For Stephen Krashen, the disruption to traditional education during Covid-19 may reveal some unexpected benefits. How teachers and parents can harness the opportunity to teach language — including heritage languages — during remote learning?

Many parents and teachers are understandably anxious about remote learning, as instruction has become less traditional.

However, Krashen notes, “We do not acquire language by study, or by speaking or writing. We acquire in only one way: by understanding what we hear or read. What we call ‘comprehensible input.’ The ability to produce language is the result of getting the right kind of input.”

With less focus on traditional language education, i.e., practicing memorized rules and grammar through speaking until they become automatic, students are free to acquire language in a more effective way.

According to Stephen Krashen’s theory of language acquisition, comprehensible input is language that can be understood by listeners even if they don’t fully comprehend all of the vocabulary and grammar in use. Input is essential to acquisition, as it informs learners’ subconscious understanding of a language.

While online education may isolate students at home, it shouldn’t negatively impact language learning. “We don’t need massive amounts of interaction to acquire language. We need massive amounts of input,” says Krashen.

Internet: <languagemagazine.com> (adapted)

This year, roughly a quarter of the vast Pantanal wetland in Brazil, one of the most biodiverse places on Earth, has burned in wildfires worsened by climate change. What happens to a rich and unique biome when so much is destroyed?

The unprecedented fires in the wetland have attracted less attention than blazes in Australia, the Western United States and the Amazon, its celebrity sibling to the north. But while the Pantanal is not a global household name, tourists in the know flock there because it is home to exceptionally high concentrations of breathtaking wildlife: Jaguars, tapirs, endangered giant otters and bright blue hyacinth macaws. Like a vast tub, the wetland swells with water during the rainy season and empties out during the dry months. Fittingly, this rhythm has a name that evokes a beating heart: the flood pulse.

The wetland, which is larger than Greece and stretches over parts of Brazil, Paraguay and Bolivia, also offers unseen gifts to a vast swath of South America by regulating the water cycle upon which life depends. Its countless swamps, lagoons and tributaries purify water and help prevent floods and droughts. They also store untold amounts of carbon, helping to stabilize the climate.

For centuries, ranchers have used fire to clear fields and new land. But this year, drought worsened by climate change turned the wetlands into a tinderbox and the fires raged out of control.

Catrin Einhorn, Maria Magdalena Arréllaga, Blacki Migliozzi

and Scott Reinhard. Oct. 13, 2020.

“Millions of children, every year, start school excited about what they will learn, but quickly become disillusioned when they get the idea they are not as ‘smart’ as others,” writes Jo Boaler. That’s because parents and teachers inadvertently give out the message that talent is inborn — you either have it or you don’t.

As a math professor, Boaler has seen this firsthand. Many young adults enter her class anxious about math, and their fear about learning impacts their ability to learn.

“The myth that our brains are fixed and that we simply don’t have the aptitude for certain topics is not only scientifically inaccurate; it is omnipresent and negatively impacts not only education, but many other events in our everyday lives,” she writes. Even though the science of neuroplasticity — how our brains change in response to learning — suggests learning can take place at any age, this news has not made it into classrooms, she argues.

Some of our misguided visions of talent have led to racist and sexist attitudes, she writes. For example, many girls get the message early on that math is for boys and that boys are better at it, interfering with their ability to succeed and leading to gender disparities in fields of study related to math. Similarly, people of color may also have to overcome stereotypes about fixed intelligence in order to thrive.

Internet: <greatergood.berkeley.edu> (adapted)

There is ample evidence that reading not only strengthens second language vocabulary, but also expands it as readers meet words, or the same word, in different contexts. After all, that is the way lexical vocabulary is acquired in real life, through hearing it in our first languages.

Apart from learning vocabulary, learners also learn new structures, which can form a strong scaffolding both for learning other new structures and introducing grammatical items to a class.

In listening to each other read, discuss points in groups, debate, or answer and their rationale, second language learners will sharpen both listening and speaking skills.

There is no magic bullet, no single explanation for what teachers can do to ensure that their students learn to read a second or foreign language. Practice and plenty of it may be the only way out.

J. Kembo. Using short texts to teach English as second language. Rongo University, Kenya. Universal Journal of Educational Research 4(12): 2735-2743, 2016 (adapted).

It was Maria’s first day at school, her first week in the United States. Her middle school in San Francisco was the biggest building she’d ever seen. It was bigger than the entire Best Buy store she’d walked through in awe on her first day in the city.

Eventually, Maria found her way to class, a special setting for Spanish-speaking newcomers. There she would practice English words for colors and numbers, learn how to introduce herself and how to say thank you. By eighth grade she was moved into mainstream classes, where she struggled. It didn’t help that her math teacher started each class by saying, “Okay, my little dummies.” He spoke really fast. Maria never raised her hand in his class.

One day Maria stopped by the administrative office, looking for someone to help her with multiplication. She took her spot in line behind a middle-aged woman who chatted with her in Spanish as they waited. Maria said school was really hard for her. The woman told her not to worry. “Latinas usually don’t finish high school,” she said. “They go to work or raise kids.”

The woman was right, statistically speaking, and Maria’s middle-school experience all but ensured she’d join the 52 percent of foreign-born Latinos who drop out of high school. She graduated from eighth grade without learning to speak English. She had a hard time writing in Spanish and didn’t know how to multiply.

Internet: <www.motherjones.com> (adapted).

This year, roughly a quarter of the vast Pantanal wetland in Brazil, one of the most biodiverse places on Earth, has burned in wildfires worsened by climate change. What happens to a rich and unique biome when so much is destroyed?

The unprecedented fires in the wetland have attracted less attention than blazes in Australia, the Western United States and the Amazon, its celebrity sibling to the north. But while the Pantanal is not a global household name, tourists in the know flock there because it is home to exceptionally high concentrations of breathtaking wildlife: Jaguars, tapirs, endangered giant otters and bright blue hyacinth macaws. Like a vast tub, the wetland swells with water during the rainy season and empties out during the dry months. Fittingly, this rhythm has a name that evokes a beating heart: the flood pulse.

The wetland, which is larger than Greece and stretches over parts of Brazil, Paraguay and Bolivia, also offers unseen gifts to a vast swath of South America by regulating the water cycle upon which life depends. Its countless swamps, lagoons and tributaries purify water and help prevent floods and droughts. They also store untold amounts of carbon, helping to stabilize the climate.

For centuries, ranchers have used fire to clear fields and new land. But this year, drought worsened by climate change turned the wetlands into a tinderbox and the fires raged out of control.

Catrin Einhorn, Maria Magdalena Arréllaga, Blacki Migliozzi

and Scott Reinhard. Oct. 13, 2020.

It was Maria’s first day at school, her first week in the United States. Her middle school in San Francisco was the biggest building she’d ever seen. It was bigger than the entire Best Buy store she’d walked through in awe on her first day in the city.

Eventually, Maria found her way to class, a special setting for Spanish-speaking newcomers. There she would practice English words for colors and numbers, learn how to introduce herself and how to say thank you. By eighth grade she was moved into mainstream classes, where she struggled. It didn’t help that her math teacher started each class by saying, “Okay, my little dummies.” He spoke really fast. Maria never raised her hand in his class.

One day Maria stopped by the administrative office, looking for someone to help her with multiplication. She took her spot in line behind a middle-aged woman who chatted with her in Spanish as they waited. Maria said school was really hard for her. The woman told her not to worry. “Latinas usually don’t finish high school,” she said. “They go to work or raise kids.”

The woman was right, statistically speaking, and Maria’s middle-school experience all but ensured she’d join the 52 percent of foreign-born Latinos who drop out of high school. She graduated from eighth grade without learning to speak English. She had a hard time writing in Spanish and didn’t know how to multiply.

Internet: <www.motherjones.com> (adapted).