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New research into how the bilingual brain processes two very different languages has revealed that bilinguals' native language directly influences their comprehension of their second language. The innovative study by researchers in The University of Nottingham's School of Psychology set out to explore whether Chinese-English bilinguals translate English words automatically into Chinese without being aware of this process. Although everything in the test was in English, in some cases, the two words actually had a connection -- but only if you know how they're written in Chinese. So, for example, the first word might be 'thing' which is written 东西 in Chinese, and the second might be 'west' which is written 西 in Chinese. The character for 'west' appears in the word 'thing' but these two words are totally unrelated in English. When two words shared characters in Chinese, participants processed the second word faster -- even though they had no conscious knowledge of having seen the first word in the pair. Even though these students are fluent in English, their brains still automatically translate what they see into Chinese. This suggests that knowledge of a first language automatically influences the processing of a second language, even when they are very different, unrelated languages.

New research into how the bilingual brain processes two very different languages has revealed that bilinguals' native language directly influences their comprehension of their second language. The innovative study by researchers in The University of Nottingham's School of Psychology set out to explore whether Chinese-English bilinguals translate English words automatically into Chinese without being aware of this process.

According to Ethnologue, of the 115 Indigenous languages spoken in the U.S. today, two are healthy, 34 are in danger, and 79 will go extinct within a generation without serious intervention. In other words, 99% of the Native American languages spoken today are in danger. Despite the Cherokee Nation's efforts, the Cherokee language (ᏣᎳᎩ ᎦᏬᏂᎯᏍᏗ) is on that list. There are 573 federally recognized tribes in the United States, and most are battling language extinction. Since 2008, thanks in part to the Esther Martinez Native American Languages Preservation Act, the Administration for Native Americans (ANA), through a competitive grant process, has allocated approximately $12 million annually to tribes working to preserve their languages. In 2018, only 47 language projects received funding - just 29% of all requests, leaving more than two-thirds of applicants without funding, according to ANA. The Bureau of Indian Education, the Department of Education's Department of Indian Education and the National Science Foundation allocated an estimated additional $5.4 million in language funding in 2018, bringing the grand total of federal dollars for Indigenous language revitalization last year to approximately $17.4 million. Compared to how much the United States spent on exterminating Native languages, that sum is a pittance. At the height of the Indian boarding school era, between 1877 and 1918, the United States allocated $2.81 billion (adjusted for inflation) to support the nation's boarding school infrastructure - an educational system designed to assimilate Indigenous people into white culture and destroy Native languages. Since 2005, however, the federal government has only appropriated approximately $180 million for Indigenous language revitalization. In other words, for every dollar the U.S. government spent on eradicating Native languages in previous centuries, it spent less than 7 cents on revitalizing them in this one.

Article written by a 13-year old student entering high school during the pandemic.

Cartoonist LA Johnson employs a graphic novel-style approach to a story about a dual-language school: Bruce-Monroe Elementary School in Washington, D.C. In a dual-language classroom, sometimes you're the student and sometimes you're the teacher. Here's what it's like for 6-year-old Merari, an L1=Spanish ELL (English Language Learner).

This essay compares the controversies surrounding actions taken by two school boards-one in Hawai'i and the other in Oakland-in their attempts to help students in their districts attain fluency in standard English. Public reactions expressed during each of these two incidents demonstrated a general lack of understanding about languages and nonstandard dialects. The myths and characterizations about Hawai'i Creole English and African American Vernacular English, and the issues these two stigmatized dialects have raised, point to educational policy implications concerning academic achievement and the politics of language.

This is a really useful essay in highlighting linguistic research re: how to effectively instruct speakers of non-standard varieties of English, e.g. AAVE and HCE. Nice find!

This article contains several data tables that show the different modes of communication and how often we use each one. Certain graphs organize data by gender, age, impact on school, and much more. Something that interested me was that our time spent on text-based technology has negatively impacted our ability to write. This article analyzes each set of data points and puts our usage of electronics into perspective, as technology has dominated the way we converse.

This article serves as an update in the new year of 2024 on which states require their public schools to teach kids how to read and write in cursive. New to the 27 state list are California and New Hampshire, as they now all require some form of cursive education for the youth in school.

This article explains trends surveyed Advanced Placement (AP) and National Writing Project (NWP) teachers noticed in students' writing due to digital technology. There are many impacts, both positive and negative.

Brain-imaging studies have shown that music activates many diverse parts of the brain, including an overlap in where the brain processes music and language. Brains of people exposed to even casual musical training have an enhanced ability to generate the brain wave patterns associated with specific sounds, be they musical or spoken, said study leader Nina Kraus, director of the Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory at Northwestern University in Illinois. Musicians have subconsciously trained their brains to better recognize selective sound patterns, even as background noise goes up. In contrast, people with certain developmental disorders, such as dyslexia, have a harder time hearing sounds amid the din. Musical experience could therefore be a key therapy for children with dyslexia and similar language-related disorders. Harvard Medical School neuroscientist Gottfried Schlaug has found that stroke patients who have lost the ability to speak can be trained to say hundreds of phrases by singing them first. Schlaug demonstrated the results of intensive musical therapy on patients with lesions on the left sides of their brains, those areas most associated with language. Before the therapy, these stroke patients responded to questions with largely incoherent sounds and phrases. But after just a few minutes with therapists, who asked them to sing phrases and tap their hands to the rhythm, the patients could sing "Happy Birthday," recite their addresses, and communicate if they were thirsty. "The underdeveloped systems on the right side of the brain that respond to music became enhanced and changed structures," Schlaug said at the press briefing.

Recent studies suggest that metaphors are more than just fancy literary devices and that there is a psychological basis for linking cold with feelings of social isolation. Psychologists Chen-Bo Zhong and Geoffrey Leonardelli from the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management wanted to test the idea that social isolation might generate a physical feeling of coldness. In their first experiment, they divided a group of volunteers into two groups. One group recalled a personal experience in which they had been socially excluded-rejection from a club, for example. This was meant to tap into their feelings of isolation and loneliness. The other group recalled an experience in which they had been accepted into a group. Afterwards, volunteers were asked to estimate the temperature in the room. Those who recalled memories of being ostracized experienced the ambient temperature of the room as colder. In a second experiment, researchers triggered feelings of exclusion by having volunteers play a computer-simulated ball tossing game. The game was designed so that some of the volunteers had the ball tossed to them many times, but others were left out. Afterwards, all the volunteers rated the desirability of certain foods and beverages: hot coffee, crackers, an ice-cold Coke, an apple, and hot soup. The findings were striking. As reported in the September issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, the "unpopular" volunteers who had been ostracized during the computer game were much more likely than the others to want either hot soup or hot coffee. Their preference for warm food and drinks presumably resulted from physically feeling cold as a result of being excluded. "It's striking that people preferred hot coffee and soup more when socially excluded," Leonardelli said. "Our research suggests that warm chicken soup may be a literal coping mechanism for social isolation."

Re " A Dreaded School Test in France Becomes a Tool of Integration " (Fontenay-sous-Bois Journal, May 12): Several factors contribute to the necessity of retaining the dreaded dictation ( dict ée) as an essential tool in teaching the French language.

Clearly I am in a judgmental phase. When I saw this year's list of words that Merriam-Webster Unabridged has added to its pages, I groaned with dismay a few times. Normally I love learning new words, and I hadn't known a lot of these words, but some seemed pointless.

This is about how text messaging has been affecting a student's way of writing in the classroom.

Slang and other text-talk terms have been making their way into student's academic essays and even their college essays. Students have stopped capitalizing words and stopped using punctuation altogether. While the future is unclear, it may be possible for academic writings to learn to accept this new way of writing.

A machine learning algorithm analyses verbal and non-verbal cues It could correctly identify if someone is suicidal with 93% accuracy Researchers incorporated the algorithm into an app trialed in schools By recording conversations and analysing cues such as pauses and sighs, it could help to flag those most at risk of taking their own life Researchers are developing an app which could help to prevent suicides by flagging those most at risk.

This article is about how California is changing its view on their law that is currently in place which restricts public schools from having a bilingual education curriculum.

The Beijing dialect of Mandarin Chinese is a victim of language standardization in schools and offices, urban redevelopment and migration. To the untutored ear, the Beijing dialect can sound like someone talking with a mouthful of marbles, inspiring numerous parodies and viral videos. The dialect is a testament to the city's tumultuous history of invasion and foreign rule. The Mongol Empire ruled China in the 13th and 14th centuries. The Manchus, an ethnic group from northeast Asia, ruled from the mid-17th century into the 20th. As a result, the Beijing dialect contains words derived from both Mongolian and Manchurian. The intervening Ming dynasty, which maintained its first capital in Nanjing for several decades before moving to Beijing, introduced southern speech elements.

School pupils attend an Aramaic language course in Nicosia. In a village in northern Cyprus, a community struggling to save its ancient language has seen a glimmer of hope in intensified efforts to reunify the divided island.

Is it better to fit in or stand out? That question has vexed all of us at one time or another, from teenagers to aspiring executives to sociologists. The answer, says Stanford Graduate School of Business professor Amir Goldberg: It depends.

As anti-Muslim rhetoric increases, American officials are cautioning that it could validate extremists' perceptions that Americans are waging a war on Islam. New research from Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management lends credence to this fear. Research conducted by Ntour Kteily (Northwestern assistant professor of management and organizations), Gordon Hodson (Canada's Brock University), and Emile Bruneau (U. Penn. neuroscientist) shows that feeling dehumanized by another group can lead you to dehumanize that group in return, which can increase support for aggressive actions against them. Meaning, if Americans think that Muslims see them as savages, Americans will be more likely to return the "favor," perceiving Muslims to be savages. And both groups will be more likely to support aggressive acts-like drone strikes or torture-against the other.