Bilingualism or Biliteracy?

Check out this NPR report about an elementary school in Florida, which aims to give students a biliterate education. This is another example of the benefits of learning or retaining a second language early in life!

AP article on bilingual kids

If you’re still wondering exactly how bilingualism works in young kids and how it supports increased academic achievement, read Unraveling how children become bilingual so easily.

Cognitive gains in 7-month-old bilingual infants

Very Short List published this brief of an article explaining how bilingual babies adapt to new situations in comparison to their monolingual peers.  Appropriately, the brief is titled Head Start.

Employment advantages of being bilingual

This morning I received the following newsbrief from the Language Immersion in the Americas listserve through University of Minnesota.

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From our colleagues at Center for Applied Second Language Studies CASLS:

Source:  California Language Teachers Association (CLTA) News Flash*

If you search for jobs at Monster.com at any time, you will find thousands of jobs for speakers of all languages. Here are some average findings (which may vary from day to day).

* At any given time, approximately 1000 employers nationwide are looking for French speakers. 200-400 of those jobs are here in California.
* There are approximately 500 new jobs available for German speakers. Nearly 100 of those are in California.
* If you speak Chinese, there are typically more than 800 job openings in the country, of which more than 300 are in California.
* If you speak Japanese, there are more than 1400 job openings in the country. In California, there are 400 employers looking for Japanese speakers.
* Spanish, of course, tops the list, with more than 8,300 jobs nationwide and almost 3000 jobs in California. With all languages combined, there are typically nearly 4000 jobs for bilingual individuals in California. That’s a lot of organizations, industries and companies that need employees with language skills. Are we preparing our students to meet this need?
* What kinds of jobs are these? Regardless of specific language needed, the jobs I find on monster.com <http://monster.com/> span all fields: medical, legal, computer technology, science and research, engineering, fashion and interior design, graphic design, editorial, administrative assistants, accountants, and many others.

from CLTA Advocacy Chair, Nicole Naditz

Johnson, L. CLTA News Flash, January 2, 2009.

Don’t take our word for it: Immersion Rocks!

Thanks to Amanda and Kathy who both sent me links to the Babble article Bilingual Education: Si or Non?

In this article one parent writes about why she and her family chose an immersion elementary and research/practice from other immersion and dual language programs nationwide.  If you’ve been following our story, it sounds a lot like what we are creating in St. Louis.  I love it!  For all of the potential founding families out there, we’d love to hear/share your story for choosing immersion with the community.

Tomorrow morning we head off to visit La Petite Ecole in Columbia and meet with Dr. Flore Zéphir, Chair of Romance Language & Literature at MIzzou.  Then Friday we’ll be visiting Académie Lafayette and University Academy in KC.

More stories later.