43% in California speak other than English at home

SAN FRANCISCO, CA–San Francisco resident Carlos Dimaano, 50, a recent immigrant from the Philippines, speaks English in his job at a community center. But when he goes home to cook dinner for his 88-year-old father, the two lapse into their native Tagalog. The men are among the almost 43 percent of Californians who speak a language other than English at home, a proportion far higher than in any other state in the country, according to full story  blog analysis

Lee school district may face another shortfall in budget; Browder: Mid-year cuts

CAPE CORAL, FL–After Tuesday’s board meeting it is evident that the Lee County School District will face another shortfall of budget funds before the end of the 2008 to 2009 year. For months district officials have been grappling with a $29 million shortfall, which could be substantially more if full story

Bilingual programs may be combined

STAMFORD, CT–K.T. Murphy Elementary School Assistant Principal Marilyn Armengol looked at two pages of detailed pencil drawings above a series of letters that had the shape, but not the content, of English. “He’s really at the beginning. He has the spacing,” Armengol said of the 6-year-old author, a native Spanish speaker. full story

Overseas student bonanza

CANBERRA, AUSTRALIA–Overseas enrolments in the vocational education and training sector are booming, but universities are still the biggest export revenue earners in the education services sector. New Australian Bureau of Statistics figures reveal education exports totalling $13.7 billion eclipsed tourism by $1.7billion in the past financial year. full story

Sri Lanka recruiters visit Shawnee State University

COLOMBO, SRI LANKA–This summer, Priyanthi and Dissa Dissanayake, college recruiters to the United States from Sri Lanka, visited Shawnee State University for the first time to look at possibly sending students for their education. More than full story

Pearson Announces Pilot Program Results for New Pearson Test of English

LONDON, UK–Pearson today announced that it has successfully completed the final stage of the worldwide pilot program for its new computer-based international academic English language test, Pearson Test of English (PTE). Pilot testing enabled Pearson to gather information about the technical functioning of the test administration hardware and software. full story

Aiken County teachers try to break language barrier

AIKEN, SC–Imagine studying science, reading and math all in a language you don’t speak. Hundreds of Georgia-Carolina students do it every year. They’re expected to learn even though English is a foreign language to them. Lori Watson spends her days overcoming language barriers and it’s not always easy. Sometimes her students have no clue what she’s saying. full story

Left dislocation

LANGUAGE LOG–A couple of days ago, Jim Bisso sent me a question:

I’ve been embattled by a bunch of peevologists over the grammaticality of sentences of the sort: “my mother(,) she is a good person”. I have pointed out that many kinds of apposition are not only acceptable  full story

Early gift of language

WINCHESTER, VA–The first words Tracy Fitzsimmons spoke to her children after they were born were in Spanish. That wouldn’t be unusual if Fitzsimmons were a native Spanish speaker, but she’s not. The mother of three and president of Shenandoah University is a native English speaker who became fluent in full story

Korea and the cost of private education

SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA–President Lee Myung-bak instructed his Cabinet Tuesday to set up measures to address rising household spending on private education, saying such costs are weighing down on urban households amid rising inflation. full story  another newspaper  blog analysis