Page 1 - ELG1601 Dec Issue 442

ELgazette

£3.50 • US$6.50 • ¥700 • €5.50 The newspaper for English language and international education Issue 442 | December 2016

Court rules

for Toeic

test-takers
Inside...

UK HOME secretary Amber
Rudd’s pledge to reduce the flow
of international students was dealt
a blow in late October, following a
little-reported court ruling.
Responding to reports of
‘invalid’ results in the Toeic
English test, the Home Office
in 2014 deported an estimated
Courtesy Bana al-Abed / Twitter students who had taken the
48,000 non-EU international
exam. A March 2016 immigra-
tion tribunal ruled against the
Home Office after its evidence
was demolished (see April 2016
Gazette). The Home Office went
to the Court of Appeal in an
Page 3: Mass protests attempt to overturn the ruling.
throw new Spanish GLOBAL FOLLOWING Bana al-Abed, Lawyers for Qadir Ishan, who
education law into doubt aged seven, lives in the besieged city of brought the original case, told
Infants excel when Aleppo, Syria with her family. Last politics.co.uk they had received a
letter from the Home Office con-
September she opened a Twitter account
they ‘learn by ear’ with the help of her mother to show the ceding there were ‘no compelling
reasons to pursue’ court action.
world the horrors of war. Fatemah, her
mother, is an English language teacher who
The court then passed judgement
has been teaching Bana, the New York against the Home Office.
Times reported. Bana writes her tweets and Deportees who are now over-
A GROUND-BREAKING randomised con- dow’ begins to close when babies reach the uploads videos in basic English, and her seas are considering claims for
trol trial in four Madrid nurseries appears age of around twelve months, but Kuhl’s words have so far reached 81,500 followers compensation. n
to show that children between eight months work – both in the Madrid nurseries and in
and three years old can acquire foreign L2 a mirror study in US pre-schools – shows
through hyper-stimulating interaction with that ‘hyper-stimulating’ social interaction
a native-speaking teacher while improving with native speakers using ‘motherese’, the
their L1 and problem-solving skills. Empha- phonetically exaggerated speech used by
sis on the use of native speakers, however, parents, can enable children as old as three
has caused controversy in Spain’s educa- to acquire a second language through pho-
Page 8: Could Chinese tional circles. netic learning. She warns, however, that this
students make better After ninety hours, children in the inter- ability declines and may be absent in most
language school choices? vention group made 73 English utterances monolinguals aged six and up.
per hour, five times more than those in the In an El Mundo interview the professor
control group taught English by Spanish makes no mention of native speakers, high-
nursery teachers. The intervention group lighting instead the use of motherese. Asked
also showed improvement in both L1 and about the results achieved by Spanish nursery
cognitive learning skills. Spanish education workers in the control groups, where children
officials, however, have questioned the valid- used 80 per cent less English, she emphasised
ity of the control group, pointing out that the importance of stimulating children though
English is not usually taught at this age. The play and interaction. Other Spanish press
data on this study has yet to be published. reports, however, emphasised the use of native
The study was led by Dr Patricia Kuhl, speakers, and Kuhl in a 2016 paper states,
professor of early childhood learning at the ‘Infants learn best through frequent high-qual-
University of Washington. Kuhl’s work on ity social interactions with native speakers.’
early childhood language acquisition chal- Spanish local education officials point out
lenges assumptions in second language that the aim of Spain’s bilingual system is to
acquisition theory. Her hypothesis is that produce good L2 speakers rather than true
babies use ‘phonetic learning’ – the ability to bilinguals. Their concerns about the use of
Page 9: Academics discriminate all 800 sounds used in the world’s native speakers, however, may be misplaced.
connect neurolinguistics languages – to acquire language, with their Kuhl’s work suggest that the use of native
to the classroom acquisition mediated by social interaction. speakers won’t increase the phonemic com-
Most researchers agree this ‘sound win- petence of learners over the age of six. n

China restricts for-profit schools

FROM SEPTEMBER 2017 for-profit inter- in their programme and prepare students
national schools for six-to-fifteen year-olds for China’s national pre-high school exam,
will be prohibited from operating in China, the Zhong Kao. Students over sixteen will
according to new government regulations. not be required to cover the local syllabus
Not-for-profit partnerships will be able to and will be able to enrol in any international
continue to enrol this age group but their schools, including those run for profit.
fees will be capped. British independent school sources told
The International School Consultancy ISC Research that the move was unlikely
(ISC) Research group reported that the new to result in widespread closures in the mar-
regulations, which surfaced in November, ket because ‘demand is huge’, but schools
Free pull-out poster: will mean that even non-profit schools, would have to work hard to comply with
Your guide to ELT-related which can continue to operate, will have to new ownership structures and curriculum
events throughout 2017 incorporate the Chinese national curriculum requirements. n

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