sorace.

Do these same advantages accrue to a child who begins learning a second language in kindergarten instead of as a baby? We don't yet know. Patterns of language learning and language use are complex. But Gigi Luk at Harvard cites at least one brain-imaging study on adolescents that shows similar changes in brain structure when compared with those who are bilingual from birth, even when they didn't begin practicing a second language in earnest before late childhood.
Empathy
Young children being raised bilingual have to follow social cues to figure out which language to use with which person and in what setting. As a result, says Sorace, bilingual children as young as age 3 have demonstrated a head start on tests of perspective-taking and theory of mind - both of which are fundamental social and emotional skills.
Reading (English)
About 10 percent of students in the Portland, Ore., public schools are assigned by lottery to dual-language classrooms that offer instruction in Spanish, Japanese or Mandarin, alongside English.

Jennifer Steele at American University conducted a four-year, randomized trial and found that these dual-language students outperformed their peers in English-reading skills by a full school year's worth of learning by the end of middle school.

Such a large effect in a study this size is unusual, and Steele is currently conducting a flurry of follow-up studies to tease out the causality: Is this about a special program that attracted families who were more engaged? Or about the dual-language instruction itself?

"If it's just about moving the kids around," Steele says, "that's not as exciting as if it's a way of teaching that makes you smarter."

Steele suspects the latter. Because the effects are found in reading, not in math or science where there were few differences, she suggests that learning two languages makes students more aware of how language works in general, aka "metalinguistic awareness."

The research of Gigi Luk at Harvard offers a slightly different explanation. She has recently done a small study looking at a group of 100 fourth-graders in Massachusetts who had similar reading scores on a standard test, but very different language experiences.

Some were foreign-language dominant and others were English natives. Here's what's interesting. The students who were dominant in a foreign language weren't yet comfortably bilingual; they were just starting to learn English. Therefore, by definition, they had much weaker English vocabularies than the native speakers.

Yet they were just as good at decoding a text.

"This is very surprising," Luk says. "You would expect the reading comprehension performance to mirror vocabulary - it's a cornerstone of comprehension."

How did the foreign-language dominant speakers manage this feat? Well, Luk found, they also scored higher on tests of executive functioning. So, even though they didn't have huge mental dictionaries to draw on, they may have been great puzzle-solvers, taking into account higher-level concepts such as whether a single sentence made sense within an overall story line.

They got to the same results as the monolinguals, by a different path.
School performance and engagement.
Wayne Thomas and Virginia Collier, a husband and wife team of professors emeritus at George Mason University in Virginia, have spent the past 30 years collecting evidence on the benefits of bilingual education.

"Wayne came to our research with skepticism, thinking students ought to get instruction all day in English," says Virginia Collier. "Eight million student records later, we're convinced," Wayne Thomas chimes in.

In studies covering six states and 37 districts, they have found that, compared with students in English-only classrooms or in one-way immersion, dual-language students have somewhat higher test scores and also seem to be happier in school. Attendance is better, behavioral problems fewer, parent involvement higher.
Diversity and integration.
American public school classrooms as a whole are becoming more segregated by race and class. Dual-language programs can be an exception. Because they are composed of native English speakers deliberately placed together with recent immigrants, they tend to be more ethnically and socioeconomically balanced. And there is some evidence that this helps kids of all backgrounds gain comfort with diversity and different cultures.

Several of the researchers I talked with also pointed out that, in bilingual education, non-English-dominant students and their families tend to feel that their home language is heard and valued, compared with a classroom where the home language is left at the door in favor of English.

This can improve students' sense of belonging and increase parent involvement in their children's education, including behaviors like reading to children.

"Many parents fear their language is an obstacle, a problem, and if they abandon it their child will integrate better," says Antonella Sorace of the University of Edinburgh. "We tell them they're not doing their child a favor by giving up their language."
Protection against cognitive decline and dementia.
File this away as a very, very long-range payoff. Researchers have found that actively using two languages seems to have a protective effect against age-related dementia - perhaps relating to the changes in brain structure we talked about earlier.

Specifically, among patients with Alzheimer's in a Canadian study, a group of bilingual adults performed on par with a group of monolingual adults in terms of cognitive tests and daily functioning. But when researchers looked at the two groups' brains, they found evidence of brain atrophy that was five to seven years more advanced in the bilingual group. In other words, the adults who spoke two languages were carrying on longer at a higher level despite greater degrees of damage.
The coda, and a caution
One theme that was striking in speaking to all these researchers was just how strongly they advocated for dual-language classrooms.

Thomas and Collier have advised many school systems on how to expand their dual-language programs, and Sorace runs " Bilingualism Matters," an international network of researchers who promote bilingual education projects.

This type of advocacy among scientists is unusual; even more so because the "bilingual advantage hypothesis" is being challenged once again. A review of studies published last year found that cognitive advantages failed to appear in 83 percent of published studies, though in a separate meta-analysis, the sum of effects was still significantly positive.

One potential explanation offered by the researchers I spoke with is that advantages that are measurable in the very young and very old tend to fade when testing young adults at the peak of their cognitive powers.

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What's Going on Inside the Brain of a Bilingual Child?

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At the same time, one of the hottest trends in public schooling is what's often called dual-language or two-way immersion programs. Traditional programs for English-language learners, or ELLs, focus on assimilating students into English as quickly as possible. Dual-language classrooms, by contrast, provide instruction across subjects to both English natives and English learners, in both English and in a target language.

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"How learning a new language makes you more tolerant"

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Why learn a new language? Timothy Vollmer, CC BY

There are many benefits to knowing more than one language. For example, it has been shown that aging adults who speak more than one language have less likelihood of developing dementia.

Additionally, the bilingual brain becomes better at filtering out distractions, and learning multiple languages improves creativity. Evidence also shows that learning subsequent languages is easier than learning the first foreign language.

Unfortunately, not all American universities consider learning foreign languages a worthwhile investment.

Why is foreign language study important at the university level?

As an applied linguist, I study how learning multiple languages can have cognitive and emotional benefits. One of these benefits that's not obvious is that language learning improves tolerance.

This happens in two important ways.

The first is that it opens people's eyes to a way of doing things in a way that's different from their own, which is called "cultural competence."

The second is related to the comfort level of a person when dealing with unfamiliar situations, or "tolerance of ambiguity."

Gaining cross-cultural understanding

Cultural competence is key to thriving in our increasingly globalized world. How specifically does language learning improve cultural competence? The answer can be illuminated by examining different types of intelligence.

Psychologist Robert Sternberg's research on intelligence describes different types of intelligence and how they are related to adult language learning. What he refers to as "practical intelligence" is similar to social intelligence in that it helps individuals learn nonexplicit information from their environments, including meaningful gestures or other social cues.

COD Newsroom, CC BY

Language learning inevitably involves learning about different cultures. Students pick up clues about the culture both in language classes and through meaningful immersion experiences.

Researchers Hanh Thi Nguyen and Guy Kellogg have shown that when students learn another language, they develop new ways of understanding culture through analyzing cultural stereotypes. They explain that "learning a second language involves the acquisition not only of linguistic forms but also ways of thinking and behaving."

With the help of an instructor, students can critically think about stereotypes of different cultures related to food, appearance and conversation styles.

Dealing with the unknown

The second way that adult language learning increases tolerance is related to the comfort level of a person when dealing with "tolerance of ambiguity."

Someone with a high tolerance of ambiguity finds unfamiliar situations exciting, rather than frightening. My research on motivation, anxiety and beliefs indicates that language learning improves people's tolerance of ambiguity, especially when more than one foreign language is involved.

It's not difficult to see why this may be so. Conversations in a foreign language will inevitably involve unknown words. It wouldn't be a successful conversation if one of the speakers constantly stopped to say, "Hang on - I don't know that word. Let me look it up in the dictionary." Those with a high tolerance of ambiguity would feel comfortable maintaining the conversation despite the unfamiliar words involved.

Applied linguists Jean-Marc Dewaele and Li Wei also study tolerance of ambiguity and have indicated that those with experience learning more than one foreign language in an instructed setting have more tolerance of ambiguity.

What changes with this understanding

A high tolerance of ambiguity brings many advantages. It helps students become less anxious in social interactions and in subsequent language learning experiences. Not surprisingly, the more experience a person has with language learning, the more comfortable the person gets with this ambiguity.

And that's not all.

Individuals with higher levels of tolerance of ambiguity have also been found to be more entrepreneurial (i.e., are more optimistic, innovative and don't mind taking risks).

In the current climate, universities are frequently being judged by the salaries of their graduates. Taking it one step further, based on the relationship of tolerance of ambiguity and entrepreneurial intention, increased tolerance of ambiguity could lead to higher salaries for graduates, which in turn, I believe, could help increase funding for those universities that require foreign language study.

Those who have devoted their lives to theorizing about and the teaching of languages would say, " It's not about the money." But perhaps it is.

Language learning in higher ed

Most American universities have a minimal language requirement that often varies depending on the student's major. However, students can typically opt out of the requirement by taking a placement test or providing some other proof of competency.

sarspri, CC BY-NC

In contrast to this trend, Princeton recently announced that all students, regardless of their competency when entering the university, would be required to study an additional language.

I'd argue that more universities should follow Princeton's lead, as language study at the university level could lead to an increased tolerance of the different cultural norms represented in American society, which is desperately needed in the current political climate with the wave of hate crimes sweeping university campuses nationwide.

Knowledge of different languages is crucial to becoming global citizens. As former Secretary of Education Arne Duncan noted,

"Our country needs to create a future in which all Americans understand that by speaking more than one language, they are enabling our country to compete successfully and work collaboratively with partners across the globe."

Considering the evidence that studying languages as adults increases tolerance in two important ways, the question shouldn't be "Why should universities require foreign language study?" but rather "Why in the world wouldn't they?"

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How learning a new language improves tolerance

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There are many benefits to knowing more than one language. For example, it has been shown that aging adults who speak more than one language have less likelihood of developing dementia. Additionally, the bilingual brain becomes better at filtering out distractions, and learning multiple languages improves creativity.

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Summary Components

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Level 1 Writing

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"Equitable Grading for Language Learners"

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HHS Equitable Grading for Language Learners PD

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"Differentiating Writing Prompts"

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"Academic Language Support"

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"Four Reasons to Learn a new Language"

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English is fast becoming the world’s universal language, and instant translation technology is improving every year. So why bother learning a foreign language? Linguist and Columbia professor John McWhorter shares four alluring benefits of learning an unfamiliar tongue.

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"Danger of a Single Story"

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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: The danger of a single story

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Our lives, our cultures, are composed of many overlapping stories. Novelist Chimamanda Adichie tells the story of how she found her authentic cultural voice -- and warns that if we hear only a single story about another person or country, we risk a critical misunderstanding.

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Constructing Meaning Resources

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Teaching the Text Backwards

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WIDA Can Do Descriptors