Current+Events+in+the+Media

Please post a link to a current event regarding TESOL, ELLs, Refugees, Immigrants below. Beneath your link, you should offer a brief summary of what the article is about. March 28, 2012 [|Banned Words] CNN World News This article discusses many different words that have been banned in New York public schools because of their religious affiliation, the feelings that are generated around the word, the frequent use of the word, or simple the diklike for the word by the adult population. This is a very interesting article becasue there are lots of words on this list that most people use in their everyday langauge and they are banned from use in schools. Should these words really be banned because of the few people that they affect? Is it worth the trouble and grief that is caused because of these 'negative" words or should they be allowed? Do schools have a right to censor their students this much? These are just a few of the questions I asked while reading it. Hopefully you guys can generate some more! :)

March 26, 2012

[|Immigration]

The Wall Street Journal, NY

This article published March 26th of this year in the Wall Street Journal addresses that despite the many challenges to stricter immigration laws around the nation, lawmakers in Georgia are considering a bill that would remove foreign passports from a list of acceptable identification documents that government agencies can accept. It’s interesting to note that the reliability of foreign passports is being questioned by the Georgia Legislature when the Transportation and Security Administration has considered the passport to be a very secure form of ID in the past. This is leading to even greater difficulty for immigrants in the United States.

March 7, 2012:

[|http://www.cnn.com/video/?hpt=ju_t5#/video/bestoftv/2012/03/02/dnt-ga-immigration-bill-hearing.wsb] (Video released on March 2, 2012)

The Georgia Court of Appeals is holding out their ruling on their immigration law entitled HB-87 to wait and see how the Supreme Court rules on the Arizona immigration law in a few months. This means, that immigrants and residents in Georgia have to wait a few months to see if Georgia will be following in Arizona's footsteps or not. Those who oppose the law say: it will split up mixed families, lead to racial profiling, and put strain on international relationships. The state argued: that is simply not true. This shows how Arizona's mind set on immigration is trying to spread, which could lead to even more hardships for our immigrants here in the USA.

March 2, 2012: []

A cognitive neruologist recently published findings on how being bilingual may help reduce your chance for alzheimers disease. Studies were conductd by looking at bilingual adults who are the same age as patients with alzheimer's and then studying bilingual patients who had alzheimers. The results showed that patients who were bilingual didn't show symptoms until much later.

Feb. 22, 2012

[]

Summary: 52% of the immigrant population of Illinois lives in the Chicago area and suburbs and are mostly Latino, with 80% using Spanish as their first language. Chicago schools are having difficulty keeping up with IL's strict school policies for bilingual education, and many of the teachers in charge of ESL teaching are under qualified or not qualified at all. Because of this, reading scores among Latinos are lagging severely behind white students.

February 8, 2012

[]

The summary: A big question that is discussed more often than not is languages and their purpose worldwide. This article highlights some of the importances of knowing various languages instead of just being proficient in English. It also gives personal anecdotes from the author about her professional experiences with numerous languages. This is a very interesting piece, especially if you have an interest in international relations or working with foreign businesses or companies. So, what's your opinion?

February 1, 2012 =// __**Can computers teach writing?**__ //= __**This is the link to the Washington Post article: [|Can computers teach writing?]**__

This article addresses the issue of how little students are required to write in English classes in many schools. Writing is an essential tool for becoming better educated and if some students are only having three writing assignments each semester, then the written knowledge of the English language will be severely lacking. Computer scoring “will allow teachers to assign more writing and spend more time on value-added instructional activities. They can spend less time reading and more time explaining." This article addresses how computer grading systems can save English teachers time, but they are not able to answer students specific questions or impart wisdom and personal attention that a teacher would otherwise be able to give to students.

Example: January 25, 2012 =Across cultures, English is the word=

This article describes how English is a global language and discusses the way the language will change given the enormity. While many are still learning English, the author argues that we will see a decline in language learning as people have access to immediate translation tools via smartphones, computers, etc.

This is a link to CNN