Saul Tello Jr., Orestimba High Valedictorian 2012 (Source: CBS Sacramento) When US high schools make international headlines, it’s usually because of a school shooting. But Orestimba High in Newman, a…
WSB TV report: Apple discriminates against Persian-speaking customers I’ve just found an e-mail from Apple in my spam folder with a ‘personal’ invitation to attend one of their new store…
Does bilingualism cause temper tantrums? (Source: ehow.com) My husband and I are raising our children (aged five and two) to be trilingual in English (my L1), Spanish (my husband’s L1)…
Eurovision Baku 2012 (Source: i3.mirror.co.uk) This year’s Eurovision Song Contest has come and gone with Sweden crowned the winner for 2012, also taking the title of Australia’s unofficial winner (over…
Cabramatta, Australia Last week an email was sent around my office about our upcoming Harmony Day celebration on 21 March. The email suggested that to mark the occasion, interested staff could…
Recently, I watched a TV documentary about the proliferation of Nomura jellyfish in Japanese coastal waters. It was a shocking tale of the devastating environmental, economic, social and human impact…
KOALA Buchstabenhaus (Adapted from: Urbanek, R. et al. (2006): Tinto grün. Arbeitsheft 1. Schreiben. Berlin: Cornelsen) Contemporary Germany is the 3rd largest immigrant-receiving country internationally. In 2008, 15.6mio inhabitants (19%…
Our contributor in Karachi, Md. Ali Khan, has alerted me to what seems to be a fascinating book: The Tyranny of Language in Education by Zubeida Mustafa published by Ushba…
Ingrid Piller's keynote lecture at the International Gender and Language Association conference in September 2010 is now available on video and so is another guest lecture she conducted during our…
Yesterday I spoke with a study agent here in the UAE and he told me that Australian universities trying to attract students from the GCC region just didn’t get the…
This is the first in a series of blog posts about my experiences undertaking an ongoing research project. In this series I will be detailing some of the methodological challenges…
I love public libraries. Here in Sydney, our family regularly spends time in our local public library and in the Persian library in Parramatta. We treat public libraries a bit…
Earlier this term I intercepted a note my 7-year-old had written to her teacher: “Ger Ger Ger; Don’t be so rude.” She was objecting to a reading comprehension exercise about…
Michael Clyne with Emi Otsuji, the 2009 winner of the Michael Clyne Prize I was saddened this morning to read the Australian Linguistics Society’s news about Michael Clyne’s passing! Australian…
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…
If you read English-language news, you could be forgiven for thinking that Germany's chancellor Angela Merkel recently came out strongly against multiculturalism and immigration. You could be forgiven, but you'd…