SIL International: Partners in Language Development

MALI—Trained in an SIL- sponsored literacy program, a local teacher writes a sentence and lists the seven Minyanka vowels. Translation: “She is very beautiful!”

SIL International® is a faith-based nonprofit organization committed to serving language communities worldwide as they develop the skills and capacity necessary to preserve and revitalize their languages. As an international nongovernmental organization (INGO), SIL actively participates in networks and partnerships—with government organizations, local groups and other INGOs—which are vital to the support of minority language communities in their own language development efforts.

SIL International grew out of one man’s concern for people speaking ethnolinguistic minority languages that lacked written alphabets. William Cameron Townsend started SIL in 1934 as a small summer linguistics training program with two students. It has expanded into an organization of more than 5,500 people coming from over 60 countries. SIL has conducted linguistic analysis in more than 2,590 languages spoken by 1.7 billion people in nearly 100 countries.

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SIL’s field linguists work in partnership with minority language speakers to collect, analyze, organize and publish language and culture data. SIL workers serve as technical advisors, teachers, consultants and facilitators. As an international advocate for ethnolinguistic minority language speakers, SIL is dedicated to supporting ethnic minority peoples worldwide in their efforts to preserve their languages and cultural identities in the 21st century.

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SIL makes its services available to all without regard to religious belief, political ideology, gender, race or ethnic background.

Click here for the complete SIL International: Partners in Language Development document.

Recent dual-language immersion programs validate MTBMLE

By Teresa Watanabe, Los Angeles Times, May 8, 2011

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[IMPORTANT NOTE: Bilingual education program as referred to here is one in which the child is taught using his own first language learned at home (L1 or mother tongue) and another language (L2), such as English, as MOI. In the bilingual Filipino-and-English education program in the Philippines, this is true for children coming from Tagalog-speaking families because Tagalog is basically the same as Filipino; these Tagalog children comprise over 20% of the entire student population. It's meaning is entirely different for the more than 70% of all schoolchildren who are non-Tagalogs who are taught from first grade using what is the equivalent of TWO foreign languages, namely, Filipino and English. These non-Tagalog children do not learn in their own mother tongues; in some cases they are even prohibited or discouraged (fined in some cases?) from speaking their mother tongues in school. With the promulgation of DepEd Order No. 74 s. 2009 institutionalizing the use of mother tongue-based multilingual education during the initial years of the child's education, the outlook especially on student performance as mentioned in the article below, is expected to change for the better. -- JP]

In a Glendale public school classroom, the immigrant’s daughter uses no English as she conjugates verbs and writes sentences about cats.

More than a decade after California voters eliminated most bilingual programs, first-grader Sofia Checchi is taught in Italian nearly all day — as she and her 20 classmates at Franklin Elementary School have been since kindergarten.

Click here for the complete article.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Bilingualism good for the brain, researchers say

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Should children learn a second language?

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Why Mother-Tongue Instruction Improves Achievement

[The following is an excerpt from Helen Abadzi's book, Efficient Learning for the Poor: Insights from the Frontiers of Neuroscience, which I recommend for those involved in MLE.]

Learning Essentials

For many children, education in another language is more difficult than expected.  The deficits in native language development common among the poor may inhibit the rapid acquisition of a second language. Mother tongue instruction is a prerequisite if Education for All is to be achieved, particularly when the official language has complex spelling rules. The official language should be taught to children as early as possible. However, it should become the platform for learning new information only after children know it sufficiently well to process complex sentences and vocabulary. A gradually decreasing percentage of mother-tongue instruction seems to be an effective way to introduce an official language.

Visitors to French-medium primary schools in sub-Saharan Africa are surprised to find out that children may understand little of what they are told and merely repeat verbatim what they hear. Sixth graders in rural areas may read haltingly or in monotone and be unable to answer comprehension questions on simple passages.  Why are schooling outcomes so poor?

Many countries have multiple languages and a need to teach in a common language. In countries like Romania or Indonesia, children speaking minority languages must learn the official language of instruction. In many others–including most countries in Africa and the South Pacific–the lingua franca is foreign to everyone (for example, English, French, or Portuguese). The countries with multiple languages have various language-instruction policies. In some countries, students may study in their mother tongues in lower primary grades and then switch to the lingua franca. In others, logistical and political complexities result in the use of the lingua franca for all grades. The latter approach is preferred in much of Africa and impacts some of the world’s poorest countries.

What impact are English-based curricula having on education?

Diane Dekker of SIL and Ched Arzadon of the UP College of Education sent the following op-ed piece written by Abdullah Al-Shehri in Saudi Gazette as an interesting comment to “Curriculum Guide for MTBMLE“.  I find it useful reading for those LGU folks in La Union contemplating reversing the language shift brought about by more than two decades of bilingual-Filipino-and-English language policy in the Philippines, well, back to Ilocano, using as a model Catalonia’s “Act No. 1, of 7th January 1998, linguistic policy” (see last 2 previous posts below).

Diane Dekker writes:  ” A very interesting article!  He makes a strong case for MTBMLE!”

Ched Arzadon writes:  “We often hear people ask why we are shifting to MTBMLE when countries are moving towards greater inclusion of English in their schools. One answer is that we have seen enough of the negative impact of an English based curricula, and other countries who are venturing to follow that direction should be warned.  Here’s a thoughtful article from Saudi Gazette that affirms our claim.  Thanks to Diane for the link…“

By Abdullah Al-Shehri

IN the last few years, the number of colleges and universities nationwide has increased dramatically with the rising demand for higher educational institutions. Many of these institutions, public and private, have decided to adopt English as their medium of instruction for some, if not all, of their academic programs. This important development in higher education has led to a sudden boom in the local English language teaching industry and created a great demand for language teachers from around the world. One could argue that such a decision is one of necessity as the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia marches towards a global economy in which the English language plays a vital role.

Reversing Language Shift: Lessons from 3 Success Stories

[The following is excerpted from "Reversing Language Shift" by Joshua A. Fishman, one of the world's foremost sociolinguists and a founding father of that discipline.  He is Distinguished University Research Professor, Social Sciences, Emeritus, at Yeshiva University (New York City), a former Fellow of the social science and humanities 'think tanks' at Stanford, Honolulu, Princeton, Wassenaar (Netherlands) and Jerusalem. Fishman has written over 1000 articles and monographs on multilingualism, bilingual education and minority education, the sociology and history of the Yiddish language, language planning, reversing language shift, language revival, 'language and nationalism', 'language and religion', and 'language and ethnicity'. Fishman is also the founder and editor of the International Journal of the Sociology of Language and the Contributions to the Sociology of Language (Mouton de Gruyter) book series.]

Three Success Stories (More or Less):
Modern Hebrew, French in Quebec
and Catalan in Spain

by Joshua A. Fishman

Joshua A. Fishman

As has been our practice thus far, in our discussion of problematic cases, we will pick our success cases from different parts of the world, one from the Near East (Hebrew), one from the Americas (French Quebec) and one from Europe (Catalan), although as we will soon see, all three cases have been strongly influenced by European thinking, values, methods and developments.  This is an inevitable state of affairs, to the extent that RLS (Reversing Language Shift)-efforts are often a reflection of late or reactive nationalism and modernization, worldwide processes that are overwhelmingly characterized by dynamics that have their origins and their mainsprings in Europe.  Even the return to ultra-Orthodoxy can be partially characterized in this fashion, overtly and consciously rejective of modernization though it be, since it too has learned that the modern world can be held at bay and an essentially authentic minority ethnicity can be maintained with respect to its language-and-culture nexus, only if some of modernity’s techniques and methods are selectively and carefully borrowed and even more carefully controlled.