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Dear Duolingo: What language would children invent?

Welcome to another week of Dear Duolingo, an advice column just for learners. Catch up on past installments here .

Hey, everyone! This week's reader-submitted question is philosophical and applicable to many important issues in language learning—too many, in fact, to do them justice in one post. ( Let us know which of these topics you want to learn more about!) Here's the question:

Our question this week:

Dear Duolingo, What language would children use naturally? If 2 kids were cut off from society from birth, how would they communicate with each other? What language would they use? Thank you, Now We're Talking

This question is more complex and interesting than you may realize! In centuries past, some people would answer this question with a specific language (Latin! Hebrew! Ancient Greek!), but that was to defend the "oldness" or "originalness" of a language. The short answer is that if 2 kids grew up together, away from all other influences, they would make up a totally new, never-before-heard language. 😍  

Although there’s a lot of research that leads us to believe this, it's never been truly tested—and never should be. Intentionally depriving kids of normal socialization, family, and language is horrible—in fact, it's been called "The Forbidden Experiment" among psychologists and linguists. But why would this question even come up?

"The Forbidden Experiment" 

The reason that Now We're Talking's question has intrigued researchers is because of the critical period hypothesis. This hypothesis asks whether there is an "expiration date" in our brains for learning some things, like a language. Researchers have wondered whether a critical period exists at all—and if it does, might there actually be multiple critical periods? (One cut-off for learning a second language versus your first language, one for learning vocabulary versus pronunciation, etc.) Also, what happens if you try to learn a language after the critical period?

For learning a second language, it's pretty easy to research and analyze the process: Lots of people of all ages study new languages ! You can compare how well people learn at different ages, with different methods, and for different languages.

But it's very different to test what happens if people learn their first language at different ages. Most of us started learning our family's language from birth … but what if someone was never exposed to a language until they're older, like 2, or 7, or 13, or even 20? Can your brain always learn its first language, or do natural brain changes over childhood mean that at some point we lose the ability to learn even our first language?

While this can't be tested in true experiments (because they would be horrible and unethical), there are some natural situations that arise that give us information about critical periods and language learning. (Warning: Many of these accidental situations are upsetting, while others are exciting—I'm going to focus just on the language learning part of these cases to protect sensitive readers from the details.)

Feral children and a girl named Genie

One accidental situation that teaches us about the critical period for language learning is children who suffer isolation. In a few extreme cases, a child has had basically no interaction with other people or caregivers, usually due to neglect and abuse, and as a result they don't have exposure to language. These cases are exceptional in many ways, and importantly it's not like everything else in their lives is normal and the only thing missing is language—these "feral children" might grow up alone in the wild, or they've suffered abuse in any number of ways.

One case that received a lot of attention from psychologists was the case of a girl given the nickname Genie. She had been almost entirely isolated until she was 13 and so had never learned a language. Even after years of language therapy, her understanding of English and ability to pronounce words and form sentences never progressed past toddler level. It seemed that her brain had passed some developmental milestone (a critical period?) and was no longer able to truly learn a language.

Kids on the playground create a brand-new language

There are more hopeful scenarios, too, including one that better matches Now We're Talking's question: kids creating their own language, all on their own!

This case is about deaf kids in Nicaragua. All around the world, most deaf and hard of hearing children are born to hearing families, so they don't learn a sign language from birth—and in some places there isn't a standard or official sign language that the whole deaf community uses, either. This was the case in Nicaragua before the 1970s: Deaf Nicaraguans used systems of gestures with their hearing families, but they weren't full-fledged languages and each family had their own home sign system. Deaf people were sort of isolated from each other, until a new national school for the deaf was created. Suddenly, deaf kids from across the country were playing, studying, and working together… and they needed to communicate. 

Those kids naturally and automatically created a brand-new sign language. It didn't happen overnight, but it was pretty close: From their varied home sign systems, the kids just improvised a language. Their brains were hungry for it! The first generation of kids at the school developed their own system, and each subsequent student cohort made it more systematic, more complex, more completely a language. 🤯 

Their brains created new vocabulary, grammar rules, pronunciation (like hand shapes and placement), and conversation rules on the spot. No one needed to teach them, because their brains were ready for language. Those littler kids and later cohorts seemed to have not yet hit the learning deadline—their critical period hadn't passed. For more on Nicaraguan Sign Language, check out this episode of Radiolingo !

Language access

What these different scenarios teach us is the importance of language access . This phrase can mean different things depending on the context—for example, a city providing important emergency information only in one language but not in others is an issue of language access, and so is the question of children getting input in a language they can understand.

The issue of language access comes up a lot for the deaf community, not just in Nicaragua. Deaf and hard of hearing babies don't have full access to spoken language, even if they have some hearing: They can't physically perceive the nuances of words, they don't know that they are being spoken to if they are looking away, and they can't rely only on visuals (like lip reading) to learn language. Since most deaf babies are born to hearing parents, not all deaf babies get access to language right away. 

As we know from Genie, the deaf Nicaraguan kids, and many other kinds of research, our brains are hungry for language—it's like our brains need to be programmed, and language gives us access to all the software we have up there. Delaying access to language has real consequences for language development, but also for other cognitive skills (like literacy outcomes, executive functioning, and inhibitory control ). This is worth discussing more in another post— let us know if you're interested !

One thing is clear… 

Your brain needs language, and it knows just what to do with it! Language is an important way that we interact with the world and it even affects other skills that we develop. It's like our brain's operating system!

For more answers to your language and learning questions, email us at [email protected] .

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Verlan: the amazing system of french slang, dear duolingo: why doesn't duolingo start with the abcs.

# 10 Popular Linguistic Experiment Examples in Labvanced

Language and speech researchers use online experiment platforms like Labvanced for running their various studies because it’s a way to gather both participants and data quickly.

By running experiments in a virtual language lab, publishing studies online and sharing them through the web, linguists and cognitive psychologists not only complete their research faster but also create their experiment quickly and without code.

Below we highlight 10 popular linguistic experiments that can be performed in Labvanced for studying speech perception and language comprehension, all which demonstrate a different capability or feature of the platform.

# 1. Multimodal Stroop Effect Task open in new window

The Multimodal Stroop Effect Task is a classic task that challenges participants’ cognitive associations.

In the study, words like ‘blue’ or ‘green’ are shown one by one with a varying text color, only sometimes corresponding to what the written word indicates. This incongruence challenges the participant.

The study prompts the participant to focus on the text color and ignore the text meaning. During the experiment, there are also distracting auditory words spoken, a voice that says one of the 4 featured colors.

In the training session, the participant practices focusing on the text color and clicking the corresponding button. The other two dimensions (spoken word and written-text) are congruent and reflect the target color.

In the example below in the training session, the correct response is ‘F’ because the text color is blue. But the participant is also reinforced because the actual written word is blue and the audio playing automatically also says ‘blue.’

In the experiment, things become more challenging as the three dimensions are incongruent.

In the example below, the correct response is ‘D’ because the color is red, but the written word says ‘yellow’ and the audio voice prompts ‘blue.’

Thus, the participant is challenged to focus and limit the various cognitive associations in order to pick the correct response and override the language written- and spoken- language cues.

Fun Fact: Did you know being bilingual predicts a Stroop Effect? A study with Spanish-English bilinguals shows a language stroop effect (Suarez et al., 2014)!

# 2. Finish the Sentence open in new window

This study, published by the UCLA Linguistics Department aims to test how adult native American English speakers finish sentences.

Participants must listen to sentence fragments and then provide a response where their voice is recorded using their computer microphone, completing the sentence fragment into a full sentence.

The participants are prompted to provide an answer using the first thing that comes to mind and without any hesitation.

The general study progress is illustrated below:

• The participant tests the recording feature of Labvanced to ensure their recording works.
• The participant moves to the next screen and clicks ‘Play’ to hear the sentence fragment.
• Then, the participant is prompted to think of a way complete the sentence starting with the fragment they just heard
• The participant clicks the record button and says the whole sentence out loud.

The study aims to increase scientific knowledge about speech and human language. The researchers state that the gathered insights will have positive implications for several areas, including: implementing computer technology, language teaching, and speech pathology treatment.

# 3. Dimensions & Sounds open in new window

The participants begin by filling out a simple questionnaire about themselves. Then, they are instructed to listen to sounds and vocalizations. After perceiving the audio stimuli, the participants are asked to rate the sound on 2 scales.

This experiment demonstrates how to incorporate a questionnaire at the beginning of the study and then use audio to study human sound perception of vocalizations.

# 4. Spanish Pronunciation Study open in new window

In this study, the participant goes through information about the experimental procedure. Then, there are 2 short tasks to be completed, about 10 minutes each. The first task is about speaking and reading and the second task is about listening.

At the end, there is a questionnaire so the participant can provide basic information about themselves, as well as any relevant information about their language learning background.

Labvanced is used for many language learning and bilingual studies. Researchers can design their experiment in any language, choose to limit a study only to specific speakers, and share the study internationally so different language speakers can participate from around the globe or keep the study local to examine language learning in a specific group, such as students in a university learning a second language.

# 5. Voice & Well-being open in new window

In this study, the relationship between sound perception and feelings is assessed. The participants are prompted to listen to 21 human sounds from all over the world. After hearing this clip, the participant must rate how the sound made them feel using 5-point Likert scales.

The experimental screen opens with instructions of the experiment. Towards the end of the explanation, there is a sound volume adjuster where the participant can adjust and calibrate the audio that will proceed to a comfortable level:

After calibrating and adjusting the sound, the experiment begins.

The participant hears a sound that plays and lasts for about 30 seconds:

Then, after the sound has been played, the participant is prompted to indicate on a 5-point Likert to what extent certain emotions and feelings (like confidence, sadness, or alertness) were invoked by the audio:

This experiment is a great example of how to present audio recordings and then a questionnaire so the participant can provide a response to the sound, language, or vocalization they perceived.

# 6. Song or Speech? open in new window

This study is interested in auditory perception and how participants classify sounds based on 2 scales.

For each sound, the participant must rate how they perceived the sound, whether it sounds like a song or like speech and whether it sounds natural or artificially-produced.

The response is recorded on a continuous range using slider scales, also known as visual analogous scales (VASs). These scales are sometimes preferred over Likert scales because they record a continuous value as opposed to discrete values (Chyung et al., 2018).

Before the experiment begins, there is a sound calibration process that checks whether the participant is using speakers of headphones to play the audio. During this process, there are three sounds presented and the participant must pick which tone was the quietest.

If you go through this calibration process using speakers, you will not pass because the answers will be wrong, indicating that headphones were not used and a prompt will appear:

The Song or Speech study is a great example of not only how to calibrate sound and objectively ensure your participants are following instructions (like using headphones), but also to use continuous slider scales for recording responses.

# 7. Semantic Networking open in new window

The participants see a word, then they see a letter sequence. If the letter sequence means something in the English language, the participant is asked to click ‘Y’ on the keyboard but if the letter sequence does not mean anything, then ‘N’ should be pressed.

The design is simple and straightforward, but it demonstrates how to collect participant responses using button presses after presenting words visually in a particular sequence.

# 8. Text Presentation open in new window

The results of this study aim to suggest best practice for educational practitioners and businesses using online fonts since reading text online has become a commonplace behavior. By establishing which fonts are associated with the highest language comprehension and user performance, the researchers are helping increase the efficiency of how language is used online for communication and learning.

# 9. Adult Reading Test open in new window

Before starting the training session, the study also asks the participants to provide their email address so that responses from a previous section in Labvanced can be linked.

In the training session, the participant must record themselves reading the prompted passage out loud:

After the voice recording has been completed, a series of questions about the passage follow:

The Adult Reading Test captures several different types of measurements, from voice recordings to answers from questionnaires. It’s a great way to measure language comprehension and mastery and can be adapted to other languages and population groups.

# 10. Semantic Learning for Toddlers open in new window

The Semantic Learning for Toddlers study aims to look at how different speakers can influence semantic connections in children between the ages of 22 and 36 months that are monolingual (English-only) or bilingual (English + another language).

The study combines several different features that can be used in virtual language labs:

• Video presentation of speakers using target words
• Video recording of the participant
• Questionnaires

Through these features, the researchers can determine how a toddler is looking at the screen for each trial and where their attention is while learning new words in different conversational settings.

Child sees a video of two speakers, each teaching two new words. Then, in one type of trial, the child will hear two words repeated (for about 20 seconds) from the same speaker. In the second type of trial, the child will hear two words again, but one word per speaker.

With this set-up, the experiment aims to investigate how semantic connections are formed between newly acquired words and if the speakers that taught those words influence in any way the semantic connections with the newly learned words.

# Conclusion

Together these 10 linguistic experiments are great examples not only of what you can do in Labvanced but also how researchers from various universities are studying speech and language but also perception using online experiments to record data and responses.

open in new window

# References

Chyung, S. Y., Swanson, I., Roberts, K., & Hankinson, A. (2018). Evidence‐based survey design: The use of continuous rating scales in surveys. Performance Improvement, 57(5), 38-48.

Suarez, P. A., Gollan, T. H., Heaton, R., Grant, I., Cherner, M., & HNRC Group. (2014). Second-language fluency predicts native language Stroop effects: Evidence from Spanish–English bilinguals. Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society, 20(3), 342-348.

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The Education Issue

My Family’s Experiment in Extreme Schooling

An education, three american siblings attend an experimental school in moscow where instruction is only in russian and classes are videotaped to improve teaching..

Danya: It was definitely very very hard when I was first plopped into a Russian school. I was old enough that I kind of prepared myself for it. It was like “Ok, you’re not going to know what is going on... just sit there and do nothing. It doesn’t matter.” And, that’s pretty much what I did. If I didn’t know what was going on, I just sat there and did nothing. Arden: The only things that I knew about Russia was that it had a lot of snow, they speak a different language and they have Matryoshka dolls. That’s literally all I knew. Emmett: [In Russian] It was very difficult to speak Russian. But, now I speak fluently. It is easy for me to speak. TITLE: AN EDUCATION: FOUR YEARS IN A PROGRESSIVE RUSSIAN SCHOOL Bogin: Comrades! Are you ready to start the day? Arden: We moved to Moscow because of my dad’s work. He’s a journalist for The New York Times. Cliff: Say hello on the first day of school Kids: Hello. Arden: My family decided that we would all the kids go to Russian schools because we really wanted to live in the culture and get to know it. Danya: So, I didn’t know that much about Soviet schools. All I knew was that all the kids had to sit there very straight and they had to put one arm up when they want to raise their hand and it’s all very strict and the teachers were not nice and they would yell at the kids and call them stupid. I did know that I didn’t want to go to a school like that. Bogin: Soviet school was the school where there were only two opinions. The opinion of teacher which was the right one and all the others which were wrong. My vision was this school to be quite different. And the children must be taught to think. SLATE: IN 2007, THE LEVY CHILDREN WERE THE FIRST NON-RUSSIAN SPEAKING STUDENTS TO ATTEND THE SCHOOL. Bogin: They were put in a very very difficult situation because they were not prepared for learning in Russian. The methods are different. Everything is different and I had a lot of doubts. Arden: It was hard especially in the first year, there were times when I was like “Omigod get me out of here.” Julie: She’s not happy. Cliff: It’s alright. She’ll be fine. Arden: I was actually excited about learning Russian before I learned how it’s actually very hard to learn a different language. // I learned not to beat myself up for not being as good as the other kids because there was really nothing I could do about it. I just didn’t speak Russian and they did. Danya: Russian is a very hard language. People think that for kids it’s so easy to learn a language which is true to a certain extent. But I was 9, when I started learning the language and it was really hard. // After 4 months when I didn’t really speak the language... It was very frustrating because if you wanted to say something and you can’t it’s very annoying. // My brother Emmett who was 4,5 had a very different experience than I did because I don’t think he even noticed he was somewhere else besides the fact that people were speaking in a strange language he didn’t understand. Emmett: Sometimes I actually didn’t understand what I had to do. // I feel like don’t know this. I can’t do this. What is this for? Sometimes I’d just get frustrated. Danya: My parents were worried that it’d be too stressful for us. Arden: We came here from going to PS 321 a Brooklyn public elementary school. At PS 321, it was like, everyone’s a winner. The most important thing is to have fun, everybody plays, there’s no like first, second or third place. Here it’s like a different planet. Bogin: Out of 18 points. Here’s what you got. Danya: Here they send an entirely different message to the kids. They’re like “learning is hard. But, you have to do it. You have to get good grades, that’s just what you have to do.” Arden: In the hallway, they hang up the rating for the entire school to see and there’s like different groups. There’s the best, then the middle then the worst and then the “omigod, you’re really bad.”

By Clifford J. Levy

• Sept. 15, 2011

The phone rang, and my stomach clenched when I heard her voice. “Daddy? I want to go home,” said my 8-year-old daughter, Arden. Two hours earlier, I dropped Arden and her two siblings off at their new school in a squat building in a forest of Soviet-era apartment blocks on Krasnoarmeyskaya (Red Army) Street in Moscow. They hugged me goodbye, clinging a little too long, and as I rode the metro to my office, I said a kind of silent prayer to myself that they would get through the day without falling apart.

But Arden had just spent the minutes between class periods hiding in the bathroom so no one would see her crying. Finally, she composed herself, found her teacher and pantomimed that she needed to talk to me. “I don’t understand . . . anything,” she told me. I tried to respond with soothing words, but I had no idea what to do. You can tell your kid to tough it out when she transfers from one school to another in your hometown. This was different.

My three children once were among the coddled offspring of Park Slope, Brooklyn. But when I became a foreign correspondent for The New York Times, my wife and I decided that we wanted to immerse them in life abroad. No international schools where the instruction is in English. Ours would go to a local one, with real Russians. When we told friends in Brooklyn of our plans, they tended to say things like, Wow, you’re so brave. But we knew what they were really thinking: What are you, crazy? It was bad enough that we were abandoning beloved Park Slope, with its brownstones and organic coffee bars, for a country still often seen in the American imagination as callous and forbidding. To throw our kids into a Russian school — that seemed like child abuse.

Most foreign correspondents, like expatriates in general, place their children in international schools. Yet it seemed to us like an inspiring idea. After all, children supposedly pick up language quickly. So what if mine did not speak a word of Russian and could not find Russia on a map. They were clever and resilient. They would adapt, become fluent and penetrate Russia — land of Dostoyevsky and Tchaikovsky, the Bolshoi Ballet and the Hermitage Museum — in ways all but impossible for foreigners.

But the fantasy of creating bilingual prodigies immediately collided with reality. My children — Danya (fifth grade), Arden (third grade) and Emmett (kindergarten) — were among the first foreigners to attend Novaya Gumanitarnaya Shkola, the New Humanitarian School. All instruction was in Russian. No translators, no hand-holding. And so on that morning, as on so many days that autumn of 2007, I feared that I was subjecting them to a cross-cultural experiment that would scar them forever.

I told Arden that I would call her back, and then I called my wife, Julie Dressner. “What should we do?” I asked. We had decided together on a Russian school, but it would become a source of tension between us. Our children were miserable, which caused us to doubt moving abroad — and to sometimes turn on each other. I wanted to give the school more time and not demand more from the teachers. Julie was alarmed and thought that we had to do something. But Julie was frustrated by our options, short of pulling them out. At one point, after a lengthy discussion with several of the teachers, she walked out of the school nearly in tears. She was studying Russian, but she realized that she had missed much of what had been said. How can you help your children when you can barely communicate with their teachers?

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15 Activity-based ESL Websites for English Language Lab Sessions

When you hear the words “language lab,” do you think of corny or boring activities?

Nowadays, language labs have evolved to become much more modern and realistic. They can bring your English students closer to native-level speech and boost all their language skill areas by providing valuable exposure to the language in action.

Not only are these language labs immersive, but they’re also fun and will keep your students motivated while learning English!

In this post, you’ll find out what a language lab is, how they can be used in the classroom as well as 15 activity-based ESL websites for language labs !

What Is an English Language Lab Anyway?

But aren’t language labs expensive, how to use english language labs in the classroom, conduct guided study sessions, find the best language lab software, take advantage of recording technology, provide content with a range of accents, use visuals for engaging verb lessons, turn word documents into an interactive reading activity, assign transcription activities, evaluate your students’ abilities in multiple areas, use the data collected in language labs to create new lesson plans, 15 resources for english language labs, 1. studyladder, 3. randall’s esl cyber listening lab, 5. rong-chang, 6. words worth, 7. live language lab, 9. sanako study, 10. robotel, 11. duolingo for schools, 12. learn american english online, 13. microenglish, 14. talkenglish.com, 15. els seminole state college.

Download: This blog post is available as a convenient and portable PDF that you can take anywhere. Click here to get a copy. (Download)

An English language lab is very much like a run-of-the-mill computer lab. The main difference is the software installed on language lab computers—and perhaps the microphones and high-quality, noise-muffling headphones that are plugged into them.

Basically, it’s a place with computers for students to complete a variety of linguistic activities independently. These activities can include listening exercises, vocabulary work and fluency building.

Usually English language labs come equipped with a set program, where student progress is recorded within the program. Depending on the program, teachers can set up specific activities for each student or groups of students.

Some programs even allow you to record video lessons or audio exercises for students to view and listen to independently. A choice few will allow students to work from home, using their favorite devices.

The intention is for the teacher to be able to assign individualized lessons and activities to suit each student, thereby maximizing their progress.

The simple answer is: No!

Not every school has the budget to make such big purchases, particularly if they have to get new computers for their English language lab.

Besides, there are so many free and affordable resources out there that there is no need to purchase anything too complex unless you really feel the need to record all the data in one place and have additional bells and whistles.

Websites are great alternatives to the traditional language lab, and usually cover a wide variety of ESL activities for varying age ranges.

If you purchase a program, it might not have all the features you need or want, particularly if it’s an outdated one. But if you get a little creative, you can combine the use of multiple websites and online resources to get all the features of a more expensive, more traditional lab program.

Another reason websites are great is because you can assign extra activities to complete at home , though you may need to check in to ensure students are doing the assigned work. To demonstrate that they have completed it, you can have your students teach you the material, complete a worksheet or write a brief summary.

It’s pretty easy to figure out how your students are doing on the various language lab activities. It doesn’t take a lot of time either, so don’t worry if you don’t have a lot of prep time.

Some of the websites in this post feature a way to track what activities students have completed, and their scores for each one. With websites that don’t record student data, you can simply use a spreadsheet to record what students are doing.

For instance, give each student their own spreadsheet to tick off which website they’re working on and which activities they’ve completed. Once every few days (or whenever you want), go through the activities to test their knowledge.

If you want, you can even have a spot on your spreadsheet for students to reflect on how they did on each activity. If they feel like they didn’t fully get it, they can have the option to repeat it.

Once a student has moved on from an activity, simply update your own spreadsheet. You can even use your spreadsheet to record observations while walking around the language lab.

You can use your time in the ESL language lab to conduct guided study sessions. Instead of letting your class study whatever they want, you give them specific scenarios or problems to solve and then assess their performance.

The average language lab program comes with different activities for speaking, listening, reading, writing and grammar, so finding topics to quiz your students on is easy.

I find that guided study sessions work much better in language labs than in the traditional classroom setting. This is because language labs enable you as the teacher to exercise some control over the course content, while students can scour the internet for assistance solving whatever English problems you give them.

Not only does this get them reading and thinking in English, but you’ll also be helping to boost their research and critical thinking skills in the process.

Make sure that you consider the lesson objectives and choose a language lab software that will provide your students with the opportunity to practice English with relevant and fun materials. 

The best language lab software will be both immersive as well as engaging  for students.

Whether it’s for listening, reading, writing or general English comprehension and vocabulary practice, finding the best language lab software will expose students to native speakers and help them start actively using the language. 

Later in this post, you’ll find 15 fun activity-based ESL websites for language labs that you can start using in your lessons. From gamified learning on Duolingo to practicing English vocabulary, listening and comprehension with authentic English videos on FluentU, there are so many options you can try using in the classroom!

One of the best ways for students to improve their pronunciation and speaking skills is simply to hear how they talk in English.

In a language lab, students can record themselves talking and then listen to their own speech. This gives them the opportunity to hear and correct their own mistakes, and they’re also not put on the spot with everyone listening to them.

As the educator, you have access to the recordings, which means you can guide their listening and learning. Have your students record themselves speaking and then give feedback on their pronunciation , rhythm and stress patterns. If you want to have them read a script, provide audio samples of a native English speaker saying the same script.

One of the difficulties of teaching English is exposing students to the wide range of accents that exist in the Anglophone world. However, this is important, especially if your students are learning English for professional purposes where they’ll be encountering lots of different accents.

Language labs make it possible to quickly and efficiently introduce your students to American, English, Irish, Australian, Scottish and various other types of accents . Try providing clips from movies, regional news or interviews with celebrities they might recognize from different English-speaking countries.

It’s also a good idea to try throwing in some accents from people speaking English as a second language, like native French, Italian or Chinese speakers talking in English. 

Test your students’ grammar skills by creating a PowerPoint presentation filled with pictures of people performing different actions. Then have them make sentences describing the pictures using different forms of past, present and future verbs .

You can choose entertaining pictures so your students will really enjoy coming up with new and creative descriptions! 

This is a useful language lab activity that’ll not only boost your students’ reading skills but will also get them comfortable using basic technology in English.

Evaluate your students’ reading skills by giving them a Google Doc or Word file to edit that’s filled with various formatting instructions covering font size, color, bolding, italics and other simple changes. Depending on your students’ proficiency level, you might also include grammatical or spelling errors in the text for them to edit.

I did this exercise with a group of adult students who didn’t only enjoy the English practice, but also appreciated that the activity helped them in a professional capacity through exploring software in English.

Assess your students’ listening and writing skills by giving them English audio clips to transcribe in the lab.

The reason that I prefer to use transcribing activities in the ESL lab instead of in a classroom is that students tend to benefit from using headphones and controlling the pace of the exercise . Instead of you reading the same sentence over and over until your class is satisfied, each learner can simply repeat the audio clip as many times as they need.

You can then highlight any mistakes students made, and have them listen again and self-correct at your next language lab lesson.

Coming up with speaking and listening assessments in the classroom can be difficult, especially if they require students to be evaluated in a one-on-one setting. Using the ESL language lab enables you to evaluate your students more efficiently and effectively thanks to state-of-the-art software .

Take a look at what your students have completed and see how they’re progressing. These assessments can help you see if you need to review concepts students don’t understand, or if you’re ready to move on and teach more complex concepts if you see that students find certain activities too easy.

So don’t just focus on one of the activities mentioned above; be sure to switch up your language lab lesson plans frequently so that you’re targeting multiple skills.

If you see students consistently lacking in certain areas, use the feedback from the data you have to create lesson plans that target these concepts. If you see the majority of your students are interested in certain activities, you can incorporate more of those in your lessons. Do they love listening exercises? Make some lesson plans centered around those.

English language labs are not just a great source of inspiration for future lesson plans and activities, but they also keep students motivated!

The following are great websites and programs for all ages and levels. Go through some of the exercises to get a feel for them to see what’s best for your students—you can even check out most of them to see the value for yourself first!

One of the best, most expansive websites for teaching and learning, Studyladder has an incredible wealth of activities in subjects such as literacy, English language, math and art.

So, not only can you directly impart English language lessons, you can also teach CLIL lessons which help students naturally absorb English while learning about other subjects. Topics include phonics, skills to learn independent reading, listening exercises and grammar.

You can join for free as a teacher and browse through the activities before deciding which ones you want to assign to your students. You can also see which activities students have completed and their scores right on your dashboard.

Recommended activity: Persuasive Writing Task – Should Junk Food Advertising Be Banned? This activity covers three lessons. Students will learn how to write an expository essay, complete a reading activity to demonstrate their understanding of persuasive writing and write an essay, which can be handed into you as an assessment.

FluentU turns authentic English videos—like movie clips, music videos, vlogs and other engaging media—into personalized language lessons so students can hear vocabulary words and grammar concepts in natural use.

Student support includes subtitles with on-demand definitions, easy flashcard creation and adaptive quizzes. As the teacher, you’ll have access to analytics on every student, including what videos they watched and which questions they got right (and wrong) in their quizzes.

You can have students learn in class or assign FluentU videos as homework. You can even assign specific videos to specific students for a truly targeted learning experience.

FluentU is also available to access on iOS and Android .

Recommended activity: Let students choose their own video lesson . Students are more likely to learn and retain information on topics they care about, so letting them pick their English language lab task will help them focus and enjoy the lesson.

Randall is a very experienced ESL teacher and has compiled many listening activities on this comprehensive website.

If you’re a first-time visitor, visit the tutorial page for videos that guide you through the site so you can see the types of activities available, how to use listening exercises for grammar activities and a sample demo lesson.

This site also has handouts you can give to students to instruct them with navigating the site.

Recommended activity: Listening for Academic Purposes . Many of your students might need to take a TOEFL test, and these listening activities (like this one ) are a great way to give more purpose to English language labs.

This is another website developed by an ESL teacher, full of videos featuring different English speakers discussing various topics.

You can choose the skill level and how many speakers there are in a video. Students can choose to enable the subtitles for videos to help them follow along.

If you want students to practice listening to different accents, assign them videos with English speakers from various countries.

Recommended activity: One Minute Videos . These listening activities are short enough that most of your students will get through a few videos in the time allotted during English language lab time.

There are many types of listening exercises available on this website.

For beginners, it might be a good idea to head over to the  Easy Conversations section, where students can listen to an audio track and practice speaking what they hear.

Students can also read short stories and complete audio exercises that accompany them.

Recommended activity: Speak English Fast . These listening exercises have short clips so students can start applying what they learned from listening right away.

Many language labs are meant to be used in K–12 classrooms, though of course they can easily be repurposed for other ages. Words Worth, however, is specifically designed with adult English learners in mind.

The program works for any size group and is ideal for professional English learners or those looking for supplemental learning.

Words Worth is divided into three levels, each with 70 to 80 hours of content to help build vocabulary, communication skills and professional-level English.

Recommended activity: Listening Comprehension exercises. Learners can replay the audio as needed and answer questions to test their understanding.

You don’t need any special hardware for LIVE Language Lab, produced by SANS Inc. This program is designed to be accessed from practically any device.

Students can access a combination of video and audio content, as well as record their answers and thoughts. Teachers can add specific comments and feedback during any part of the recording.

This lab does not need a teacher’s constant presence, so it’s ideal for homework or self-study outside of the classroom.

Recommended activity: Pair or small group speaking practice. Because of LIVE Language Lab’s recording feature, you can give students direct and specific feedback on their speaking—whether they were talking to you or someone else.

Mac users rejoice—there is a language lab just for you.

From Swift Education comes DiLL, which uses networked Macs and teacher/student programs to deliver a fairly traditional language lab experience.

This digital-only program uses a central server to save student work in real-time and allows teachers to deliver content, pair students off, monitor the learning process and assist individual students.

Recommended activity: Speaking exercises. DiLL helps you group students in countless ways, so you can ensure they’re getting plenty of practice speaking with a variety of people.

Sanako worked with Oxford University Press to design a system that does more than just encourage repetition. This lab has an advanced text-to-speech program that allows users to paste any block of text into the program and have it read out in an authentic British English accent.

As the teacher, you can curate playlists and assign them to students, who can then listen and record their answers for you to evaluate.

Recommended activity: Multi-language skill activities. Students can listen to audio recordings and then fill in blanks within the transcript to practice both listening and spelling, for example.

If you want a program that’s easy to use and comes with a number of interesting built-in exercises, self-study and group work interfaces , as well as full teacher control, Robotel’s SmartClass HUB program is perfect for you.

What sets this program apart from other language lab software bundles is that it’s fully compatible with nearly any device, including Chromebooks and portable devices. This makes it great for smaller schools that want to implement a language lab but have a bring-your-own-device (BYOD) policy. Stop by Robotel’s YouTube channel and view some of their tutorials and exercise examples to learn more about this product.

Recommended activity: Group activities. With this language lab, you can assign your students some of the pre-made activities to work on in pairs or small groups. This will help encourage students to work together and practice the target language. 

Duolingo is one of the most popular language learning platforms around, and at least a few of your students have probably tried it, especially since it’s free! The platform for teachers allows you to give assignments to your students, track their progress on the app and even focus on specific skills.

Since the app models its lessons after games , this is one type of homework that your students might actually enjoy doing! 

Recommended activity: Vocabulary activities. Add your students to your class group and assign different vocabulary topics to them. Students will be able to complete fun activities, practicing vocabulary while competing with each other to win the most points and be on top of the leaderboard. 

The perfect complement to your grammar lessons, this page boasts 49 different exercises in its listening lab. Students are instructed to listen to the sentences and write the correct word in the blank.

Even if the content isn’t super snazzy, it’s purposeful and gives students the practice they need with sticky grammar concepts.

Activity topics include gerunds and phrases using “going to,” prepositions, possessive pronouns and more. Be careful, though, because the answers are on the same page and just a scroll away.

Recommended activity: Dictation activities . With these dictation exercises, students can practice their listening, writing and general comprehension skills in English. There are six different levels available for your students.

When you navigate to the exercise section of this site, you’ll see different categories of listening activities such as micro-listening .

What’s micro-listening? As they explain on their site, “micro-listenings are quick dictations and drills to improve your listening comprehension.”

While what you see there is great, it’s only a drop in the bucket of what you can find. If students access the exercise archives,  they’ll find hours of listening opportunities.

The content is engaging, with clips from movies and splashy photography. I also appreciate the heads up about the accent of the person in the clip and the ability to change the difficulty level of the drill.

Recommended activity: English idioms . Ask your students to choose an idiom, complete the listening fill-in-the-gaps activity and share their idioms with other people in their group.

Separated into levels, students have over 100 exercises to choose from on this site. For documentation, students will have to keep track of their lesson number since the exercises are not titled.

Once you choose a lesson, you’re given three steps to complete. I like that the questions and transcript are hyperlinked instead of all being immediately visible like you’ll see in lesson #25  at the advanced level (you have to click on “View Questions” to expand the questions section). This makes it a teensy bit more likely that students will listen and focus solely on the dialogue before diving into the questions.

There are even extra listening lessons that focus on pronunciation and grammar. It’s sure to get your students understanding and speaking English soon!

You can also download the TalkEnglish.com app “Learn to Speak English” on iOS and Android .

Recommended activity: Advanced listening activities . Assign your students listening tasks. Ask students to:

• Listen to the audio
• Answer the multiple-choice quiz
• Listen while reading the conversation dialogue

For an extra activity, ask students to work in pairs, reading out the dialogue from the listening activity to practice their speaking skills.

This page is produced by a state college, so it’s sure to make your learners feel a little more scholarly. They’ll listen to an audio recording and choose the correct sentence. It’s geared more toward older learners, with categories like consumer education and employment.

You’ll want to make sure your students read the instructions carefully before they get started. I’m embarrassed by how long it took me to figure out why I kept seeing the same question in every activity I chose.

Recommended activity: Telephone listening activities . To practice English listening and comprehension skills, you can assign your students a telephone listening activity. Students can listen to the audio and select the correct answer from the multiple-choice quiz. 

As you can see, English language labs definitely don’t have to be boring or costly.

With a little creativity and some engaging websites, your students will come to learn that using a computer is a really fun and effective way to learn English!

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5 fun Back-to-School projects for Teachers and Parents

As the new school year approaches, teachers and parents alike are gearing up for the back to school season. This is the perfect time to bring out your crafty sidekick, Cricut, and customize some school essentials and classroom decorations. Whether you’re looking to organize your classroom, personalize school supplies, or add a little flair to the first day of school, these five projects are sure to inspire.

Decorative Lunch Bags

In this project, you’ll use cardstock and Iron-on or Smart Iron-On (HTV) to make a paper bag Lunch Pal. Include an encouraging note for your student to let them know their lunch was made with love.

Custom Backpack

In this project, you’ll use printable iron-on for light fabrics to create a patch style backpack. Print-then-cut magical creatures or use your kiddo’s favorite drawings.

Personalized T-shirts

In these projects, you’ll use iron-on to make these shirts. Change the shapes, text, fonts and colors to personalize them even more.

Pencil Holders

This project uses cardstock to create a 3D crayon box. Personalize each crayon-shaped box with your students’ names and top the pencils with a welcome note to your classroom.

Custom Caddies

In this project, you’ll use vinyl to create a decal for table caddies (or any other smooth surface). These are great to organize and keep tidy all the shared supplies by each table in your classroom.

Make these Back to School projects in Design Space

Proud Mom School Shirt

Teach Love Inspire Shirt

Table Number Caddies

Print then Cut Kids Backpack

There are endless possibilities for both teachers and parents looking to make the school season special. These back-to-school projects are fun, practical, and help create a more organized, welcoming, and personalized environment for students. We’d love to see all your projects, so be sure to share them in Design Space and tag us in your creations on social using #cricut.

If you are a teacher or a school administrator, learn more about Cricut and our exclusive discounts at Cricut Teachers .

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8 fun and easy Back-to-School crafts for parents

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Vince Vaughn’s politics make him one of Hollywood’s most fascinating stars

The self-described libertarian has occasionally surprised audiences by shaking hands with trump and calling for more guns in american schools – but his worldview has always run through his acting projects, writes adam white , and made him uniquely intriguing on screen.

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I n a recent interview, the actor Vince Vaughn expressed wariness at being asked so often about his politics. “I’ll finish the political thing, because I think you’re interested,” he snarked, in response to a not particularly subtle question about gun legislation from The New York Times ’s David Marchese. Later, when Marchese asked Vaughn about more of his stances, he replied, courteously but firmly, that he gets asked far more about not believing in gun control than those who do. “There’s a consistency with it,” he added. “It’s like that becomes a focal point.”

In fairness to writers like Marchese, it’s no real surprise that politics dominate Vaughn’s newer interviews. As Vaughn’s mainstream career has dipped, in tandem with an industry that’s lost interest in making mid-budget comedies for adults – films that were once so synonymous with him, such as Old School or Wedding Crashers – his views have become more central to his public image. Unless you were one of the handful of people to see the horror comedy Freaky or the Kristen Bell vehicle Queenpins , the last thing you may have seen Vaughn in was grainy footage of him shaking Donald Trump’s hand at a football game . (That image sparked a mini firestorm in January 2020, before everyone started violently sneezing and then some other stuff happened.)

Vaughn has since clarified that he is a libertarian (so neither allied with the Republican nor Democrat parties), but next to the ubiquitous centre-left liberalism of Hollywood, it still makes him an outlier. Likewise, that he’s been happy to collaborate on documentary series with conservative blowhard Glenn Beck, called for US schools to be armed with guns, and voiced support for politician Ron Paul, who has run for president as both a Republican and a libertarian. Plus, his movies have always been a bit of a clue when it comes to his worldview – they are typically tales of white male bloviating, of a kind that has come to define right-wing politics. That unspoken thread running through his professional choices, mixed in with what we know of Vaughn as a person, has long made him one of the most fascinating – and largely underappreciated – actors in Hollywood.

Vaughn, a man with an intimidating 6ft 4in height and a voice on perpetual fast-forward, found fame as a professional showboater. The buddy comedy Swingers , his 1996 breakthrough, captured and then inspired a particular type of man – the cocky, loutish motormouth who doesn’t so much demand your attention as wear you down until you acquiesce. Later, he’d play a run of fratty man-children in mid-Noughties comedies such as Dodgeball , The Break-Up and the aforementioned Old School and Wedding Crashers . He was the face of an era in film (and, broadly speaking, bro humour entirely) that he’s spent his most recent press tour – for his new Apple TV+ series Bad Monkey , which begins on Wednesday – fondly memorialising.

There was always something magnetic about him, too. Vaughn’s on-screen obnoxiousness could be potent, his personality so loud and outsized that his co-stars would seem to bend to his will. It’s no wonder he was always paired up with smaller, whinier men – your Owen Wilsons, Will Ferrells or Dave Francos in the likes of The Internship , Old School and Unfinished Business , respectively – just to balance out the natural order of things.

Those films tend to get written about now as slightly regressive: deeply male endeavours that reduce women to window-dressing and worship a kind of slovenly juvenilia. I do get it, to an extent – anyone who has sat through the last gasps of Vaughn’s studio movie career, films such as Couples Retreat and The Dilemma , will have no problem with this description. But many of his earlier hits – The Break-Up and Wedding Crashers , specifically – are also quietly prescient when it comes to masculinity in the modern era. They revolve around men stuck in a kind of perpetual adolescence, who find themselves at odds with worlds that seem to be leaving them behind.

These themes have only deepened as Vaughn has entered his grizzled character actor era. In recent years he has worked consistently with S Craig Zahler, a filmmaker drawn to lurid tales of bruised masculinity and white-male entitlement. In 2017’s Brawl in Cell Block 99 , Vaughn plays a man forced into a life of thuggish violence after losing his job. In 2018’s Dragged Across Concrete , he is a cop suspended after brutalising a drug dealer. (Just to drive home the film’s gleeful provocations, Mel Gibson plays his partner.)

Both films have been described as departures for Vaughn, but if anything they merely reinforce his interests as an actor. Vaughn’s characters don’t so much express anger at change, but at least discomfort with it. Sometimes they grow and learn, and become better. Other times they don’t – they plant themselves in grievance and bitterness, as if the world owes them something. These are men who also help make sense of Vaughn’s politics, which have never (at least publicly) veered into petty nonsense, and seem confined to those very libertarian ideas of self-sufficiency and personal autonomy.

Sure, you may not agree with him. But there’s something undeniably compelling about an actor who has always stood his ground, quietly if not ambiguously, on the fringes of an industry largely defined by its identikit politics. It’s no wonder people keep asking him about it.

‘Bad Monkey’ streams on Apple TV+ from 14 August

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Science Experiments for Language Learning

Posted by Erika Keller on 6/15/2022 8:00:00 AM

The summer break seems to fly by each year, but day to day, it can be challenging to find meaningful activities to do with our children that are both easy to execute and appeal to the whole family. Science experiments allow you numerous opportunities to target your child’s speech and language skills. Both receptive (understanding language) and expressive (producing language) language skills can be targeted during science experiment activities right in your kitchen! Below are a few well-loved experiment ideas to help get you started!

Rain Cloud Experiment

Materials needed: Shaving cream, glass cup with water, and food coloring.

Directions:

• First, squirt a bit of shaving cream on top of the water.
• Next, drip the food coloring on top of the shaving cream.
• Lastly, watch as it begins to “rain” when the “cloud” gets too heavy to hold the water.

Language skill areas that can be addressed:

Following directions: “First, put the cup under the faucet, then turn on the water”; “Put the food coloring in after you add the shaving cream.”

Answering WH questions: “Where do we put the shaving cream?”; “What does shaving cream feel/look/smell like?”, “Who filled up the cup with water?”

Inferencing/Problem-solving: “What do you think will happen?”; “Why did it start to rain?”, “What could we do if we can’t find a clean glass cup?”; “Why do we need to be careful with a glass cup?”; “How can we tell that it is going to rain?”

Vocabulary: “ What is another word that means the same as heavy ?”; “What is a faucet ?”; “Can you think of 2 meanings for the word watch ?”

Narrative language: “Tell me about a time that you got stuck in the rain”; “Tell me about what you like to do on rainy days at home”; “How does the rain in the cup look different from the rain that comes from the sky?”

Skittles Rainbow Experiment

Materials needed: Skittles, ¼ cup of warm water, and a white plate.

• First, place the Skittles in a single row around the edge of the plate. You may choose to make a pattern with the colors.
• Next, pour warm water in the center of the plate until the water covers the entire plate, as well as the bottle portion of the skittle.
• Lastly, watch for the rainbow to appear!

Following directions: “Put the skittles on the plate, then add the water”; “Put the orange skittles next to the purple skittles”; “After you fill the cup with water, pour it in the center of the plate.”

Answering WH questions: “ What color skittles did you put on your plate?”; “ Where did we pour the water”; “ What temperature did we need to make the water?”; “ When did the rainbow appear?”

Inferencing/Problem-solving: “Why do you think the water had to be warm?”; “Why are the bottom of the skittles white now?”; “Why did the water turn different colors?”

Vocabulary: “What do I mean by edge of the plate?”; “What is the opposite of warm ?”; “Can you think of two meanings for the word row ?”

Narrative language: “Describe what you see on the plate”; “Tell me about a time that you saw a rainbow in the sky”; “Can you explain to your sister/brother how we made the rainbow using the words first, next, then, & last?”

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The University of Edinburgh Open Educational Resources

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Online Experiments for Language Scientists

Many areas in the language sciences rely on collecting data from human participants, from grammaticality judgments to behavioural responses (key presses, mouse clicks, spoken responses). While data collection traditionally takes place face-to-face, recent years have seen an explosion in the use of online data collection: participants take part remotely, providing responses through a survey tool or custom experimental software running in their web browser, with surveys or experiments often being advertised on crowdsourcing websites like Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) or Prolific. Online methods potentially allow rapid and low-effort collection of large samples, and are particularly useful in situations where face-to-face data collection is not possible (e.g. during a pandemic); however, building and running these experiments poses challenges that differ from lab-based methods.

This course, developed by Prof Kenny Smith , from the School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences, provides a rapid tour of online experimental methods in the language sciences, covering a range of paradigms, from survey-like responses (e.g. as required for grammaticality judgments) through more standard psycholinguistic methods (button presses, mouse clicks) up to more ambitious and challenging techniques (e.g. voice recording, real-time interaction, iterated learning).  These course materials, which include weekly readings and programming tasks, also explore the main platforms for reaching paid participants, e.g. MTurk and Prolific, and discuss some of the challenges around data quality and ethics.

The course materials are released under a CC BY licence and are available on Github: Online Experiments for Language Scientists .

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50 STEM Activities for Kids of All Ages and Interests

Inspire the innovators of tomorrow.

These days, STEM learning is more important than ever. Science, technology, engineering, and math are the keys to many modern careers, so a good grounding in them from an early age is a must. The best STEM activities for kids are hands-on, leading students to cool innovations and real-world applications . Here are some of our favorites, with challenges and experiments that will really get kids thinking about how STEM plays a part in their everyday lives.

What is STEM?

To ensure activities are purposeful and aligned to standards, check out this quick video on what STEM means and how to relate it to your teaching. 

Want some quick challenges to try with elementary students? Get free printable stem challenge cards for grades K-5:

• Kindergarten STEM Challenges
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For more STEM activities for kids across a range of subjects, take a look at these ideas.

FEATURED PICK

1. Add STEM bins to your classroom

Prepare for a wide variety of STEM activities for kids with these cool bins . STEM bins encourage individualized, hands-on, maker exploration and get students thinking creatively, inventively, and imaginatively.

2. Egg Drop Challenge

Test various types of materials to keep an egg safe when being dropped from a tall height. Compare and contrast the differences in designs and materials used to prevent the egg from cracking.

Check out these different ways you can try the egg drop challenge.

3. Engineer a marble roller coaster

Explore potential and kinetic energy by building a roller coaster. Notice how the height of the hills change the motion and speed of the coaster. For an additional challenge, time how fact the marble travels through the coaster. 

4. Find ways to slow soil erosion

Notice how land moves with water erosion. Have students engineer a solution that will slow down or stop the soil from moving when water is poured. 

5. Use LEGO Bricks to build a marble maze

Students can engineer a marble maze using LEGO bricks on top of a base plate. Ensure the marble can pass through lanes and have a clear start and finish. 

6. Build a game out of recycled materials

Using recycled materials, have students plan, write rules and create a game. Test designs by playing games to ensure they work and rules are fair. 

7. Design a plant life cycle model

Help students recognize how living things grow and change by designing a model to represent a plant’s life cycle. These can be built out of LEGO bricks, play dough, or even use this plant diagram as a starting point. Also, check out these Google Slides we put together to use while teaching students about plant life cycles.

8. Engineer a helping prosthetic

Prosthetics are special devices that help people who are missing a body part, like an arm or a leg. They act like a replacement for the missing part, helping the person to move and do everyday activities. Engineer a paper hand to simulate how a hand moves and how a prosthetic might be designed and built for those who are in need of this tool. 

9. Understand the importance of water

Learn how water moves and is recycled throughout the Earth with the Water Cycle. Teach students what the water cycle is using these Google Slides and worksheets we put together. Then, have students draw with permanent marker on a ziplock bag the cycle. Add water with a few drops of food color, hang in a window with sunlight, and make observations for a few days and notice how the water moves and changes. 

10. Devise an amazing marble maze

Marble mazes are one of students’ favorite STEM activities! You can provide supplies like straws and paper plates for their project. Or let them use their imaginations and create marble mazes from any materials they can think of.

11. Build a bottle rocket

Build a bottle rocket, and learn how molecules act under pressure when applied to launching a rocket. Connect with Newton’s 3rd Law of Motion and how every action as an equal and opposite reaction. Connect with watching rockets being launched by NASA and how the same concept is applied as they are being sent up into space. 

12. Understand how volcanoes erupt

Learn more about Earth’s processes and how they change with the help of volcanoes. Teach about the different types of volcanoes and where some are still active here on Earth. Simulate how volcanoes erupt by building a volcano and making it explode with the help of baking soda and vinegar. Watch this video and grab worksheets we put together for you. 

13. Retell a fairy tale using stop motion

Using LEGO bricks, play dough and any items on hand, have students retell a fairy tale using stop motion animation. Add an extra challenge where students aren’t allowed to use sound or words. Their entire video needs to visually and clearly retell the story. 

14. Build a solar oven

Learn about the value of solar energy by building an oven that cooks food without electricity. Enjoy your tasty treats while discussing ways we can harness the energy of the sun and why alternative energy sources are important. Check out this video we put together to help you build a solar oven. 

15. Build an Insect Hotel

Understand the importance of pollinators and helpful bugs by building an insect hotel and place near a school or local garden. Recycled materials work well for this project. 

16. Construct a catapult

Apply concepts of potential and kinetic energy by building a catapult using popsicle sticks, rubber bands and plastic spoons. Practice aim by changing the fulcrum and launch pom poms into a basketball hoop that students engineer. 

17. Design a landform

Have students build a model of land and bodies of water found on Earth with LEGO bricks. Many interesting landforms can be found using Google Earth, which adds another element of wonder. 

18. Build a solar powered house

Discuss the difference between renewable and nonrenewable resources and how solar power is a type of renewable resource. Build a home and add a small LED light that can illuminate with a small solar panel. 

19. Create a night light

Learn how circuits work by lighting up a small LED light by engineering a paper circuit with copper foil tape and a coin cell battery. Have students design a night light that can be placed on top by building with recycled materials. 

20. Nature’s natural protection

Learn why eggs are a natural way to project the living thing that is born inside. Have students make predictions as to what will happen if an egg is placed in vinegar and is left there for a certain amount of time. Check out this video and experiment we put together here . Discuss why animal parents choose specific locations to lay their eggs to help them withstand harmful elements.

21. Engineer a bridge

Here’s another one of those classic STEM activities that really challenge kids to use their skills. Build a bridge with Popsicle sticks and other materials, then compete to see which can bear the most weight.

22. Forage and build a bird nest

Birds build incredibly intricate nests from materials they find in the wild. Take a nature walk to gather materials, then see if you can build a sturdy, comfy nest of your own. 

23. Build parachutes to test air resistance

Learn more about the physics behind air resistanceHave students build a parachute out of different types of materials and test which makes the most effective parachute.

24. Engineer a shelter to face the weather

Have students engineer a small shelter that can withstand various weather such as rain, snow and wind. Use a soaked sponge to represent rain, glitter to represent snow, and a fan to represent the wind. 

25. Build a shade structure

Teach students how shade is created by blocking the direct rays from the sun and how shade can be helpful to people and animals. Provide students with pony beads that change in the sun, then create a shade structure that will prevent the beads from changing color. If going outside isn’t possible, a flashflight can work well for this challenge. 

26. Take action against climate change

Use this student project plan to inspire your students to lead a comprehensive climate action campaign in their community. Use these provided teaching slides and project ideas to building background while also how to make a change in their community. 

27. Brew up your own slime

Chances are good your students already love making and playing with slime. Turn the fun into an experiment by changing the ingredients to create slime with a variety of properties—from magnetic to glow-in-the-dark!

We have a variety of slime videos to check out: 

We Put 4 Slime Recipes to the Test! Which One Was Best?

Glitter Slime

Fluffy Slime

Butter Slime

2-Ingredient Slime

28. Engineer your name

Using unifix cubes, or other math manipulatives, have students build their name. For an extra challenge, have students build their middle and last names. 

29. Build using flashcards

Have flashcards with fun images sitting in your closet? These can serve as inspiration for a building station in your classroom. Students can build using LEGO bricks or any other manipiulatives you have on hand. 

30. Launch a straw rocket

Create a tube out of paper that is slightly larger than a straw and seal one end shut. Cut out rocket shapes out of paper and tape to the paper tube. Blow into the bottom of the straw to launch the rocket. Observe and discuss the physics of rockets while also measuring the distance of each of the rockets made. 

31. Create pixel art

Pixels are the tiny dots that are on any screen that are put together to make the images we see. Have students visualize what simple pictures may look like in pixels by building with unifix cubes. 

32. Learn about butterfly migration

Print out a large world map and locate where monarch butterflies live most of the year. Then locate where they migrate to as the weather gets colder. Have students code a robot to travel the same migration path as monarch butterflies. As a bonus, check out these free monarch butterfly teaching slides and worksheets to add to the lesson. 

33. See water pollution in action

Learn about the challenges of cleaning up polluted water sources like rivers and lakes with this interesting outdoor science activity. Pair it with a visit to a local water treatment plant to expand the lesson.

34. Test your local water quality

Once you’ve “cleaned up” your water, try testing it to see how clean it really is! Then head out to test other types of water. Kids will be fascinated to discover what’s in the water in their local streams, ponds, and puddles. Student water-testing kits are readily available online.

35. Build a Space Rover

Explore how rovers are sent up into space to explore locations, like Mars, to learn more about the location and send information back down to Earth. Have students engineer a model of a space rover and ensure students add elements that allow the rover to perform certain tasks like taking photos and picking samples to examine. Check out this article for more Mars Rover activity ideas. 

36. Build a solar eclipse viewer

While solar eclipses don’t happen every year, test different ways to safely view one if one were to arrive. Design variations of a solar eclipse viewer and notice how each design changes how the solar eclipse can be viewed. Check out this video for an example here and corresponding worksheets. 

37. Create giant bubbles

It’s easy to mix your own soap bubble solution with just a few ingredients. Let kids experiment to find the best proportion of ingredients to create giant bubbles, long-lasting bubbles, and other variations. Check out this video and free worksheet we put together with a recipe and steps to make a giant-bubble wand

38. Construct a small bubble wand

Using pipe cleaners, students can design small bubble wands and blow bubbles using the same recipe above. Compare and contrast how bubbles made with the pipe cleaner wands compare to the large bubble wand. 

39. Have a STEM scavenger hunt

Get students up and moving by writing down different items they can build using manipulatives you already have in the classroom. Students will find a plastic egg hidden in the classroom, go and build the time listed, re-hide their egg, then go and find another egg hidden in the classroom. 

40. Protect a house from a flood

Learn about different ways floods can enter an area then have students create an invention to keep a house safe from the flooding water. Make sure to have towels handy for any spills along the way! 

41. Construct a wall maze

Tape recycled materials to the wall with painter’s tape to create a parth for a marble to travel down the wall and land in a cup on the floor. Notice how different angles change the direction and speed of the marble. 

42. Refine mapping skills by designing an amusement park

For this cross-curricular activity, students investigate the parts of a map by creating an amusement park. After they create their map, they do a detailed drawing and write about one of their ride designs. Then they design an all-access park pass. So many STEM activities in one!

43. Design a Rube Goldberg Machine

Talk about chain reactions and how when one event starts, it will eventually trigger the next and so on until the final task is completed. Connect to other types of chain reactions that happen in nature, like food chains, climate change and life cycles. 

44. Cast a tall shadow

Explore light and shadow by experimenting with the angle of their flashlight to see how tall of a shadow they’re able to cast. Add a bonus connection to Groundhog Day and how this holiday is centered around a groundhog seeing its shadow! Her

45. Host a Glow Party

Discuss how different things in the sky can be observed during the day, night or both. Host a class glow party to celebrate things seen during the night with various glowing activities. 

46. Give kids a Maker Cart and a pile of cardboard

You don’t need a whole lot of fancy supplies to create a STEM Cart or makerspace. Scissors, tape, glue, wood craft sticks, straws—basic items like these combined with a stack of cardboard can inspire kids to create all sorts of amazing projects! See how these STEM activities work here.

47. Design Stained Glass 

Using examples from the real-world, allow students to observe the patterns and shapes used to create the intricate designs. Then using tissue paper and wax paper, students can create their stained glass design. 

48. Start a school robotics team

Coding is one of the most valuable STEM activities you can include in your classroom plans. Set up a school robotics club and inspire kids to embrace their newfound skills! Learn how to set up your own club here.

49. Embrace the Hour of Code

The Hour of Code program was designed as a way to get all teachers to try just one hour of teaching and learning coding with their students. Originally, the Hour of Code event was held in December, but you can organize yours any time . Then, continue to learn using the huge amount of resources on Hour of Code’s website .

50. Allow students to free build

Sometimes just giving kids different manipulative options and some time to build and explore is exactly what kids need. Let them create a challenge and see what they come up with! 

What are your favorite STEM activities for kids? Come share in the We Are Teachers HELPLINE group on Facebook .

Plus, get 20+ free stem posters for your classroom .

You Might Also Like

25 Quick and Easy Fifth Grade STEM Challenges (Free Printable!)

Give them a few simple supplies and watch their minds grow. Continue Reading

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The Experiment: Spain: Spanish Language & Culture

• Reviews (23)
• Interviews (1)

Program Details

Certificate of completion, Health insurance

About Program

Begin your Experiment in Spain’s capital, Madrid, exploring the famous sights, museums, and neighborhoods while trying authentic foods such as paella and pulpo. Take a day trip to Toledo, the “Imperial City,” known for its 2,000+ years of history, before continuing on to the province of Andalucía in southern Spain, where you will dive into intensive Spanish language classes.

Your Spanish language immersion continues with a stay in an Andalusian town, where you will enjoy home-cooked meals and visit local markets, beaches, and cafés with your friends and host family. Experience Spain’s outdoors with activities in beautiful natural landscapes.

Video and Photos

Diversity & Inclusion

Bipoc support, lgbtqia+ support, sustainability, ethical impact, program highlights.

• Improve your Spanish with language training and daily practice with your homestay family.
• Learn about the culture and history of Spain through visits to renowned museums and sites, such as Plaza de la Encarnación and the historic Hapsburgs District.
• Go on language-based excursions throughout the city with the guidance of your local teachers.
• Explore the surrounding area with your group and enjoy a range of activities, from hiking nature trails to kayaking at a reservoir.
• Join cultural activities, such as flamenco classes with local teachers and a visit to Alhambra.

Program Reviews

• 5 rating 91.3%
• 4 rating 8.7%
• 3 rating 0%
• 2 rating 0%
• 1 rating 0%
• Support 4.75
• Housing 4.6
• Safety 4.85

Spain: Language and Culture

Upon beginning the program, there are many resources available for my family and I to get all the information I needed. Along with this, we had a personal online helper, which we could email about any questions – I definitely used that to my advantage. Applying for the program was fairly easy through their website. The in country staff was amazing and cooperative with the students along with my personal leaders who were very caring. I made many friendships with a variety of American and Spanish people. The immersion of culture was a quick paced environment, but enjoyable nonetheless. I was able to meet many residents of the village I stayed in, this helped me further my Spanish and push me out of my bubble. I was able to learn many new words and try a variety of different foods. I am so happy to have had this experience!

• Meeting new people
• Practicing spanish
• Different foods may not be what you are used to
• Culture shock

I absolutely loved my trip to Spain. I found that the interactions we had with our Spanish peers were one of a kind, and we connected with them more deeply than I could have imagined. I appreciated the intense cultural immersion we had, and I truly feel like I know Spain and Spanish culture. I especially liked that I walked away from this trip feeling like I could give my family a tour around Granada or Guadix if I wanted to. I was really able to get to know the places we stayed in and the people we got to know. I would definitely recommend this trip to others!

• Cultural and Language immersion
• close connection with Spanish peers
• I got a little sick

Amazing Experience

This was undoubtedly one of the best experiences of my young life. The whole application was extremely easy and the team was amazing. I got to visit places I could never imagine and meet incredible people. Honestly, I didn't want to leave. Going to Granada and Guadix gave contrasting yet starking experiences of spanish life. The people I met in spain are some of the most amazing and inspiring I have ever met and I am still in contact with many even now. Throughout the trip I also got assilamed into spanish culture. My spanish is hundreds of times better now than it was before and I can now confirm that siestas are amazing.

The first half of the trip involved our group going to the cities of Madrid, Toledo, and Granada. We spent a few days in Madrid getting orientated and meeting our amazing guides from CELEI. We ate some typical spanish meals and toured the city. Next we went to the historic city of Toledo which is one of the most beautiful cities I've ever seen. We wandered around the city and saw the cathedral which was stunning. after leaving Toledo we went to Granada which is where we were for two weeks. There we met local kids and did all kinds of activities in the city. We saw the ancient alhambra and went to a flamenco show among other things. We also took part in interactive spanish lessons where we would go one the street and learn spanish first hand.

After taking day trips to Cordoba to see the cathedral-mosque which was one of the highlights of the trip, we went to guadix where we took flamenco lessons along with spanish cooking and pottery lessons all in spanish. In guadix we spent a ton of time with the local kids and went out to the city for food or to play soccer a lot. In guadix the focus was much more about Spanish culture and we spent more time exploring culinary and home life aspects. We even spent a day with a spanish family.

As a whole it was an amazing experience and one I will never forget and I thank the people at the experiment as well as the amazing teachers and guides at CELEI. I would highly recommend this program for someone looking to have an immersive experience in spain.

• Super immersive
• Great connections
• Good starting point
• language barrier
• Very very very hot

Absolutely Worth It

By far the best experience I have ever had the privilege of being apart of. Not only did I gain a better ability to speak Spanish and experience another culture, but I also was gifted 5+ absolutely amazing role models, who opened my mind and altered my ways of thinking for the better. We visited the most beautiful cities and sights: Madrid, Toledo, Granada, Guadix, Cordoba, Castril, and the beautiful Alhambra palace and fortress. There was definitely a lot of walking, which I enjoyed; In Granada, most of the neighborhood streets are paved in river rock and the architecture is stunning, the 100+ years old stone walls, the archways, and homes, everything was absolutely breathtaking. Our residence had the most beautiful view of the Alhambra. While in Granada we went to school, both teachers were absolute delights, they were understanding, funny, and really cared about our educations and well beings, Im really grateful I was able to meet them. During our stay in Granada we did many activities: our guides took us on a graffiti tour of the neighborhood ( the artwork was skillful and beautifully crafted, the locals admired the murals greatly), we walked up to a gorgeous viewpoint to watch the sunset over the entire city, hiked a mountain path to overlook the landscape and get to know some of the local teens, traveled to the river to have a survival skills class, visited the Alhambra and toured the grounds with an amazing and knowledgeable tour guide, visited multiple Cathedrals, and roamed the neighborhood and shops.

While Granada was packed with adventure, Guadix was equally great. Our activities included Flamenco, Art, Cooking, and Ceramics classes, we spent our days with local teens from the area, whether we were swimming,on the trampoline, playing connect four or uno, or just hanging out, we were always making new friends and getting to know each other. Due to Covid-19 we were unable to have host families, but we did each go with our friend/s to their homes and spent the day with them and their families. On the last day of our stay in Guadix we all participated in a talent show for the residents living where we were staying, there was skits, dancing, and music.

While on this trip I made some amazing friends and even more amazing role models, people who truly wanted to help others and see change in their communities. We were taught to "Act Local, Think Global" when it comes to making a change in our communities. I left this trip with a completely different mindset than I had come with. I have truly grown so much as a person because of this trip and I could not be more thankful to The Experiment for allowing me to experience something I never thought I could.

• Amazing Architecture
• Breath Taking Views
• Endless Adventure
• Dry Heat, but its way better than Humidity
• Lots of walking, which is good, but fair warning
• Most places dont have AC

A once in a lifetime opportunity

My time in Spain was truly life changing. I learned so much about an amazing, culture rich country, about what life is like for kids my age there, and about myself. The Spanish classes I took were unlike any others I had ever taken. I found them particularly helpful because we were building our vocabulary while also discussing things such as the history, government, and society of Spain. I definitely felt my Spanish vocabulary and comfort level speaking it increase, and it has even more since I've continued to practice it. I also made so many great friends along the way. The other Americans I traveled with and I became such a close knit group and we still continue to talk every day. In addition to them, the groups of Spanish kids we met there have become some of my best friends. I think one thing that made the experience so unique was being able to not only learn from them about their lives, but also to teach them about us and help them speak English while they helped us speak Spanish. The trip taught me more about my likes, dislikes, what I can actually do when pushed outside of my comfort zone, and as soon as I visited Granada, I knew I had to go back there. Because of the trip, I have decided I want to do a year abroad of college at the University of Granada, where one of my wonderful group leaders did the same. The Experiment in International Living was a life changing experience that I think more people should try.

• Improved language skills
• Connections around the world
• A deeper cultural understanding of a new place
• Food wasn't always great
• Long time away from family
• Can be tiring some days

Best time ever

The trip overall was the best thing that has ever happened to me. I got to meet the most amazing people from all around the U.S and Spain. I feel so lucky to have met them. We all created such a great bond with each other. They have become some of my best friends for life. Same goes with the group leaders. They were so kind and nice to all of us and always made sure that we were having fun and safe. I miss them more and more everyday. We are all planning on meeting up again. I was really surprised of how much I immersed into the culture. This trip has made me feel more confident to meet new people and try new things. I will always cherish the memories I I have about this trip. If I could do this trip all over again. I would. I am so grateful for such an amazing experience.

Amazing: Would not take it back

I had such an amazing time abroad. Coming in, I was admittedly nervous, but I have never met a more supportive, kind group in my life. We were all so enthusiastic and willing to learn and explore, and the group leaders were so kind and really ensured that we had fun. The scheduled activities ensured that we found out the history and were showed some classic sites, while the freedom allowed for us to travel in small groups and live like locals, finding miradors around the cities, finding places to buy souvenirs, or just to buy snacks. I made new best friends, whether it be with spaniards or with americans in my group. I will forever have a group of people that shared this amazing experience with me, and i will forever keep them in my life. I can't wait to go back some time.

Most Memorable Month of my life

This program allowed me to have the most amazing summer of my life. The leaders were amazing people who were so helpful, fun, and loving. They wanted to make sure we had a great time and they really succeeded. The experience was shared with an awesome group of other teenagers. We all shared our memories together and we became close super quickly. Overall, The Experiment does everything they can to ensure we really enjoy our trip. I highly recommend. Spain is amazing and it is so great to be able to make memories with some of your new best friends. The experience was overall amazing and I would recommend it to anybody who has never traveled overseas. It was my first time travelling overseas and I'm so glad I did it with The Experiment. Nothing could have been better for first travellers.

Questions & Answers

Alumni interviews.

These are in-depth Q&A sessions with verified alumni.

Claire Holmes

Why did you choose this program?

I chose this program because I had been taking Spanish classes in school since my elementary years. I was most comfortable with Spanish language and felt more confident about speaking it rather than going to a country where I did not speak any of the languages. I also had been learning a little bit about Spanish culture in class and I found it so interesting and beautiful and I loved their lifestyle and their sense of community, as well as their music.

What did your program provider (or university) assist you with, and what did you have to organize on your own?

The Experiment of International Living pretty much helped me with everything. I was helped throughout the whole entire application process, which was thankfully not as complicated as I thought it was going to be.

I also got to do an in person interview with an EIL employee, as well as attend an in person pre-program orientation that really helped me prepare for my trip.

What is one piece of advice you'd give to someone going on your program?

Don’t doubt yourself. Not even for a second. Embrace the new place, the new possibilities, and the new people. Branch out and form bonds with not just your leaders and your group (although that’s very important) but also with any one else you meet on this trip. Don’t be afraid to try out your language skills, but also don’t be afraid to truly be yourself. These people will accept you for you and it’s a really special opportunity.

What does an average day/week look like as a participant of this program?

An average day would consist of getting up, having breakfast at the hotel (unless you’re staying with a host family at that time), then getting ready to spend the day out and about doing activities, including visiting museums, churches, temples and gardens.

Meal times included local restaurants with your group and their leaders, or the opportunity to split up and venture out on your own to find food or just visit the local shops. Every day was filled with cultural immersion that opened ones mind and allowed them to learn in a much more personal way.

Going into your experience abroad, what was your biggest fear, and how did you overcome it? How did your views on the issue change?

My biggest fear was how long I felt like I was going be gone and how I would have to stay there, even if I didn’t like it or didn’t get a long with my group. But that fear entirely went away after a couple days because of how incredibly beautiful the country was and especially because of how awesome and kind my group leaders and my group members were. Without each and every one of them, I know the trip wouldn’t have even come close to how amazing it was and how happy it made me.

Is there something you would have done differently?

If there was something I would’ve done differently, I would have practiced much more Spanish before going, and while I was there in Spain, I would have tried even harder to communicate with the locals and broaden my own understanding of the language. That definitely would have helped me become even more closer with the host siblings, who were very fun to be around.

About The Experiment in International Living

Other Programs You Might Like

The Experiment: France: Cultural Discovery

The Experiment: Japan: Language & Culture

The Experiment: Japan: Anime & Manga

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Bilingual Education: The Failed Experiment?

On this page, historical background, policy implications, acknowledgements.

In this excerpt from their book The Latino Education Crisis: The Consequences of Failed Social Policies ( Harvard University Press , 2009), Drs. Patricia Gándara and Frances Contreras discuss the history and implications of the debate around bilingual education in the U.S. and offer an in-depth look at the research reviews that have frequently been cited in those conversations.

Teaching children in two languages so that they can be competent learners and successfully acquire English has become over time such a hot-button issue that many people are reluctant to use the term "bilingual education" for fear of inciting scorn or stopping a conversation cold. Researchers even counsel each other to avoid the phrase so as not to prejudice readers against their research.

Yet while critics in the United States claim that bilingual education is a "failed experiment," most other modern nations consider it the norm and cannot imagine why Americans would prefer an education in only one language. What about the history of bilingual education in the United States has led to the emotional controversy surrounding the teaching of students in two languages?

For the last thirty years, with only brief exceptions, the only government-sanctioned justification for bilingual education in the United States has been as a means to transition students as rapidly as possible into an English-only school experience. The idea that a good bilingual education might actually produce students who are literate in two languages gained initial acceptance in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Ever since, however, programs have had to defend themselves against the accusation that they were "maintenance" programs, trying to maintain students' primary language as they became fluent in English, as though this were a terrible thing to do to a child. Like "busing," bilingual education has become a lightning rod for those who oppose policies designed to equalize (or enhance) educational opportunity for minority children. Social conservatives have very effectively branded as failures these policies that an abundance of research evidence shows have provided many black and brown children with educational opportunities that had been foreclosed to them. 15

Research: Bilingual or English immersion?

Educational evaluation was used very effectively in the late 1970s and early 1980s to undermine bilingual education as a pedagogical strategy. Two expensive, multiyear studies were commissioned by the federal government to answer the perennial (and ultimately unanswerable) question: Which is more effective, bilingual education or English immersion? (One reason this question is so difficult to answer is because there is great confusion about the goals of these programs — for example, should the goal be rapid transition to English? Grade-level academic achievement?

In addition, the nature of the instruction is seldom carefully specified — it is often unclear whether it should entail, for instance, fully qualified bilingual teachers providing rigorous curriculum in two languages, bilingual aides helping to translate some portions of an English curriculum, or sink-or-swim immersion into English.) The first major study, released in 1978, found that "there had been no consistent significant impact" of Title VII bilingual education on English learners. 16

Critics of this study noted that it was impossible to know what the "treatment" had been in these bilingual and English-immersion classrooms; the researchers had simply taken at face value the label applied to the classes. In 1991 a second federally sponsored longitudinal study was released with similarly ambiguous results. 17 In this study, great care was taken to observe actual instruction in the classrooms. But although the principal investigator, David Ramírez, argued that the trajectories of student achievement strongly favored late-exit ("maintenance") bilingual programs, he conceded that the four-year duration of the study was insufficient to draw definitive conclusions. Importantly, the study also noted that in several cases programs had shifted their language emphasis and no longer looked distinctly different from other categories of programs.

Criticisms of both studies focused on the insurmountable methodological challenges of trying to compare students and programs that are not truly comparable:

• Schools assign different types of students to English-only and bilingual programs (usually placing in the bilingual programs the students who are least English proficient because they are viewed as needing the most primary language assistance);
• teachers tend to rely on the language they feel most comfortable in rather than the language mix that is mandated by the program; and
• students in low-income schools come and go so quickly that few are still in the same school or program after only a few years, making long-term assessments of outcomes unreliable. 18

Moreover, those students who do not move are likely to be more advantaged than those students who are highly mobile, which also biases study outcomes. 19

There has been no major empirical study of dual-language or "two-way" programs, those that mix English speakers and non-English speakers in roughly equal proportions with the objective of fostering full bilingualism and biliteracy in both groups. Smaller studies, however, suggest that this is the most effective strategy for educating both groups of students to become competent bilinguals without sacrificing English development. 20

In a major meta-analysis funded by the U.S. Department of Education that looked at bilingual and two-way programs compared to English-only programs for English learners, researchers concluded:

Evaluations conducted in the early years of a program (Grades K-3) typically reveal that students in bilingual education scored below grade level (and sometimes very low) and performed either lower than or equivalent to their comparison group peers (i.e., ELL [English-language learner] students in mainstream English, SEI [structured English immersion]/ESL [English as a second language], or EO [English-only] students in mainstream classrooms).

Almost all evaluation of students at the end of elementary school and in middle and high school show that the educational outcomes of bilingually educated students, especially those in late-exit and two-way programs, were at least comparable to and usually higher than their comparison peers. There was no study of middle school or high school students that found that bilingually educated students were less successful than their comparison peers. 21

These findings are important because they may explain results of short-term evaluation studies in which students in bilingual programs sometimes score lower than others in English-only programs when tested early on and only in English. It seems that students require more time to become competent in both English and the primary language. Dual-language, or two-way, programs have the added advantage of helping to reduce the linguistic isolation that so many Latino students experience.

The strategy has its own challenges, including the need to cluster the appropriate numbers of both groups and protect against the social power imbalances that can occur in these settings, but their potential for increasing the academic success of English learners (as well as English speakers) would appear to far outweigh these potential pitfalls. 22

Research: Meta-analyses on effectiveness

The federal government has also sponsored research syntheses. The first of these, requested in 1980 by the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Planning and Budget, was charged with reviewing the research literature on the effectiveness of bilingual education. 23 Keith Baker and Adriana de Kanter conducted a simple meta-analysis on twenty-eight studies of bilingual education that they considered sufficiently methodologically sound, and concluded that there was not enough evidence in favor of transitional bilingual education to mandate it as the favored approach for educating English learners.

The study was cited widely for many years afterward, as bilingual education came under increasing attack during the Reagan administration. The Baker and de Kanter study itself, however, was widely criticized for being biased in the studies selected and methodologically weak in its simple "up or down vote" methods.

Questions about their meta-analysis gave rise to a series of re-analyses by other researchers, most of which concluded that when strict methodological criteria were applied to the selection of the studies, such as only including studies that had well-defined control groups, bilingual programs tended to show better outcomes than English-only programs. 24

In the mid 1990s, in an effort to find definitive answers, the National Research Council commissioned a major study of what was known about educating language-minority students. 25 It concluded, "When socioeconomic status is controlled, bilingualism shows no negative effects on the overall linguistic, cognitive, or social development of children, and may even provide general advantages in these areas of mental functioning." In addition, "use of the child's native language does not impede the acquisition of English." 26

Research: Reading in the native language

A subsequent study also commissioned by the National Research Council on preventing reading difficulties in young children concurred: "If language minority children arrive at school with no proficiency in English but speaking a language for which there are instructional guides, learning materials, and locally available proficient teachers, they should be taught how to read in their native language." 27

More recently, a synthesis study commissioned by the U.S. Department of Education and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development also concluded that it was generally preferable to teach Spanish-speaking students to read in Spanish where possible. The Bush administration, however, refused to release it with its imprimatur in spite of two peer reviews that concurred with its findings. 28

Thus while the debates over primary language — or bilingual — instruction have continued unabated, the major research syntheses that have been commissioned by the federal government have increasingly concluded that use of the primary language in instruction probably holds certain benefits, and at a minimum does not impede English learners' achievement in English. These findings suggest that English-only efforts are likely based on something other than a simple concern for these students' academic welfare.

The cost of bilingual education

Policymakers have presumed that if bilingual education is not shown to be systematically superior to English-only instruction with respect to achievement outcomes measured in English, then preference should automatically be given either to English-only programs, or to transitional programs that incorporate the least primary language for the shortest period of time. On its face, there is no particular logic to this conclusion. If both programs had more or less equal results in English, but one had the added benefit of teaching some competence in another language, shouldn't that program be considered the superior one? For the most part the answer to this question has been framed as one of cost. Critics of bilingual instruction have long assailed the programs as being a "costly" waste of the taxpayers' money.

Consider the preamble to Proposition 227, California's antibilingual ballot initiative that largely prohibited bilingual education:

(d) Whereas, The public schools of California currently do a poor job of educating immigrant children, wasting financial resources on costly experimental language programs. 29

In fact, there has not been a great deal of research on the costs of bilingual education as compared to any other kind of intervention for students who are limited in English. The two studies that have been conducted, however — both by large, reputable research organizations — came to similar conclusions: bilingual education is in fact generally among the least expensive models for meeting the needs of English learners because it requires only that one teacher in a classroom be able to provide instruction in two languages (or two teachers who trade classes for part of the day).

Other models, such as separate ESL pull-out programs or primary language aides who provide educational support, require additional personnel, which increases these programs' cost. Moreover, bilingual teachers tend to be less senior than other teachers, having been hired in larger numbers more recently, and so their pay level, on average, is lower. 30 Program costs, then, appear to be more of a red herring than a real issue in the debates over language education.

Program models and instruction

Because earlier studies of language instructional models had not been definitive, proponents and opponents of the different models used these earlier evaluations to make whatever point they chose. On one side are those who assert that English-only instruction not only is more efficient in teaching English learners because students are exposed to more English, but also does not waste valuable time instructing in a language that they do not "need to know." The primary argument for this position is that more "time on task" (learning English) will result in greater and more rapid acquisition of English. 31

It is an argument with intuitive appeal. On the other side of this debate, however, are researchers who argue that a fundamental principle of learning is that students learn best when the teacher builds on frameworks of knowledge — or "schemata" — that students already possess. That is, teaching is most effective when new learning is tied to what students already know. 32 Thus by teaching students concepts in a language they understand, one can advance the learning in other subject areas while also teaching students English. In fact, as noted, studies comparing bilingual education with English-only approaches consistently find little or no difference in the rate at which students acquire fluency in English.

Reading skills (in English), however, do appear to be enhanced by initial instruction in the primary language, suggesting that learning that occurs in the native language is not "wasted." Hence the earlier mentioned study commissioned by the U.S. Department of Education and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development found: "Where differences were observed [in studies comparing English-only and bilingual instruction] on average they favored the students in the bilingual program. The meta-analytic results clearly suggest a positive effect [on reading scores] for bilingual instruction that is moderate in size." 33

Although well-implemented bilingual programs can claim a "moderate" advantage over English-immersion instruction, no language intervention has erased the gap between English speakers and English learners, or between native-English white children and Latinos. Clearly, other factors are essential to the academic achievement of English learners. Unfortunately our cultural obsession with whether to pursue English-only versus bilingual education has obscured the more critical social and pedagogical issues that need to be studied and understood.

Our policy section is made possible by a generous grant from the Carnegie Corporation. The statements and views expressed are solely the responsibility of the authors.

Gándara, P. and Contreras, F. The Latino Education Crisis: The Consequences of Failed Social Policies . Excerpt from Chapter 4, "Is Language the Problem?" Pps. 128-135. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009.

August, D., and K. Hakuta. 1997. Improving Schooling for Language Minority Children: A Research Agenda . Washington, D.C.: National Research Council, Institute of Medicine.

August, D., and T. Shanahan, eds. 2006. Developing Literacy in Second-Language Learners: Report of the National Literacy Panel on Language-Minority Children and Youth . Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum. http://www.erlbaum.com/august.

Baker, K., and A. de Kanter. 1981. Effectiveness of Bilingual Education: A Review of the Literature . Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Education, Office of Planning, Budget, and Evaluation.

-------. 1983. "Federal Policy and the Effectiveness of Bilingual Education," In Baker and de Kanter, eds., Bilingual Education: A Reappraisal of Federal Policy . Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books, pp. 33-86.

Carpenter-Huffman, P., and M. Samulon. 1981. Case Studies of Delivery of Bilingual Education . Santa Monica: RAND Corporation.

Chambers, J., and T. Parrish. 1992. Meeting the Challenge of Diversity: An Evaluation of Programs for Pupils with Limited Proficiency in English , vol. 4: Cost of Programs and Services for LEP Students . Berkeley, Calif.: BW Associates.

Danoff, M., B. Arias, G. Coles, and B. Everett. 1978. Evaluation of the Impact of ESEA Title VII Spanish/English Bilingual Education Program . Palo Alto, Calif.: American Institutes of Research.

Genesee, F., K. Lindholm-Leary, W. Saunders, and D. Christian. 2006. Educating English Language Learners: A Synthesis of Research Evidence . New York: Cambridge University Press.

Gersten, R. 1985. "Structured Immersion for Language Minority Students: Results of a Longitudinal Evaluation." Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis 7: 187-196.

Greene, J. P. 1998. A Meta-Analysis of the Effectiveness of Bilingual Education . Claremont, Calif.: Thomas Rivera Policy Institute.

National Research Council, Panel on High Risk Youth. 1993. Losing Generation: Adolescents in High-Risk Settings . Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.

Orfield, G., and S. Eaton, eds. 1996. Dismantling Desegregation: The Quiet Reversal of "Brown v. Board of Education" . New York: New Press.

Preamble to California Proposition 227 . 1998. Codified as sec. 1, chap. 3, art. 1 of the California Education Code. http://primary98.sos.ca.gov/VoterGuide/Propositions/227text.htm.

Ramírez, J., S. Yuen, D. Ramey, and D. Pasta. 1991. Final Report: Longitudinal Study of Structured English Immersion Strategy, Early-Exit and Late-Exit Bilingual Education Programs for Language-Minority Children . Paper 300-87-0156 prepared for U.S. Department of Education. San Mateo, Calif.: Aguirre International.

Ream, R. 2004. Uprooting Children: Mobility, Social Capital, and Mexican American Underachievement . New York: LFB Scholarly Publishing.

Rolstad, K., K. Mahoney, and G. V. Glass. 2005. "The Big Picture: A Meta-Analysis of Program Effectiveness Research on English Language Learners." Educational Policy , 19: 572-594. http://www.public.asu.edu/?krolstad/big_picture.pdf.

Rossell, C., and K. Baker. 1996. Bilingual Education in Massachusetts: The Emperor Has No Clothes . Boston: Pioneer Institute.

Rumberger, R. 2003. "The Causes and Consequences of Student Mobility." Journal of Negro Education 72: 6-21.

Snow, C., M. Burns, and P. Griffin, eds. 1998. Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children . Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press. http://books.nap.edu/html/prdyc.

Valdés, G. 1997. "Dual-Language Immersion Programs: A Cautionary Note concerning the Education of Language-Minority Students." Harvard Educational Review .

Willig, A. 1985. "A Meta-Analysis of Selected Studies on the Effectiveness of Bilingual Education." Review of Educational Research 55: 269-317.

15 For evidence on the positive outcomes of busing for African American (and white) students, see Orfield and Eaton 1996.

16 Danoff et al. 1976

17 Ramírez et al. 1991.

18 Because most bilingual teachers are primary English speakers, English more often predominates over Spanish in bilingual classrooms. See ibid.

19 Ream 2004; Rumberger 2003.

20 Genesee et al. 2006.

21 Ibid. Bilingual is defined as a program in which English learners are taught through two languages, and two-way is a program in which English learners and English speakers are taught through two languages together. ELL is the acronym for English language learner, a common variation of English learner, which we prefer; SEI is the acronym for structured English immersion, an English-only curriculum with structured adaptation to the needs of English learners; ESL is the acronym for English as second language instruction; and EO refers to English only.

22 See Valdes 1997 for discussion of power imbalances and unintended consequences.

23 Baker and de Kanter 1981.

24 Willig 1985; Greene 1998; Rolstad, Mahoney, and Glass 2005.

25 August and Hakuta 1997.

26 Ibid., p. 28.

27 Snow, Burns, and Griffin 1998, p. 235.

28 August and Shanahan 2006.

29 Preamble to California Proposition 227 of 1998. http://www.primary98.sos.ca.gov/VoterGuide/Propositions/227text.htm (accessed May 10, 2008).

30 Carptenter-Huffman and Samulon 1981; Chambers and Parrish 1992.

31 Proponents of this position included prominently Baker and De Kanter 1983; Rossell and Baker 1996; and Gersten 1985.

32 National Research Council 1993.

33 Ibid., p. 397.

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