Elisabeth Barakos and Simone Plöger, University of Hamburg *** Editor’s note: Learning from home is hard enough but what if you are simultaneously learning the language of instruction? In this…
Colours of the alphabet February 21 is International Mother Language Day and serves as an opportunity to discuss and promote the use of first-language medium education. The United Nations Educational,…
Benz, Victoria. 2015. Dynamics of bilingual early childhood education: Parental attitudes and institutional realisation. PhD. Macquarie University. Victoria Benz recently completed her PhD thesis about “Dynamics of bilingual early childhood education: Parental…
Children in a bilingual program in Hamburg (Source: AlsterKind) It is a key finding of contemporary educational research that the children of migrants experience educational disadvantage vis-à-vis their native-born peers.…
PASCH Schools: Partners for the future Last week I was privileged to attend the 3rd Conference of School Principals of PASCH Schools in Southeast Asia. A ‘PASCH school’ is a regular…
Losing their heritage language decreases the earning potential of 2nd-generation migrants In most countries of immigration, linguistic diversity is by and large ignored by policy makers. If there are language-related…
Panel devoted to Jeju Global Education City (Source: Jeju Weekly) Now that Psy’s “Gangnam Style” has become a global hit, I wonder if you know what Gangnam is? The dictionary…
Who profits from an early start in English language learning? 不要讓你的孩子輸在起跑點上 (Don’t let your children lose out at the starting point.) is one of the most popular slogans whenever English…
Carrie Chen's successful chalk-and-talk method In my previous post, I discussed the celebrity status of star teachers in Taiwan. Although their good looks and personality do play a key role…
Promoting English language learning: billboard for private early English instruction in Wuhan Knowledge of English has come to be seen as the key talent of the 21st century, a way…
The completed calendar, rolled up and secured with a rubber band When my son was six years old, he came home from his Japanese Montessori pre-school one day saying that…
The high price of multilingualism When society doesn’t value something you, as an individual, do, you, the individual, end up paying for society’s lack of valuation. That’s the case with…
I’ve written before that I’ve never had an experience in which someone responded negatively to me when I speak German to my daughters in public here in the United States.…
"Velcro on one pocket coming away at the edge. Please repair and bring back tomorrow for checking." This was the note I had dreaded from my son’s teacher. The Velcro…
I’m not a big fan of what I call “breathless academic postmodernism,” or what I view as the often naïve valorization of, among other things, hybridization, creolization, liminality, polysemy, multiplicity,…
Commemorative stamp, German Federal Post, 1989: 300 years French School Berlin I’ve been teaching about bilingualism for more than a decade and when I speak about bilingual education and dual-immersion…