- By 2050, African countries will be home to a billion young people. That same year, we’ll celebrate our 43rd year of supporting those young people through cultural exchange opportunities, like the Kennedy-Lugar Youth Exchange and Study Program. Our exchange teachers from Egypt will be congratulating Arabic students they taught in kindergarten on completing their post-graduate studies. The list of countries we work in will have grown. One thing that won’t change between now and 2050: our… Read More
- Our programs in South and Central Asia range from English immersion camps to academic advising and four-year fellowships for gifted students. The programs share the same goal of providing educational opportunities to bright young citizens who are passionate about improving their communities.
- Based on conversations with Dr. Bob Slater, Co-Director of American Councils Research Center (ARC)For decades, the American educational system has struggled to create equal opportunities for the rapidly expanding population of students whose first language is not English. Too often, these students fail to achieve the same level of academic success as their peers; and the majority of past educational approaches to support English Learners (ELs) have proved neutral, at best.Despite that more US… Read More
- On Thursday, February 16th, more than 150 language experts from across the US will descend on Capitol Hill to lobby for languages. Dr. William P. Rivers, the Executive Director of the Joint National Committee for Languages (JNCL-NCLIS), the organization that hosts Language Advocacy Day, shares why he and hundreds of others believe that foreign languages need advocacy and how any concerned citizen can advocate for languages in their community. What exactly is Language Advocacy Day and how… Read More
- The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAAS) formed the Commission on Language Learning in 2015 in an effort to evaluate the state of foreign language learning in the US for the first time in over 30 years. As a direct response to a bipartisan request from the US Congress, the Commission was formed to gather and analyze research on the benefits of foreign language learning for all age groups starting at pre-school and extending through secondary, higher education, and lifelong learning… Read More
- By Dr. Steven Byrd, Associate Professor of Spanish and Portuguese and Director of the Latin American Studies Minor at the University of New England In the early 21st-century, foreign language learning (and the humanities generally) in the United States has found itself on the defensive. Worrisome terms such as "crisis in the humanities" and "identity crisis" have been articulated in academic literature to describe the decline and apathy of language learning in the country. Ironically,… Read More
- This article was originally published by New America. By Sammi Wong Did you know that more than two-thirds of the world's population speaks or understands at least two languages? Multilingualism is not the global exception in the world: it's the rule. In the United States, however, only about one-fourth of the population is meaningfully multilingual. These statistics indicate that many of the students in the US education system do not have as widespread access to bilingual or foreign language… Read More
- This article was originally published in The Atlantic By Emily Deruy The young Americans who spend time abroad during college look little like the students at universities across the United States. But there is a growing effort from schools, nonprofits, businesses, and even the federal government to make sure the students who go abroad are an accurate reflection of the nation's college campuses. A couple of years ago, the nonprofit Institute of International Education launched a campaign… Read More
- The US Department of Education's Office of English Language Acquisition will hold a webinar on Tuesday, June 14 at 2 p.m. (ET) featuring research on dual language immersion in the Portland Public Schools. Webinar guests include researchers Dr. Robert Slater (American Councils for International Education), Jennifer Steele (American University), Jennifer Li (RAND), and Michael Bacon (Portland Public Schools).The underlying message is that dual language programs benefit all learners and position… Read More
- As two-way immersion programs (TWI) are increasingly embraced by educational systems across the country as a means of eliminating educational disparities and realizing the cognitive benefits of learning more than one language, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAAS) dedicates its May Data Forum to examining the trend in TWI adoption over the last five decades.The Forum features data from the Center for Applied Linguistics that puts the number of such programs at approximately 425 in… Read More
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