Around the World: ESL in the News

Puerto Rico Aims to Become Fully Bilingual by 2022

The governor of Puerto Rico is trying to do what more than a century of American citizenship has failed to accomplish: make Puerto Ricans fluent in English. Gov. Luis Fortuno, who has been mentioned as a possible Republican vice-presidential candidate, has proposed an ambitious, and what critics call far-fetched, plan to require all public schools to teach all courses in English instead of Spanish.

Aida Diaz, president of the Puerto Rico Teachers Association, said that while she supports bilingual education, the notion of teaching all courses in English is extreme. "This is wrong," she said. "This leads us to substitute our own language for a secondary one. It should not be that way."
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Shakespeare in Iraq

What's in a name? Shakespeare Iraq is out to prove that the Bard's English will sound just as sweet mixed with a little Arabic and Kurdish. Led by Bay Area, Calif.-educated professor Peter Friedrich, this ambitious band of Iraqi theater students raised more than $30,000 on Kickstarter to fly to the U.S. and fulfill their dream of performing at the fabled Oregon Shakespeare Festival. The troupe of 10 students recently landed in the Bay Area to rehearse at Santa Clara University before making the trek to Ashland for their big debut, with the first performance.
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The Education System That Pulled China Up May Now Be Holding It Back

China wants inventors and entrepreneurs, but its schools, built around the notorious gaokao exam, are still designed to produce cookie-cutter engineers and accountants. The gaokao is the annual, nationwide college entrance exam, which will decide the college matriculation of the nine million or so students who take it. China's gaokao-style education system has been great at imparting math and engineering, as well as the rigorous work ethic that has been so integral to China's rise so far. But if the country wants to keep growing, its state economists know they need to encourage entrepreneurship and creativity, neither of which is tested for on this life-determining exam.
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Language Exodus Reshapes India's Schools

The belief shared at all levels of Indian society that an English-medium education is the key to children's prosperity is changing classroom teaching but experts worry about standards. More and more across India, parents are forsaking educating their kids in their mother tongue in favour of English. Despite warnings from educationists that a child's cognitive development is affected by early schooling in an unfamiliar language, there has been an exponential increase during the last decade in English-medium schools in the country.
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English Language Learners Around the World Get Help from Students at Washington State University

When Mohamed Elhess was a youngster in Libya, he couldn't formally study English. Back in the 1980s and '90s, dictator Moammar Gadhafi had proclaimed that the language not be taught in schools. "So I learned English from pop music, and from books my brother brought from Egypt,” said Elhess, a graduate student at Washington State University. "Now, English is back in Libyan schools, but there are no qualified teachers.”

Elhess is eager to find ways to help students in newly liberated Libya, and all over the world, learn a second language. An assignment from Professor Joy Egbert gave him a way, He created several video tutorials on how to use a popular language-learning website called Voxopop. His is one of eight technology-based language learning projects created this summer by Egbert's students, who are passionately dedicated to helping ELLs around the globe.
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Deported American Children Struggle to Adjust to Life in Mexico

The wave of deportations in the past few years, along with tougher state laws and persistent unemployment, have all created a mass exodus of Mexican parents who are leaving with their American sons and daughters. The result is an entire generation of children who blur the line between Mexican and American. One of these children, Jeffrey, expressed his confusion: “I dream, like, I’m sleeping in the United States,” he said. “But when I wake up, I’m in Mexico.”
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