Winter 2012 - Connecticut Council of Language Teachers

Transcription

Connecticut COLT
World Language News Exchange
Connecticut Council of Language Teachers
Winter 2012
notebooks were being used to collect information for each
chair as the position changed hands – and along the way so
much of this has been lost. It is my hope that as you clean out
your office, basement, study, picture boxes, in preparation of
the New Year, you may find some of these things that will
help to preserve our history. Please share this past with us, so
that we can preserve it.
A Note From The President...
It is with great sadness that we
report the passing of our founder
and first president of CT COLT,
Dr. Ken Lester. Many of you
might remember Ken from the
early years of CT COLT, and for
his work to promote the study of
foreign languages while he
worked tirelessly as our World
Language Consultant at the CT
State Department of Education.
As a strong advocate for early
language learning, many
elementary programs were started under his watch. Ken was
also a recipient of our CT COLT Distinguished Service
Award.
Only a few weeks prior to his death, we had
reconnected through e-mail and had made a date to get
together to begin the process of gathering material for an
electronic archival repository in preparation of our 50th
anniversary. Ken and his wife were preparing to move to a
retirement village, and he offered a box of old records from
the early years which I had intended to store in the warehouse,
as I gather other documents from years past. I was so excited
to be able to catch up with him, and renew our friendship, and
to have the opportunity to gather yet more of our history. Ken
has left a legacy of the promotion of foreign language study.
In his honor, the CT COLT student immersion scholarship will
now carry his name – the “Ken Lester Student Immersion
Scholarship”. This scholarship is designed to help students
fund an immersion in experience in a program abroad, or in a
language camp here in the U.S. As language professionals
here in CT, we have benefitted greatly from Ken’s work.
And looking to the future – CT COLT continues to work hard
to serve its members. I continue to invite you to take part in
the many committees, the many activities that CT COLT
offers. After each event we ask for feedback through a short
survey link on our website, and sadly, we are not hearing from
enough of our members.
Our New Year main initiative
continues to focus on building our membership so that one
voice representing many languages is heard at the national,
state and local levels. As an organization that provides CEUs
in your own discipline we continually look for presenters to
bring you the latest in methodology, technology, pedagogy
and more. Spread the news of what you are doing to promote
language learning in your school and community.
I
encourage you to visit the website often.
The New Year also brings other changes to the organization:
Membership is required for participation in all CT COLT
events; information for the new essay contest for high school
students is now posted on the website; the newsletter will now
be posted on line as well as sent electronically to members
unless they specifically request a hard copy (contact
pmsaint@verizon.net), the site of our fall conference has been
moved to the Coco Key Resort in Waterbury – Oct. 29, and we
are very excited to tell you that the website will be undergoing
a massive renovation in the near future.
I wish you a happy holiday, and happy, healthy, and inspiring
2012. I look forward to working with you and hearing from
you soon.
Looking back at the past helps us to build our future. I am
asking past presidents, boards, chairs of events to please
contact me to pass on any CT COLT memorabilia. It was sad
to not be able to put together any kind of electronic portfolio
of our long standing Poetry Recitation Contest as we
celebrated its 30th anniversary. Our fall conference too, is
short on any kind of memorabilia. If you have received a
distinguished service award from CT COLT, please contact
me. Years ago when I served on the board I knew that
Linda
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Winter 2012
In Memoriam
Kenneth Allen Lester
Founding Father and First President of CT COLT
November 19, 1932 – November 7, 2011
Kenneth Allen Lester, 78, of Columbia, CT, died of complications from coronary artery disease on November 7,
2011. He was born in Colchester, CT on November 19, 1932 to the late Robert and Evelyn Lester. He is survived
by Carolyn (Williams) Lester, his loving wife of 32 years. In addition to his wife he leaves his son Warren Lester
and his daughter Cheryl Blum. He was predeceased by his brother Brian Lester and leaves a brother Lee Lester and
his wife Joan, and a brother Curtis Lester and his wife Donna. He adored his granddaughter, Julie Blum, with
whom he shared a great love of music. He also leaves several dear cousins, nieces and nephews. Ken was a
graduate of East Hampton High School, and earned a bachelor's degree in French and a master's degree from the
University of Connecticut and a doctorate of education from Boston University. He taught at Suffield High School
for nine years, and was the foreign language consultant at the Connecticut State Department of Education for 27 years. He founded
the Connecticut Council of Language Teachers (COLT) and had a lifelong love of world languages. He loved classical music and
enjoyed being the first president of the Hop River Chamber Music Board of Directors. A man of great faith, he was highly active at
the Andover Congregational Church where he held positions as deacon and treasurer and enjoyed singing with the choir for many
years. He was given recognition for his 50 year membership as a Mason, and of this he was very proud. He loved living on Andover
Lake and then Columbia Lake, fishing, watching birds and wildlife, gardening and taking great pride in his tomatoes and roses, but
caring about family and friends was most important to him. He also really loved his cat, Chatty.
Calling hours took place at Potter Funeral Home, 456 Jackson Street, (Route 195) Willimantic, CT, Friday, November 11, from 5-8
p.m. with a Masonic service taking place at 7:30 p.m. Friends and family were invited to the burial which took place on Saturday,
November 12, at 9:30 a.m. at the Marlborough Cemetery on Route 66 in Marlborough, CT, followed by a Memorial Service at the
First Congregational Church, UCC, Andover, CT at 11 a.m., corner of Route 6 & Long Hill Road, Andover. In lieu of flowers,
memorial contributions may be made to the Andover Congregational Church, P.O. Box 55, Andover, CT 06237. For an online
memorial guestbook, please visit www.potterfuneralhome.com.
these, of course, had the authority to speak for all foreign
language teachers.
In the Beginning
by Kenneth A Lester, State Foreign Language Consultant
Emeritus
There was one group which did try to represent the views of
language teachers in general, and that was the State Foreign
Language Advisory Committee.
This committee was
appointed by the State Commission of Education (then known
as the Secretary to the State Board of Education) and was
advisory to the State Department of Education. It dates back
to 1953 when it was set up to provide advice to Commissioner
Finis Engleman on how to handle the question of commencing
Foreign language in the elementary school. For the next seven
years it advised the state on matters of content related to
foreign languages. Then, in 1960, in the wake of the Soviet
Union’s launching of Sputnik, a position of Foreign Language
Consultant was created in the State Department of Education.
This article is about the conception, birth and early life of the
Connecticut Council of Language Teachers (Connecticut
COLT). The author was chiefly responsible in conceiving the
organization and continued as a major participant in its birth
and first twenty-three years of life.
Before 1967, the foreign language teachers of Connecticut had
no voice in their destiny as a profession in the state. There
were several strong individual language organizations such as
the American Association of Teachers of
French...German...Slavic and Eastern European
languages...Spanish and Portuguese and the Connection
Section of the Classical Association of New England. None of
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The national organization founded in 1967 was the American
Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL). In
my position as Foreign Language Consultant, I receive an
invitation for Connecticut’s statewide foreign language
teachers organization affiliate with ACTFL as a member of the
governing board. Since we had no such organization, we
would be left out of a movement which I believed would be
very significant for the language teaching profession.
The only group in Connecticut representing all languages at all
levels was the State Foreign Language Advisory Committee.
The Chairman in 1967 was Morton Briggs of Wesleyan
University. I met with Professor Briggs, Professor Arthur
Selvi of Central Connecticut State College and several foreign
language coordinators, among whom were Robert Serafino of
New Haven and Jane Bourque of Stratford. (My apologies for
names I have left out. Perhaps someone else can fill us in on
what I miss.) We developed plans for an organization which
would be called the Connecticut Council of Language
Teachers and which would be founded in complete
cooperation with the existing language teacher associates in
the state.
We proposed to the State Foreign Language Advisory
Committee that it be designated as the executive board for the
new organization until it could become operational. We then
applied to ACTFL for recognition as Connecticut’s affiliate to
the national organization. I agreed to serve as interim
executive secretary, using my good offices to communicate
with teachers in the state as well as with ACTFL. The
Advisory Committee also appointed me to serve (in its
capacity as the Connecticut COLT Executive Board) as its
representative to the ACTFL Board of Directors meeting in
December 1967.
The Foreign Language Advisory Committee continued in
existence for many years, giving the State Consultant a
valuable means for tapping the expertise of foreign language
teachers at all levels of education and from several different
languages. However, these voices for foreign language
teachers, both the State Consultant and the Foreign Language
Advisory Committee, were not independent. There were
subject to screening and censoring through the policies of the
State Department of Education. This lack of an independent
voice for all foreign language teachers was of concern to me,
although my concern was not shared by many of the other
leaders in foreign language instruction in the state. They
active, popular AAT’s were seen as sufficient support for
teachers of the languages they represent.
Efforts to organize a state language teachers’ group was first
announced to Connecticut teachers in the April 1967 issue of
the Foreign Language News Exchange (at that time a
publication of the State Department of Education, office of the
Foreign Language Consultant).
The assistance of the
individual language associates was enlisted during the 19671968 academic year, requesting that they contribute fifty cents
per member so all could become charter members of
Connecticut COLT.
As of June 1968, there were 480
members of Connecticut COLT: 240 through AATF, 160
through AATSP, 50 through Connecticut CANE, 15 through
AATG and 12 who joined independently.
The ever changing education environment became more
difficult for foreign language education as we moved into the
late 60's. The need for a strong, independent advocate for
languages was felt by more and more teachers and language
supervisors. This atmosphere, combined with the sudden
formation of a national organization, created a milieu where
conceiving a state foreign language teachers’ organization was
possible.
The first available written record of the organization is a set of
minutes of the Executive Board of Connecticut COLT dated
June 5, 1968. A mail ballot with nominations for officers as
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proposed by the State Foreign Language Advisory Committee,
acting as the interim Executive Board, had been sent to the
480 members early in the spring. As a result, the following
people assumed their offices on May 1, 1968: President,
Kenneth A. Lester, State Department of Education; Vice
President, Robert P. Serafino, New Haven Public Schools;
Secretary, Janice S. Calkin, Greenwich Public Schools, and
Treasurer, Doris Barry, Charter Oak School, West Hartford.
Other members of the Executive Board were: Jacqueline de L.
Skubly, President, Conn. AATF; Luz Geldman, President,
Conn. AATSP; Elizabeth Knight, President, Conn. AATG;
Sally Casper of the Connecticut Section of CANE; Morton
Briggs, Wesleyan University; Symond Yavener, Central
Connecticut State College; George Cushman, Choate School;
and Sister Artheur du St. Esprit, Cathedral High School,
Bridgeport.
The June 5th meeting was concerned with many details of the
new-born organization. Dominic Cote of Branford had been
charged with developing a constitution and bylaws, assisted by
four members of the Executive Board. A document was need
before the fall teachers convention, for the first time to be run
by Connecticut COLT instead of the State Foreign Language
Advisory Committee. COLT was to have is first membership
business meeting at the convention and we were to ask for
approval of the documents, sealing the establishment of the
Council. It was noted that the treasury amassed for the 50
cents dues would be almost depleted by the cost of mailing the
documents to all members by first class mail. The Executive
Board also directed that the statement of purpose be included
in a late June mailing to members. The three paragraph
statement is as follows:
The goal of the Connecticut Council of Language Teachers,
the, is to accomplish these purposes and to fulfill these needs.
conform to these challenging purposes. As services were
curtailed by the State of Connecticut, the Council took over
the publication of the Foreign Language News Exchange,
initially mailing it to all public school foreign language
teachers as the State Department of Education had been doing.
When the School-College Committee (originally founded by
my office to assist in articulation between schools and colleges
in foreign language instruction) began to get into the realm of
statewide testing, the Committee was assumed by COLT as
one of its functions. (Back then, the State Department of
Education was reluctant to even mention the prospect of
sponsoring any kind of state-endorsed testing.) When my task
as foreign language consultant was supplemented by bilingual
education, English for Speakers of Other Language and
curriculum development unit coordinator, I could no long
devote the time needed to keep the foreign language
coordinators (COFLIC) going. Again, when I asked COLT to
take on sponsorship of the group, the Board of Directors
readily agreed.
Over the next several years, dedicated officers and members of
Connecticut COLT served the profession by attempting to
The complete story of Connecticut COLT’s growth in service
to the profession in those early days is too long for this piece.
The purpose of the Connecticut Council of
Language Teachers is to give an articulate
voice to the body of foreign language
teachers in Connecticut.
There are matter of public policy and
pedagogical and curricular procedures
which all foreign language teachers may
wish to address. There are services to the
profession which, other resources lacking,
this Council may best be able to offer in the
State of Connecticut.
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Let me just end this narrative by stating unequivocally that the
young organization, the symbol of which is the mythical
Pegasus, spread its wings, took flight and fulfilled its destiny
with high style and vigor.
Winter 2012
CT COLT Is Going Green
Why I joined CT COLT
By Eliza Gonzalez
I first heard about CT COLT when I was a junior in high
school. My teacher, a CT COLT member, was working on
something for the fall conference. My curiosity was sparked
and I decided to ask what she was doing. She told me all
about the fall conference and a bit about CT COLT. I was a
little aware of the organization because I had received a CT
COLT award.
When I went home that day, I did some
research and came across the CT COLT website. I realized
that I needed to be a part of this organization since I wanted to
become a foreign language teacher.
NEW
NEW
Starting with the Spring issue, the
CT COLT World Language News
Exchange will be available ONLY
online unless you request that a
paper copy be sent to you.
After I graduated from high school I joined CT COLT as a
student member and I also joined the fall conference
committee. I understand how beneficial being a part of this
organization is. I have had the opportunity to meet and
converse with people in the world language profession. From
their experiences, I have learned what to expect in the
classroom when I begin teaching. As I met more and more
people within the organization, I am beginning to get my name
out there in hopes of someday making my job search a little
easier. I was able to work with an amazing team that was very
accepting of a new student member. We collaborated so well
to make this event a success. I was able to help in the planning
and the set-up of the conference, and worked at the Ways and
Means table during part of the conference. At the end of the
day, I felt a sense of fulfillment knowing that so many people
were able to benefit from such a great event because of the
efforts of the committee. Personally, I also benefitted from the
workshops of the conference, where I was able to learn many
tools that I will employ in the classroom when I begin
teaching.
All database records will be coded to
receive the online version of the
newsletter after January 15, 2012.
If you wish to receive a paper copy of
the newsletter, you MUST e-mail
Paul St. Louis DIRECTLY at
pmsaint@verizon.net to request a
paper copy of the newsletter.
Whether we are former, present, or future teachers, it is our
duty to help support an organization that supports our
profession. Therefore, I encourage other young people who are
beginning their career studies to become part of CT COLT.
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Answering this question has become part of our job, our
mission, and it is really just the corollary to the ‘Why do I
need to know this?’ question that we all get from the kids. It
seems that having a ready answer to that question has become
an integral and necessary part of our profession. It seems to
me that we need to be very clear in our message to the public
and up to date with facts—this is one way that membership in
CT COLT can help, as there are advocacy materials on the
website and related sessions at the fall conference. I believe
that we need to incorporate such content in assignments we
give to our students, both in the form of texts they read and in
research they carry out as to what professional pathways are
seeking people with language skills. We could post links in
English on our web pages, so that parents and students can
access them and see why language learning is so crucial. (I
have such links on my homework pages and I point them out
to parents at Open House.) Bulletin boards that outline the
benefits of language learning could be put up in our hallways,
or better yet, outside guidance offices. We have work to do
within our faculty lounges: we need to include counselors,
administrators and other teachers in the list of those we want
to reach. All this in addition to advocating at the local and
state levels. CT COLT is deeply involved in advocacy and
your regional director will let you know when we need people
to write to their local representative or senator or BOE. We
need to pull together to manage the task, for the kids, for our
communities, for our profession. We can’t afford to let
another 30 years pass without some real progress in our
mission.
Advocacy
Which Way Forward In a Tongue
Tied America?
By Michaela Volovsek
In 1980, Congressman Paul Simon published The Tongue Tied
American: Confronting the Foreign Language Crisis. He was
chairman of the House Select Subcommittee in Education and
wrote his book from that perspective; in it he described in
compelling detail the ways in which America’s
monolingualism threatened both its security and business
interests. Or perhaps I should say threatens, present tense,
because there is much reason to believe that not enough has
changed to warrant congratulating ourselves. In February
2008, Reuters columnist Bernd Debusmann wrote an article in
which he referred to Paul Simon’s book and he concluded that
since 1980…”[j]udging from a wealth of statistics, there has
been much effort but little progress.” Both men cite examples
of how other cultures value language learning more highly and
gain advantages both in business and in national security.
Debusmann writes about the lack of speakers of Arabic,
Pashto, Farsi and how this lack may have contributed to the
tragedy of 9/11. After the attacks, the government said it had
a backlog of untranslated tapes in such languages that ran to
over 120,000 hours.
Sources--
On a local level, we face an increasing need for bilingual
speakers here in our home state. I find that very few of
Connecticut’s residents know how important French speakers
are to our state’s business and economy. If we combine
France, Belgium, Quebec and Africa, CT exports 5 billion
dollars worth to French speaking areas of the world and 1.25
billion to Germany, a further 1 billion to China. We import
close to half of our electricity from Quebec-Hydro. According
to a link provided at the end of this piece, 100,000 CT jobs are
related to trade with Canada, and most of that trade is with
Quebec. Add that to our ever growing need for people who
have a professional skill/qualification plus Spanish in order to
fill existing positions in all sorts of work environments, not to
mention our need for people who speak Italian, Chinese,
Portuguese, German, Arabic, etc—the list goes on.
H t t p : / / w w w . c e n s u s . g o v / f o r e i g n trade/statistics/state/data/ct.html
http://www.canadainternationl.gc.ca/buffalo/commerce_can/2
010/ct.aspx?lang=eng
Simon, Paul. The Tongue Tied American, The Continuum
Publishing Company, NY, NY 1980
Thanks to John Hegarty of Conard High for the internet links!
Let’s Stop Being the Butt of the
Foreign Language Joke
Posted by Don Tennant
Well, you and I know this, but do our students? their parents?
our colleagues? our politicians? our communities? Too few,
of course, for as both Debusmann and Simon write, it is
typical for Anglophones to assume the entire world will learn
English. As a retired man in attendance at a school board
meeting in my town said—since he and his children had all
succeeded in life speaking only English, why should the tax
payer support more foreign (sic) language instruction? Why,
indeed?
We’ve all heard the old joke that someone who speaks two
languages is called “bilingual,” and someone who speaks
one language is called “American.” The shame is that so
few of us Americans are bothered by that.
In a post I wrote back in December titled “Setting Our Kids
Up for Tech Career Failure,” I argued that our willingness to
allow schools to drop foreign language instruction as a cost-
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According to a U.S. government-funded national survey
conducted by the Center for Applied Linguistics (CAL),
foreign language instruction in elementary schools decreased
from 31 percent in 1997 to 25 percent in 2008. For middle
schools, the decrease was even more disturbing: from 75
percent to 58 percent.
Still, there was a bright spot, according to the survey: The
percentage of schools offering Chinese and Arabic has
increased. An article in The New York Times that cited the
CAL survey pointed out the growing interest in offering
Chinese:
No one keeps an exact count, but rough calculations based on
the government’s survey suggest that perhaps 1,600 American
public and private schools are teaching Chinese, up from 300
or so a decade ago. And the numbers are growing
exponentially. Among America’s approximately 27,500
middle and high schools offering at least one foreign language,
the proportion offering Chinese rose to 4 percent, from 1
percent, from 1997 to 2008, according to the survey.
A decade ago, most of the schools with Chinese programs
were on the East and West Coasts. But in recent years, many
schools have started Chinese programs in heartland states,
including Ohio and Illinois in the Midwest, Texas and Georgia
in the South, and Colorado and Utah in the Rocky Mountain
West. “The mushrooming of interest we’re seeing now is not
in the heritage communities, but in places that don’t have
significant Chinese populations,” said Chris Livaccari, an
associate director at the Asia Society.
cutting measure will yield a very costly predicament for our
children:
If this trend continues, and if we can somehow summon the
communal will to reverse the trend of schools abandoning
foreign language instruction, we will have taken a major stride
in improving the value proposition of homegrown talent. We
will have given our kids the chance to be considered for jobs
they’d otherwise lose to bilingual candidates, many of whom
will come from other countries.
The message being sent to our kids is that having a second
language in their career-building arsenals is inconsequential.
Given that the competition for STEM jobs will only become
more global in scope by the time these kids enter the work
force, we’re handicapping them by failing to prepare them
with the international perspective and globally oriented skill
set that they’ll need to succeed.
Source: http://www.itbusinessedge.com/cm/blogs/tennant/let-s-stopbeing-the-butt-of-the-foreign-language-joke/?cs=41239
Since then, it’s only become more obvious how beneficial it is
to be bilingual. A nationwide survey conducted earlier this
year by CareerBuilder and USA Today listed the demand for
bilingualism as a key employment trend for the second quarter
of 2010:
World Language Advocacy~now is a
good time
Employers are diversifying their workforce to appeal to
broader consumer segments, including building bilingual
teams. One-third (33 percent) said they plan to hire bilingual
candidates in the second quarter. Half (50 percent) said that if
they had two equally qualified candidates, they would be more
inclined to hire the bilingual candidate.
Greetings to all our world language colleagues and friends
across the state! In a response to a query from our CT COLT
Corresponding Secretary, Nancy Silander, Representative Joe
Courtney writes,
Dear Nancy,
Thank you for contacting me regarding the importance of
foreign language curriculum. I appreciate your comments and
having the benefit of your views. As a father of two, I have
What that means is that if employers can’t find bilingual
candidates who are U.S. citizens, they’ll have no choice but to
go abroad to recruit them. And yet we still don’t get it.
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Winter 2012
takes up the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary
Education Act.
worked hard to make education a top priority during my time
in Congress. It is vital that we help prepare our children to
compete for the jobs of the 21st century and this requires a
broad and thorough understanding of core subject areas like
math, science and reading comprehension just to name a few.
One skill that will be particularly important for our children is
the ability to speak a foreign language. We live in an
increasingly globalized world where the ability to speak a
foreign language can make the difference for the success of
our children, not only while they are in school, but when they
enter the labor force. As you know, most policies regarding
educational requirements are made at the state and local
level. You may be aware that recent educational reforms
passed by the State of Connecticut require Connecticut high
school students to receive credit in a foreign language in
order to graduate. While most of the policies are made on the
local level, Congress has worked to expand foreign language
curriculum. The Elementary and Secondary Education Act
(ESEA) includes programs to improve foreign language
curriculum. However, these programs are relatively modest
and do not address the breadth of needed investments and
resources to ensure that all children have these vital skills.
The Foreign Language Assistance Program (FLAP),
established by the No Child Left Behind Act, is the only
federally funded grant program that targets foreign language
instruction in elementary and secondary schools. In April,
Congress passed the Full Year Continuing Appropriations Act
(H.R.1473), which provided $26.87 million for FLAP in FY
2011. As you may know, the Department of Education did not
have a competition for grants in 2011 and funds appropriated
for the program were used for continuing grants. The
Administration proposed the consolidation of several other
education programs into the "Effective Teaching and Learning
for a Well-Rounded Education" for Fiscal Year 2012 to
increase flexibility for state and local education agencies over
field-specific opportunities. In September, the House
Appropriations Committee released a draft Fiscal Year 2012
Labor, Health and Human Services and Education bill which
would eliminate dedicated funding for FLAP. Please be
assured that I share your concerns and will continue to
monitor the education appropriations process closely.
Again, thank you for sharing your views on this issue with me.
Should you have any additional comments or suggestions,
please do not hesitate to contact me in the future. For more
information on my work in Congress, please visit my website
at courtney.house.gov and sign up for my e-newsletter at
courtney.house.gov/forms/emailsignup>. You can also connect
with me at facebook.com/joecourtney> or receive updates
from twitter.com/repjoecourtney
Sincerely, JOE COURTNEY
Have you written to your state Rep. lately? It would be great to
know where they stand as we watch closely the events of the
upcoming legislative session in Connecticut. At the national
level, you might write to your representative to ask what we
could do while we await the reauthorization of the Elementary
and Secondary Education Act as mentioned above by
Representative Courtney. Please do so today and e-mail us the
response you receive.
All Best in 2012!
Jaya Vijayasekar
World Language Coordinator
Vernon Public Schools
Immediate Past President, CT COLT
Personal Perspectives
A Summer Immersion in Greece
By Felicia Filiatreault
The first winner of the Student Summer Scholarship
Greece has always fascinated me in so many ways; from the
culture, the mythology, the ruins, temples, history, and the
language. I wanted to read the Homeric Epic Poems in the
original language, and I was ecstatic when I learned that I
could do this in high school. I loved my Greek class, even
though I sometimes struggle with the language and grammar. I
had an opportunity to visit Greece with my Greek teacher this
past summer. It had been a goal of mine to visit there at some
point in my life, so being able to go with a teacher who is an
expert on Greek Culture and landmarks was amazing.
As you may know, Representative Rush Holt of New Jersey
introduced legislation known as the Excellence and Innovation
in Language Learning Act (H. R. 994) on May 25, 2011. This
legislation would expand the federal Department of
Education's role in foreign language by providing grants to
states to improve and expand their curriculum. This legislation
would also seek to make foreign language a greater priority in
federal education policy thus recognizing its importance to the
success of school aged children. This legislation was referred
to the House Education and the Workforce Committee, where
it awaits further consideration. You might be interested to
know that the Excellence and Innovation in Language
Learning Act is one of a number of bills that may be
considered when the Education and the Workforce Committee
Some of the places we went too left me stunned from the
beauty of the ruins that it really makes you wonder what they
looked like whole. My favorite place had to be Dion because
some of the ruins had been flooded by water and you could see
the reflections of the statues and the walls. Other places like
Delphi, Mycenae, Epidauros, old Kameiros, along with Athens
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have always enjoyed studying the subject in school, but this
was different. When I was in Greece, I could feel it. History is
real. So thank you, I’ll never forget the memoires that I made
on this trip.
Just Speak English...and
French...and Mandarin...and...!
By Pasquale Joseph Di Matteo
I have a student named “Ventus” who often inquires how to
say sweet, romantic words in Spanish. Presumably, he will
put them in practice on an unsuspecting señorita and convine
her to be his first girlfriend. I do not believe in giving him
false hopes as he is an overly confident and swaggering
fourteen year old whom I also facetiously call Suave and who
still has much to learn about women. Yet I credit him with his
desire to learn a third language. In this aspect, he resembles
every other student who attends the international school in Ho
Chi Minh City where I now teach mostly local Vietnamese
teenagers the practical, and occasionally romantic, vocabulary
and structures of Spanish and French. He is also studying a
third language just as his peers are required to do, but more
importantly, desire to do. Whether he understands the process
he has initiated or not, he will become exponentially more
fluent in Spanish. Would others have guessed that he would
also become more proficient in his second language English as
well? In fact, this will be the case as a result of studying a
third language.
are breath taking you can’t really take in everything at once. I
hope to go back to see them one day.
A great part of the trip was the series of required classes we
had to take about ancient and modern Greece. It was so
interesting to learn about the different styles of columns and
architecture in the different time periods of Greece. (My
friends call me a column nerd.) Eventually we made it to the
Island of Rhodes, where we stayed in a small village called
Soroni, which was full of culture and tradition. The village had
only gotten electricity fifty years before, and had few modern
conveniences we take for granted.
One night, during one of our classes, we were going to look at
a church that had historical significance to the region. I
remember sitting near the top of the stairs and hearing this
beautiful serene music. My teacher told us that it was the
shepherd of the village playing a flute. We had walked by this
elderly man on our way up, and he stopped playing and waited
until we were gone before he started again.
In this international school most students enter having left the
Vietnamese State Schools and hope to graduate from the
program established by the international school, be it
American, British, Australian, Canadian, French or under the
auspices of another country. They will then most likely pursue
a degree in a college or university of that foreign country,
ultimately what most desire when they choose to enter a nonVietnamese school and have parents who either possess the
necessary financial means or must work stubbornly hard and
sacrifice so their children can afford the education.
Sitting there quietly, listing to this calming music being played
by a shepherd in Greece was really touching to me. I was not
just listening to music, I was listening to a tradition that is
thousands of years old. A tradition made to pass the time on
the mountains watching the sheep, a tradition that might have
been lost anywhere else. I know it was important to me
because I had a little tear in my eye as I sat there. It was a
moment I will always remember.
These students will begin learning English as their second
language (L2). They will demonstrate varying degrees of
proficiency as one would imagine and it will depend naturally
on several factors: the age at which they started learning
English, the opportunity, or lack thereof, to travel to Englishspeaking countries, the amount of television they watch in
English and their exposure to media in English not to mention
their study habits. At the same time, they continue to study
Vietnamese language, history and culture. Once in middle
school they begin learning Mandarin. They may opt to
continue studying Mandarin in high school or they may choose
to start Spanish or French. By the time they have graduated
with an American High School diploma or an International
Experiencing the land of Greece, with all the history and
mythology it has, was a great experience. It is difficult to
explain, in an article, exactly what this trip meant to me.
Having been award the scholarship from the CT COLT made
me appreciate the fact that hard work and persistence pays off.
I earned most of the money for this trip by doing odd jobs,
writing for scholarships and striping copper that my Dad had
to help pay for the plane ticket, I cannot tell you how much
more I appreciated the trip. I felt privileged to go to Greece’s.
The shepherd, playing his flute, changed my perspective. I
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Winter 2012
Baccalaureate Diploma, they will have already studied three languages.
Ventus does not shine particularly more brightly than other
students in Spanish but his progress in Spanish and in his
linguistic abilities typifies that of many students who study
more than two languages. His spoken English betrays his
native accent but he is usually comprehensible. I understand
his Spanish often but occasionally I must ask him to repeat
what he is trying to articulate. I do this less often now because
his classmates and he have been experimenting with the
phonetics of the language for ten weeks and are duly adjusting
their pronunciation. Their brains are also working hard to
differentiate among the phonological, morphological and
syntactic components of Vietnamese, English and a third
language.
fine-tune their skills. They also must draw encouragement
from their continued success in language and their motivation
is increased by their successful attempts at trying to express
new language despite the inevitable pitfalls. Almost all of my
students exhibit that comfort with and motivation to learn
another language partly because they have gained a quietly
assured confidence while learning English in an international
school. They enjoy new sounds, probably because they have
experimented from an early age with different sound systems
of both languages. They find innocent enjoyment in hearing
new phrases that, although they have become trite to us
English-speakers, fascinate them by virtue of their novelty. In
addition, they feel rather satisfied with themselves for being
able to decipher combinations of new words. My students
burst into laughter the other day in class because I had
mentioned the oft-quoted line in English concerning the only
tow things certain in life, “death and taxes.” It is a common
enough saying for those growing up in the States (especially in
Connecticut!) and speaking English, but this saying tickled by
Vietnamese students whereas in the State it would have just
made me sound very “old” like my students’ parents.
The English of my L3 learners will also improve. Some
curious researchers in Haifa, Israel offer further evidence of
this phenomenon, gained from an interesting experiment they
conducted at the university there. They compared the
linguistic abilities of two groups of 6th graders who were
studying English as a foreign language. One group consisted
of immigrants who speak Russian as their L1 and who have
since become essentially bilingual by acquiring Hebrew. The
second group consisted of students who spoke only Hebrew.
They interviewed and measured the language skills of both
groups. The results indicated that the first group could
manipulate English, their L3, more skillfully than the second.
Moreover, and perhaps somewhat unexpectedly, these 6th
graders had also surpassed their peers of the second group in
their ability to use Hebrew. The researchers drew the
conclusion that students who study a third language improve
their linguistic skills in all the languages they know, given that
they are languages that they employ on a regular basis.
(University of Haifa. “Bilinguals find it easier to learn a third
language.” ScienceDaily, 1 Feb. 2011.)
My students not only appreciate creativity with language but
also create a good deal themselves. Even their names are a
creation. Many students have chosen a Western nickname by
which they prefer to be called, perhaps because many
international teachers have demonstrated little skill in
pronouncing their original Vietnamese names with the proper
sounds and tones. However, many also simply enjoy taking
on a persona since they are encouraged, after all, to speak
English outside English, math history and every other lesson.
Consequently, I do not have to pronounce Nguyen or Hieu but
my tongue easily can say “John,” “Peter,” “Amy” and
“Kristine.” A few boys prefer more interesting names like
“Leons” or “Tanner” and some girls “Clover” and “Lola.” The
school also has sighted “Elvis”, educates a “Pokemon,”
wearily watches a “Stinger” and simply is entertained by a
“Cher.” Ventus apparently had a different name last academic
year. He changed it to his current sobriquet this September,
sporting it like a new Fall fashion.
The researchers and we language teachers as well may have
extrapolated more ideas from this experiment. Bilingual
learners will improve their proficiency in all their languages
even if all three language differ one from the other, that is, all
three languages need not be romance languages nor do they
need to use the same script. Returning to Ventus and his lovestarved life, I would not classify him exactly as bilingual. I
cannot verify, but I simply know he is not as smooth in
English as he is in Vietnamese. However, and as I have
warned my female students, his English will improve as his
Spanish does. They insist, and rightly so, that their English
and Spanish will grow to similar majestic levels of linguistic
ability and will be able to fight his hyperbole with
understatement or his directness with metaphor and take the
wind out of Ventus.
I shall boldly hypothesize that even students who are not
bilingual but simply using L2 while also studying L3 will
improve their linguistic abilities as well. They appear to know
how to train their brains and accumulate more knowledge and
I do not have budding linguists in all my classes but I can
attest to the high quality fo their linguistic talents and to their
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Winter 2012
so. Yet research also suggests that learning three languages
yields significantly higher proficiency in all three languages.
In order to encourage students to build confidence, and
therefore inspire and enthuse them so that they may develop
their own sense of motivation, it seems that students should be
exposed to a second language and a third. The students in
Europe who profit from living in a small space compared to
the vastness of the United States easily acquire more than two
languages. The students in international schools resemble
their European counterparts. They profit from geography,
which essentially leads to comfort in speaking more than two
languages. Most people feel comfortable at home. To some
extent language teacher always try to recreate that zone of
comfort so students take risks and create language. Perhaps
offering even more linguistic challanges will not lower those
SAT scores. If the foundation for language is laid down early,
and comfort is established, then research consistently proves
that knowing many languages can only help the SAT taker.
Technology
Adina’s Technology Tips
By Adina Alexandru
So, you are starting a new school year and you are in a hurry
to nail down those indispensable classroom routines, assess
students’ prior knowledge and introduce new material, apply
all the new information presented during the previous
professional development sessions while still trying to
understand how to better facilitate for students the acquisition
of 21 Century skills. Successful integration of technology and
21st Century skills development into standards-based
curriculum and classroom practice is the current concern of
many school districts across the state. While we are all aware
of the urgency that students need to master these skills,
teachers’ primary concern in the classroom is still the students’
engagement in the learning process. Due to this concern, more
and more teachers have realized by now that today’s students
respond positively to the use of technology and therefore, it is
a good idea to incorporate new technology as it becomes
available.
intrinsic motivation in learning a language. Anecdotally, the
few students who lack the motivation and/or skills that their
peers possess are the ones who more recently have left the
Vietnamese educational system and have entered the
international school with little or no prior knowledge of
English. They are just working hard to catch up to their peers.
Others simply have true disabilities in language learning.
Although they will not all pursue careers or vocations in which
Spanish or French plays a prominent role, they will
nevertheless exit school knowing three languages, all to
varying degrees but with a respectable amount of proficiency.
When I taught in the States, the students naturally had varying
degrees of talent in language. Of course, we all know students
who speak English fluently while speaking another language
at home and studying a third in school. I think back and easily
recall many of my former students of Polish descent who were
bilingual in English and Polish and studied Spanish. They all
had an admirable propensity for language and demonstrated
that poised comfort and confidence mentioned previously.
Every year I incorporate 2-3 new technology applications to
keep the students (and myself ☺ ) interested and curious about
learning as it does become often boring to use the same old
“stuff”. For recycling purposes and time and resource
optimization and I use the beginning of the year to do an
“early fall” cleaning for the purpose of replacing old
technology with new technology. Some of the new but
promising technology to deliver the foreign language content
is presented below. I encourage you to try one or two
applications this school year mostly because they were created
to respond to the 21st century skills!
As for the students who do not have the advantage of speaking
another language at home and begin to study another language
at school, must they work harder in order to succeed in their
language studies? Research suggests that they will have to do
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How many applications are you already using from this list?
Winter 2012
A quick, easy way for students to complete and submit a
homework assignment is with Google Docs. Teachers can
share the link for the assignment so that students have a blank
worksheet. They can complete it in G Docs, and then either
save and share their own link with the teacher or email it back
to their teacher. Of course that this means that students need to
have Gmail accounts.
Smart Board, Edmodo (school version of Facebook), Quizlet
(create your own game and self quiz), Conjuguemos,
Wikispaces (often better than Google.docs), iWeb, Voki,
Glogster, Zoobird, Prezi ( a nice change from Power Point),
iGoogle, Toondoo, taggalaxy, Piclits, Wordle, Faceinwhole,
Wallwisher, iPad 2, Google maps (to design tours), Wordplay,
Wiffiti, Storybird.
GoAnimate
In the past, it was very difficult and time consuming to make
animated videos. Now with GoAnimate, you can easily make
animations any way you want! There is nothing to download
and there is no need to draw. Students can make their own
animated characters, direct their own movies, or watch their
peers’ creations. It's easy, fun and free! Videos can be
customized with a large number of features and you can assign
students to create scenes from daily life that can be enacted
into comical, satirical or even dramatic stories. All they have
to do it to select a template, choose characters, pull a script
(created in class) and then watch the animation video!
Recently, I came across the visual below (that was developed
by a foreign language teacher) and I thought that it
summarizes, with a fairly high degree of accuracy, how
specific new technology helps facilitate the 21 century
learning skills.
Edmodo
Edmodo http://www.edmodo.com is social learning network
similar to Facebook but designed specifically for foreign
language students and teachers. Beyond using the site to post
assignments and reminders of upcoming quizzes and tests,
students can also post their own topics. This site gives the
possibility for communicative language practice (as opposed
to practicing vocabulary or verb conjugations in isolation). In
fact, we all agree that students should do the majority of
preparation at home and practice actively with us in class!.
This allows students to hand in homework via the Edmodo
interface and eliminate paper altogether!
Here are my recommendations in this issue:
Speech to Text in Google Chrome
Speech to text technology has certainly improved
tremendously over time but we know that it can be also very
pricey. Adding a speech recognition option to your computer
doesn't have to be expensive however! If you use Google's
Chrome web browser one of the apps you can add is the
Speech Recognizer. The Speech Recognizer is available
through the Chrome Web Store as a free and easy to use
application. After installing it, you launch it and click the
microphone. You can now start recording your voice. The
Speech Recognizer will type out your text when you finish
recording. You can then copy and paste your text to a
document you have opened in Google Docs. The Speech
Recognizer could be a good resource for students who, for a
variety of reasons, might need assistance generating text
documents on a computer.
In preparation for this application it is always a good idea at
the beginning of the year to survey students regarding their
access to technology at home. My guess is that a large
majority of them do have access to it but the survey will give
you their accurate current profile. If you have student with no
access at home you can always encourage them to use the
school computers in the library during study halls or after
school. This way all students can post and comment every day.
There are also public libraries and community centers with
computers available to the public. My recommendation is to
sign up for a lab day early in the year to get everybody started.
Edmodo is a great resource and the learning curve for the
students is small because they know Facebook so well!
Submitting homework assignments with Google Docs
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Uploader Box
I hope that this was a good overview of the newest
technologies and that you will try out some. Have a good year
and let me know your thought on how to improve this column!
Uploader Box is a free service for sharing large files with your
students. To use this service you need to upload a file from
your computer, enter your email address, and enter the email
addresses of your students. Once your file is uploaded,
Uploader Box will provide you with two urls. One of the urls
is for sharing your file and the other is for deleting your file if
you decide you no longer want to share it. This service is
handy for sharing files that are too large for attaching to
emails. The next time your students complete a large
multimedia project, they could use Uploader Box to send that
file instead of using up the storage in your email inbox.
CT COLT News
2011 Fall Conference
The 41th annual CT COLT Conference turned out to be another
successful gathering for world language professionals. We
had over 325 pre-registered for the conference and the
participation was incredibly high, despite the unseasonal storm
that hit the state two days prior to our event. For many, this
conference became a personal reprieve, as participants had
nothing but smiles on their faces all day, being warm, dry,
well-fed, catching up and networking with fellow world
language enthusiasts. Professional participants spanned all
levels of education, from pre-K to college, private and public
sectors, student teachers, eager college students and Teach for
America educators. We want to thank each and every one of
you for setting your personal priorities aside during this
unusual time, and joining us for a day of world language
professionalism.
Mind Maps
One way to verify that students master their knowledge of a
topic is to have them create outlines of their theme or
assignments. Here are some tools for creating outlines and
mind maps to plan video projects, podcasts, or essays.
·
Quicklyst is a nice tool for taking notes and creating
outlines. Quicklyst provides a simple outline template that
you can use to take notes. There are two features that
stand out: First, you can do basic web searches within the
framework of taking notes. To do a search just type a
question mark (?) before a word then press enter.
Quicklyst will then fill-in that line with some basic
information about that word. For example, when you type
“?spain” that line on the outline is filled with some basic
information about Spaint. The other useful feature offered
by Quicklyst is the option to search within your notes. If
you've created a lot of outlines in your Quicklyst account
you can use the search function to quickly locate your
notes about a particular topic.
·
Knowcase is a free tool for recording ideas and creating
outlines. To get started using Knowcase just click create
then start typing. Each time you press enter or return a
new element of your outline is started. To rearrange the
sequence of elements on your outline just drag them into a
new order. Students can edit their colleagues’ outline if
the document is made public.
·
Winter 2012
CT COLT was happy to have over 40 workshops run
throughout the day. These workshops spanned many, many
languages, including Chinese, French, Italian, German and
Spanish. Initiatives spanned all facets of world language
development, from music, arts, and cuisine to general
workshops on technology and world language teaching
strategies and ideas, including for the first time ever iPads, as
well as data collection, classroom management and software
strategies. CT COLT was honored to offer professional
development from presenters spanning several states and
included the 2010 NECTFL Best Presentation workshop.
This year’s best of CT COLT conference was presented by
Spider Scribe is an online mind map creation service.
Spider Scribe can be used individually or be used
collaboratively. What jumps out about Spider Scribe is
that users can add images, maps, calendars, text notes, and
uploaded text files to their mind maps. Users can connect
the elements on their mind maps or let them each stand on
their own.
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Winter 2012
in Waterbury, CT. The call for workshops will be available
soon on our website. Plan to spend a great day with
professional development and great camaraderie. Be sure to
visit our website often for upcoming information.
Richard DeMeij. It is hoped that he will be able to travel to
Baltimore to present at NECTFL in April of 2012.
The keynote speaker, Dr. Timothy Reagan, left attendees with
a powerful presentation. He encouraged world language
teachers to continue to be advocates for World Languages and
the future of our students.
We should continue to
communicate and collaborate professionally with our
immediate and extended professional learning network.
CTCOLT encourages the same, and holds events such as the
conference to continue to remind those in the field of
education just how imperative world language learning has
become.
Between Scylla and Charybdis:
Foreign Language Education as a
Portal to the Future
Keynote Address presented at the CT COLT Annual Fall
Conference on October 31, 2011
We continue with the passport drawings, as well as with the
themed raffle baskets. Much thought and effort has gone into
preparing the drawings and the raffle baskets. It is exciting to
have our winners so enthusiastic about the conference and
their prizes. We also have added to the ways and means table
with CT COLT pencils, pens, lanyards, mugs, and insulated
lunch bags. CT COLT jackets are also available. Our first
wine and cheese event was a wonderful conclusion to the day,
with Greg Pearce, a classical guitarist entertaining us while we
enjoyed conversation with colleagues and friends.
Timothy Reagan, CSU Professor
Central Connecticut State University
There is a profound paradox in contemporary foreign language
education in our society, and I would like to begin discussing
this paradox by sharing with you pieces of a short essay by the
American humorist Will Cuppy. Cuppy, who is not as wellremembered today as he deserves, wrote a number of satirical
pieces during the first half of the 20th century, and one of my
personal favorites is entitled, “The Dodo.” If you will bear
with me, I want to quote part of that essay now:
Congratulations to Rosemarie Bartholomew who was the
drawing winner of a free conference registration for next year.
Rose was one of many who went on line to fill out the survey
that we ask all participants to do so that we can hear how we
can meet the needs from our members.
The Dodo never had a chance. He seems to
have been invented for the sole purpose of
becoming extinct and that was all he was
good for. I’m not blaming the Dodo, but he
was just a mess.
For one thing, his
appearance was against him . . . He had an
ugly face with a large hooked beak, a tail in
the wrong place, wings too small and weak
for flight, and a very prominent stomach.
You can’t look like that and survive . . . Up
to 1505 the Dodos had everything their own
way . . . They probably thought they were
All in all, the annual CT COLT conference came off with
exhilaration and success. We particularly want to thank our
exhibitors who help to make this conference so affordable to
our members. Without their support we could not possibly
offer the caliber of such a conference to our members.
It is our hope that everyone spread the good news of all the
hard work that you do and come back to join us at our
conference next year!
We look forward to seeing you
Monday, Oct. 29, 2012 in our new site at the Coco Key Resort
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CT COLT
making splendid progress as a species and
had most of life’s problems licked. And
then came the Portuguese. The Portuguese
called the birds duodos, or fools, because
they would associate with the Portuguese
and allow themselves to be hit on the head
with clubs. The Portuguese finally got tired
of this and left, and the Dutch arrived in
1598 with a shipload of Pigs, Dogs, and Cats
. . . The Dutch ate the grownup Dodos, and
the other animals ate the eggs and the young,
and by 1691 there was not a single Dodo left
on earth . . . Most of us feel that we could
never become extinct. The Dodo felt that
way, too. (1951, pp. 163-165)
Winter 2012
CT COLT wishes to thank
the following exhibitors
for supporting the
2011 Fall Conference
Abbey Road Programs
Applause Learning Resources
Bennington College
Breaking the Barrier, Inc.
Casterbridge Tours
Central Connecticut State University (CCSU)
Chester Technical Services, Inc.
EF Education
EMC Publishing
Glencoe/McGraw Hill
Green Rewards
Holt McDougal/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Jumpstreet Tours
National Registration Center for Study Abroad (NRCSA)
Outlook International
Pearson
Prometour Educational Tours
ROBOTEL
SANAKO-Tandberg Educational
Santillana USA Publishing Co.
Sosnowski Language Resources
I do not believe that foreign language
educators in Connecticut, or in the United States in general,
are actually threatened with extinction. I am concerned,
though, that our future is far from as clear or certain as it
should be. In an era of dramatically increasing globalization,
in a country in which linguistic diversity is rapidly growing, at
a time when greater and greater numbers of others on our
planet are finding not just bilingualism, but multilingualism an
essential part of everyday life, the United States is increasingly
monolingual ideologically, although certainly not
demographically.
You may wonder what I mean by “ideologically
monolingual.” In every society, there are assumptions that are
deemed to be normative – that is, beliefs about what is normal
or typical, and, concomitantly, what is in some way abnormal
or atypical. Regardless of our very real diversity, examples of
normative assumptions in the United States include race
(where the norm is white), religion (where the norm is
Christian), and of course language (where the norm is native
English-speaking). These norms are important not only
because they marginalize others, but also because they
encourage fears that “real” Americans are somehow
threatened. We see this in fears about people of color
becoming the majority in our population, in growing fears of
Islam and our Muslim population, and, of course, in
xenophobic fears of both immigrants and minority languages.
When we hear people objecting to advertisements on buses
and billboards in Spanish, for instance, the underlying cause of
the objections goes far deeper than a mere linguistic
preference.
Southern CT State University (SCSU)
MA Romance Languages
Student Travel Vacations
Surcari
Teachers Love Travel
Travel and Education
University of Connecticut (UCONN)
Visit Canada
Vista Higher Learning
Vistas in Education
Wesleyan University Graduate Liberal Studies
World Challenge
It is this ideological monolingualism in the context of a world
that is rapidly becoming more and more global that is at the
heart of the paradox of contemporary foreign language
education in the United States. Further, the lack of real
concern for and commitment to foreign language education
that characterizes much education policy in the United States
is especially strange when one takes into account that foreign
language teaching, curricula, textbooks and teaching materials,
not to mention the overall quality of foreign language teachers,
is arguably better today than it has ever been.
Indeed, to follow this line of reasoning just a bit further, if one
follows the typical political and educational rhetoric about
globalization, we make a fascinating discovery. Virtually
everyone involved in any manner in public education –
parents, other teachers, school board members, business and
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Winter 2012
foreign languages, I have never seen any product capable of
delivering on such a promise, nor have I ever seen anyone
really acquire a second or foreign language so quickly and
easily. In fact, the difficulty involved in learning a foreign
language has provided the punch line for humorists for
generations. The nineteenth century American humorist Mark
Twain commented extensively on his own problems learning
(or, perhaps more accurately, not learning) both German and
French (see Thomas, 1988). In an essay on “Taming the
Bicycle,” Twain noted that:
community leaders, school administrators, politicians, and
policy-makers, among others – all agree on the importance of
preparing children for the twenty-first century, and all of these
groups also agree that a central part of this preparation must be
to prepare students to become global citizens capable of
functioning in an increasingly globalized world. So far, so
good, I would say. Surely there is no more powerful argument
for the central place of foreign languages in the curriculum; if
preparing students to succeed in a globalized world, then they
must have language skills that go beyond their first language.
Foreign languages, then, must be envisioned not only as an
important part of the curriculum, but as a core subject.
It [learning to ride a bicycle] is not like studying
German, where you mull along, in a groping,
uncertain way, for thirty years; and at last, just
as you think you’ve got it, they spring the
subjunctive on you, and there you are. No – I see
now, plainly enough, that the great pity about
the German language is, that you can’t fall off it
and hurt yourself. (Quoted in Loeb, 1966, p. 35)
Somehow, though, in the alchemy of politics, and filtered
through the ideological monolingualism that I have already
discussed, this turns out not to be the case. Although it
ultimately failed, only a year ago the Connecticut State
Department of Education was recommending in the Secondary
Education Reform Act that foreign languages be offered, as
electives, for at most a single year (see Reagan, 2009). In
short, in a way perhaps only possible in the context of public
education double-speak, we face the idea of monolingual
global education. What is even more disturbing, I think, is not
that we are seriously taking about global education taking
place in a thoroughly monolingual setting, but that no one
seems even to notice how absurd this is. Sometimes, after I
have said something that they believe to be especially out-ofdate or ridiculous, my children will say, “Is that really what
they believe on the planet that you’re from?” That is pretty
much how I find myself reacting to the idea of monolingual
global education.
In The Innocents Abroad, Twain discussed the problems of
communicating with native speakers in French, observing, as
perhaps have many others, that, “In Paris they just simply
opened their eyes and stared when we spoke to them in
French! We never did succeed in making those idiots
understand their own language” (Twain, 1966, p. 484).
I think that another common mistake that we often make in
trying to make the case for foreign language education is that
we conflate two very different concepts: studying a foreign
language and becoming bilingual in a foreign language (see
Reagan, 2004). To be sure, there is a relationship here, but it
is neither direct nor causal, and most people in Anglophone
settings have direct experience only with the former – and all
too often, these experiences have been both frustrating and
largely unsuccessful, as Twain’s comments make clear. Some
years ago, Gil Jarvis of The Ohio State University, in
advocating high school foreign language study, argued that:
I must confess, though, that on occasion I think that foreign
language educators are our worst enemies. In a way, this is
understandable. For most of us, language learning was an
exciting and extremely enjoyable undertaking – and one that
we were good at, or we would not be here. I suspect that most
of us have far more positive memories of our own efforts to
learn a second language than we do of learning, say,
mathematics. I would bet that for many teachers of
mathematics, just the reverse is true. We all end up,
ultimately, choosing to do things that we are good at and from
which we gain pleasure. This is only natural, and there is
certainly no shame in it. But what it may mean is that we
forget, or perhaps do not adequately take into account, how
difficult learning a language is for many, perhaps most, of our
students.
With a language skill added to your other
skills, you might double the chances of
getting the job you want. There are openings
for an auto mechanic who also speaks
Arabic, an electronic radio expert who
knows Japanese . . . Language is, in fact,
your hidden job insurance. (Jarvis, 1980, pp.
31-32)
Now, I ask you: just how realistic are these scenarios, both in
terms of the combinations of skills involved and with respect
to the necessary degree of language fluency required? I
believe, as much as anyone, that second language skills can
have very real vocational value, but I also believe that a few
years of secondary school language, especially given the
constraints under which we now teach and students now learn,
are likely to be unnecessary in providing such a skill level for
most students. We may, in short, have a bit of a “truth-inadvertizing” problem sometimes that we need to be both aware
There are a plethora of magazine and television
advertisements that make extravagant promises about how
easy some product will make learning a foreign language – I
am willing to gamble that almost all of us have seen some
advertisements that come close to guaranteeing fluency in as
little as ten days. Perhaps this is indeed possible; the human
brain is certainly remarkable, and I have obviously never met
most members of my species. What I can say, though, is that
in my experience, after some 35 years of teaching and learning
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CT COLT
of and sensitive to, since it has the potential to delegitimize
our other arguments as well.
So, then, what is our future? Is foreign language really a
“portal to the future”? In trying to answer this question, I
cannot help but remember some of the other predictions about
future events that perfectly sensible, reasonable and wellinformed people have made in the past about politics,
technology, democracy, capitalism and a host of other topics.
For instance, consider the following predictions, all of which I
have taken from the Internet:
•
In 1962, Decca Recoding Company, in
rejecting the Beetles, commented that, “We
don't like their sound, and guitar music is on
the way out.”
•
•
•
Not all technological predictions have been
negative, though. In 1955, in an interview in
The New York Times, Alex Lewyt, the
president of the Lewyt Corporation which
manufactured vacuum cleaners, predicated
that, “Nuclear-powered vacuum cleaners
will probably be a reality in 10 years.”
•
Regardless of what one might think of her
politics, Margaret Thatcher made an
incredibly powerful, and quite erroneous,
prediction in 1974, saying that, “It will be
years -- not in my time -- before a woman
will become Prime Minister.’
•
Ανδ λαστ, Ωιλλιαμ Κριστολ, ον
Δεχεμβερ 17, 2006, σαιδ, “If [Hillary
Clinton] gets a race against John Edwards
and Barack Obama, she’s going to be the
nominee. Gore is the only threat to her, then.
… Barack Obama is not going to beat
Hillary Clinton in a single Democratic
primary. I’ll predict that right now.”
After visiting the Grand Canyon in 1861, Lt.
Joseph Ives wrote, “Our [expedition] has
been the first, and doubtless [will] be the
last, to visit this profitless locality.”
•
Winter 2012
In 1895, Lord Kelvin, the president of the
British Royal Society, and a well-respected
mathematician and physicist, observed that,
“Heavier-than-air flying machines are
impossible.”
I am thinking of all of these predictions, and many others
as well, in trying to see into the future of foreign language
education in the United States. There are, it seems to me,
some fairly easy predictions that can be made about
language and language teaching in the United States based
on our present circumstances: the shortage of foreign
language educators, especially in Spanish, is going to
continue to increase as foreign language teachers retire
and as the numbers of newly‐minted foreign language
teachers fails to increase substantially enough to replace
them; the teaching and learning of foreign languages in U.S.
public schools are likely to remain marginalized in spite of
our efforts at public advocacy; and last but not least, the
most commonly taught languages (especially Spanish, and
to a lesser extent French), are going, by and large, to
continue to dominate foreign language education, in spite
of efforts to promote various less commonly taught
languages. Predictions about computers and
computerization have been especially
subject to error, it seems. In 1943, Thomas
Watson, chairman of IBM, commented that,
“I think there is a world market for maybe
five computers.” Six years later, in March
1949, the magazine Popular Mechanics was
far more positive in its predictions about
where the technology was going,
optimistically suggesting that, “Where a
calculator on the ENIAC is equipped with
18,000 vacuum tubes and weighs 30 tons,
computers in the future may have only 1,000
vacuum tubes and weigh only 1.5 tons.”
Not having learned a lesson from these
earlier predictions, in 1977 Ken Olson, the
president, chairman and founder of Digital
Equipment Corporation, which
manufactured large business mainframe
computers, dismissed the viability of the
personal computer by arguing that, “There is
no reason anyone would want a computer in
their home.”
These are all safe predications, and I strongly suspect that
every one of you might have made them just as easily as I
have. Although fairly likely to be true, they do not really
provide an answer the question of whether foreign
language actually is a “portal to the future.” The way in which
we respond to this question in fact involves a much broader
question about how English-speakers in particular will
function in an increasingly multilingual world. In spite of the
common belief that “everyone already speaks English,” this is
of course not true. The vast majority of human beings alive
today do not speak English. There are somewhere between
325 million and 330 million native speakers of English in the
world, and an additional 150 million fluent second language
users of English, for a total of about 480 million speakers. If
IBM in 1959 also dismissed the idea of the
photocopier as a potential money-maker,
telling the eventual founders of Xerox that,
“The world potential market for copying
machines is 5000 at most.”
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CT COLT
Winter 2012
history.
And while it is not exactly
equivalent to biological extinction of
endangered species, it is happening much
faster, making species extinction rates look
trivial by comparison.
Scientists’ best
estimates show that since the year 1600 the
planet lost a full 484 animal species, while
654 plant species were recorded as having
gone extinct.
Of course, these are
underestimates. But even so, they make up
less than 7 percent of the total number of
identified plant and animal species.
Compared to this, the estimated 40 percent
of languages that are endangered is a
staggering figure. Languages are far more
threatened than birds (11% threatened,
endangered, or extinct), mammals (18%),
fish (5%), or plants (8%). (2007, p. 7)
we add to that number the individuals who have some degree
of facility in the language, there are probably about one billion
speakers of English in the world. Taking into account that
there are roughly seven billion people on earth, this means that
fewer than 15% of the planet’s population speak English. I
would suggest that a percentage of under 15% simply does not
make English a “global” language, in spite of its importance
and dominance in some fields.
The issue here, though, is not merely one of numbers. When a
person is restricted to using a single language, there are other
limitations involved as well. It is true that a native speaker of
English can usually “get by” in many parts of the world using
only English, this inevitably means that their interpersonal
contacts will be only with others who speak English. In nonEnglish speaking settings, such individuals are not
representative of the general population: their education, social
class, and even values and beliefs are to some extent atypical
of other members of their society, and the monolingual
English speaker is unable to recognize that, let alone have
direct contacts with other members of the population. Further,
when two individuals communicate, and do so in the native
language of one but the non-native language of the other, there
is always a power differential created, and this power
differential is virtually never recognized by native speakers of
English. There is, then, an issue of social justice and fairness
involved in our selection of the language that we use in
interactions, and this is as true when speaking to non-native
speakers of English in the United States as elsewhere in the
world. Finally, when one relies on interactions only with
speakers of English, nuances (often quite important nuances)
in the non-English language are lost to the monolingual
speaker of English. A simple example of this is the Spanish
word cena; the dictionary or textbook tells us that cena means
“dinner” in English. So it does. But the mental concept that is
part of the Spanish term is quite different than the English one:
cena is typically a much smaller meal than its English
equivalent, and is eaten much later in the evening than is
generally true for “dinner.”
The analogy of language loss to biological loss is a flawed one
in many ways, but it does help us to see how serious the
problem of language endangerment actually is. Harrison
summarizes the case for why language endangerment and
language extinction should matter to us:
We have seen at least three compelling
reasons to safeguard and document
vanishing languages. First is the fact that
our human knowledge base is rapidly
eroding. Most of what humans have learned
over the millennia about how to thrive on
this planet is encapsulated in threatened
languages. If we let them slip away, we may
compromise our very ability to survive as
our ballooning human population strains
earth’s ecosystems. A second reason is our
rich patrimony of human cultural heritage,
including myth and belief systems, wisdom,
poetry, songs, and epic tales. Allowing our
own history to be erased, we condemn
ourselves to a cultural amnesia that may
undermine our sense of purpose and our
ability to live in peace with diverse peoples.
A third reason is the great puzzle of human
cognition, and our ability to understand how
the mind organizes and processes
information. Much of the human mind is
still a black box. We cannot discern its
inner workings – and we can often only
know its thoughts by what comes out of it in
the form of speech. Obscure languages hold
at least some of the keys to unlocking the
mind. For all these reasons, and with the
possibility of dire consequences for failure,
documenting endangered languages while
they may still be heard, and revitalizing
tongues that still may be viable, must be
There is another concern that language educators should be
aware of with respect to our linguistic future. We do not know
precisely how many human languages currently exist around
the planet, but most estimates vary between 6,000 and 7,000.
Most of us, of course, are completely unaware of the vast
majority of these languages; we know about only the world’s
elite languages – those that have some sort of formal status,
those that have a written form, those that we identify with
particular countries or groups of counties, those which have
substantial numbers of speakers, and so on. What most people
– even extremely well-educated people with a strong interest
in linguistic matters – may not be aware of is how seriously
this incredible threat to this language diversity that now exists.
As K. David Harrison noted,
The accelerating extinction of languages on
a global scale has no precedent in human
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CT COLT
Winter 2012
In ending, I would like to argue that foreign language
educators are in fact not at all like the dodo. We are by no
means threatened with extinction. It is true that our field is
often marginalized, both financially and in terms of
curriculum, but in many ways we are stronger today than we
have ever been. Even more important, our students – and our
society more generally – desperately need the very skills,
perspectives and kinds of knowledge that we provide. Our
task is not so much to continue to improve (although we do
need to do so, as do all educators), but to assist others to
understand how central foreign languages are to any decent
education, how the study of foreign languages is a key to
promoting global education, and how foreign language study
is indeed at the core of the curriculum. Thank you.
viewed as the greatest conservation
challenge of our generation. (2007, pp. 1920)
There is, admittedly, not a great deal that most of us can do to
save threatened languages, but what we can do is raise the
issue with our students in the context of the foreign language
classroom.
Now, to return to an earlier point: If there are powerful reasons
for English speakers to learn other languages, which I believe
that there clearly are, how does such learning constitute a
“portal to the future”? The answer has to do with what we
mean by the role of the school in helping our students to
become “educated persons.” There has been a substantial
literature – both theoretical and practical – about the concept
of the “educated person” since the 1960s, and the concept
itself is embedded in the Connecticut Core of Common
Learning, which are designed to ensure that students “become
fully educated citizens.”
References
Cuppy, W. (1951). How to become extinct. Garden City, NY:
Garden City Books.
Harrison, K. (2007). When languages die: The extinction of
the world’s languages and the erosion of human knowledge.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Another way to think about the future of language, not only in
the United States but around the world, is in terms of the
relatively new field of interlinguistics. Jonathan Pool and
Mark Fettes (1998) have suggested that there are basically five
linguistic options that are possible results of and responses to
today’s multilingualism:
Jarvis, G. (1980) The value of second-language learning. In F.
Grittner (ed.),
Learning a second language: Seventy-ninth Yearbook of the
National Society for the
•
World English;
•
the use of “language brokers”;
•
the acceptance of multilingualism;
•
technologism; or
Loeb, A. (Ed.). (1996) The wit and wisdom of Mark Twain.
New York: Barnes and Noble Books.
•
the acceptance and use of global auxiliary
language.
Pool, J., & Fettes, M. (1998). The challenge of interlingualism:
A research initiative. Esperantic Studies, 10, 1-3.
From the perspective of language educators, only two of these
options have much credibility: the use of language brokers,
and the acceptance of multilingualism. Clearly most language
educators would prefer the latter, but would certainly be able
to live with the former (which we already do, in point of fact).
The idea of simply giving up to not only to the dominance but
to the hegemony of English is a huge mistake on a variety of
levels. Technologism requires a huge leap with respect to
what computers are capable of accomplishing. Perhaps
someday a computer will indeed be able to translate
Shakespeare from English into Russian or isiZulu, but that
time is not now – nor is it likely to take place in the near
future, in my view. The acceptance, learning and use of a
global auxiliary language is tempting on a number of grounds,
and is potentially possible as the case of Esperanto makes
clear. As Esperanto also makes clear, though, any such option
is likely to be seen both by language educators and the general
public as incredibly unrealistic and impractical.
Reagan, T. (2004). ‘Don’t know much about the French I
took’: A contemporary case for second language study in the
liberal arts. Arts and Humanities in Higher Education, 3 (2),
231-241.
Study of Education (pp. 26–43). Chicago, IL: University of
Chicago Press.
Reagan, T. (2009). Proposed high school reform and world
language education in Connecticut: How The Connecticut
Plan misrepresents the evidence. NECTFL Review, 64, 18-33.
Thomas, U. (1988) Mark Twain’s German language learning
experiences. In D. Benseler, W. Lohnes, and V. Nollendorfs
(eds.), Teaching German in America: Prolegomena to a
history (pp. 133–143). Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin
Press.
Twain, M. (1966). The innocents abroad. New York: Signet
Classics.
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Winter 2012
I look forward to meeting you at the COLT convention on
October 31 and hearing from you during the course of the
academic year.
Street address:
230 Prospect Street- Room 103
New Haven CT 06511
to Rosemarie Bartholomew
Mailing Address:
MACMILLIAN/PIER/CTF
PO box 208206
New Haven, CT 06520-8206
for winning the drawing for
completing the survey monkey
evaluation. She will receive a free
registration to the 2012
Phone: 203 432 1582 - Email: marion.fouan@yale.edu
fall conference.
Announcing The First Annual
Student Essay Contest Grades 9-12
Introducing Marion Fouan
Sponsored By CT COLT
New Coordinator for the Center for
Toulouse-Connecticut Partnership
The goal of the contest is two-fold:
1. To offer students a voice and recognize excellence
My name is Marion Fouan and I am
the new coordinator of the Center for
the Toulouse-Connecticut Partnership
for this academic year (2011/2012).
2. To have a piece that we can use for advocacy; to that end,
the essay needs to be in English
Task to student: Write an essay of 350-500 words, 12 point
font, double spaced, in which you explain what learning a
world language means to you. The essay should be in a letter
format, with an audience of a school board or local politician.
You may wish to mention how learning a language enriches
your life now and how you see it enriching your life in the
future. You are encouraged to do research as appropriate (for
example, how language learning is correlated to higher IQ and
SAT results, or how you will use your language in your
chosen profession) and you should give credit to any words
and ideas to which you refer. There are links on CT COLT’s
website that you can use, or we recommend looking at the
ACTFL website, but you are not limited to these sources. The
prize for the winning piece is $50 to the winning student and
$50 Carlex voucher to the submitting teacher. The teacher
must be a member of CT COLT. All pieces submitted become
property of CT COLT and may be used by COLT for
advocacy purposes.
My school career started in 2006
when I began my undergraduate
studies in Toulouse – BA in Applied
Foreign Languages – where I had the
opportunity, during two summers, to
teach French as a foreign language to
adults. Afterwards, I completed my
first Masters in England where I stayed for a year to study
applied linguistics. Finally, last year I started a new Masters –
Learning and Teaching French as a foreign/second language at
the University of Toulouse II.
This year, at the Center for the Toulouse-Connecticut
Partnership (formerly Center for the Teaching of French), I
will be working with PIER (Programs in International
Educational Resources) at the MacMillan Center for
International and Area Studies at Yale, the Cultural Services
of the French Embassy and the State of Connecticut
Department of Education.
Due date is March 8.
My main responsibilities are giving the Test de Connaissance
du Français (TCF) three times a year, organizing cultural and
pedagogical programs and continuing and strengthening
exchanges between schools in Connecticut and in the
Académie de Toulouse. If you are interested in starting an
exchange (real or virtual), please let me know.
Submissions should be made to Michaela Volovsek at
Michaela_Volovsek@whps.org with a copy to Manuela
Wagner at manuela.wagner@uconn.edu. Notifications will be
made by the end of March.
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CT COLT
Winter 2012
krotzerk@glastonburyus.org with any questions. We would
love to see you there!
Technology Academy 2012
Due to overwhelming demand the CT COLT
Technology Academy will offer a winter session on
Thursday, January 12, 2012 at Enfield High School
from 4-7pm. This session will focus on four
technologies that are essential for all language teachers
to be familiar with. Each of the four mini-sessions will
be 30 minutes, with the final hour of the session
devoted to personalized learning for each attendee.
Sessions include: incorporating digital media into the
FL classroom through Youtube, Using Twitter for
professional development, Creating wikis for
classroom use, and Using VoiceThread for
encouraging student communication.
Kristen Vrabie’s Photo Wins
Honorable Mention in ACTFL
Contest
Kristen Vrabie’s photo (see above) was awarded honorable
mention in the 2011 The Language Educator Photo Contest. It
was chosen as one of the top 7 photos from over 100
submissions. Her entry appeared in the August issue of the
magazine, as well as on the ACTFL website.
Registration for this outstanding professional
development opportunity is available through the Tech
Academy on the CT COLT website at www.ctcolt.org
If you have any questions, please send them to
Jimmy Wildman
at wildmanj@glastonburyus.org
This is a photo of Kristen Vrabie with schoolchildren from
Montevideo, Uruguay. The children are waving to my students
from Marlborough, CT via a live SKYPE session. I teach
Spanish in grades 3-6 at Marlborough Elementary School. I
traveled to Uruguay during April vacation with the support of
the Educational Seminars Program Alumni Small Grants. This
is a program sponsored by the Bureau of Educational and
Cultural Affairs (ECA) of the U.S. Department of State, and is
administered by American Councils for International
Education: ACTR/ACCELS. This picture communicates that
our global community has no boundaries. Through technology,
thousands of miles are bridged instantly. Student motivation
and attitudes about learning world languages increase
exponentially with personal interaction.
A second tech academy will take place on Saturday,
May 12, 2012 at Southington High School from 9am12pm.
Poetry Contest Changes!
By MaryLouise Ennis, Chair of Poetry Judges
For our 2011 poetry contest, so admirably chaired by Beth
Lapman, 164 judges heard 775 recitations by 743 students
from 69 schools. And next year’s contest, chaired by Andrea
Rajotte of Bristol Eastern HS, is shaping up to be yet more
exciting!
CT COLT 2012 Rhyme Celebration
On March 14th, 2012, the CT COLT Rhyme Celebration is
taking place at the Morgan School in Clinton, CT. The Rhyme
Celebration is an opportunity for elementary school foreign
language students to come together from across the state and
recite rhymes, poems, and songs in different languages. Last
year we had over 25 schools and 230 students participating.
This year's Rhyme Celebration theme is "In the Garden." For
more information and for registration forms and guidelines,
please visit www.ctcolt.org and follow the Rhyme Celebration
link at the top. Feel free to contact Kate Krotzer at
With so many recitations by so many students, however, there
were bound to be some glitches with rules and registration.
Among the errors that resulted in either lowered scores or
student disqualification:
Page 21
·
Poems that were read.
·
Poems used in a previous year by the same student.
·
Poems that were mis-scanned (Latin) or mis-typed.
CT COLT
·
Poems of inappropriate length (too short or too long)
for the language level.
·
Poems of inappropriate difficulty (too easy or too
difficult) for the language level.
"Student
disqualified himself/herself" was noted for those who
appeared but were unable to recite. Automatic
disqualifications went to the more than 70 absent
students.
Winter 2012
2012 CT COLT
Poster Contest
Theme:
World Languages: Gateway to the
Global Marketplace
It was this discrepancy in difficulty that most concerned the
CT-COLT Board of Directors. In addition to those students
who disqualified themselves, those numerous absences may
also have indicated poetry beyond the students’ capability.
Moreover, we also found that the same poems are often recited
for different levels. La Fontaine’s Le Corbeau et le renard,
for example, has been recited in every single contest -- from
MS1 through HS Native! Such a poem is too difficult for
young beginners to perform well, yet is not challenging
enough for graduating native speakers competing against more
appropriate selections.
Chairperson:
James Wildman
Deadline:
March 2, 2012
Entries must be postmarked
no later than February 29, 2012
choose, will be available on our poetry website at:
www.ctcolt.org/poetry_contest.htm
These dedicated teachers, along with their subcommittee
members (whose names were not all available at press time)
have spent countless hours selecting appropriate poetry on
behalf of our students. We simply cannot thank them enough
for their hard work!
Call For Proposals
6th CCSU Conference For Language Teachers
“Language Connections: Trespassing Borders”
Now, based on feedback from judges in 2010, our 2011 survey
put out feelers about level-appropriate slates of poems to
“level the field.” 78.3% of the judges felt that COLT should
adopt such a system, and 59.3% volunteered to chose the
slates. Based on this information, the CT-COLT Board
approved the following resolution:
To be held at Central Connecticut State University, Student
Center, Ella Grasso Boulevard, New Britain, Connecticut,
06050, on Saturday, March 10, 2012 from 8:00 a.m. to 4:00
p.m.
Proposals for all languages are welcome!
For our 2012 contest, CT COLT will pilot slates of levelappropriate poems.
Presentations: total duration of 30 minutes, 10 of which are
dedicated to questions and answers.
We were thrilled to have so many Board Members volunteer
to choose poetry for several languages: Sheila Houlihan
(Ancient Greek, Latin); Carol Chen-Lin (Mandarin Chinese);
Jaya Vijayasekar (French); Christine Dombrowski (German,
Polish); Giancarlo & Maria DeStefanis (Italian); Laurie Barry
(Spanish, Portuguese). Their slates, from which students must
Workshops: total duration of 60 minutes, 15-20 of which are
dedicated to questions and answers. Workshops should include
a practical component involving participants.
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CT COLT
Winter 2012
participate in her high school exchange program in Dinard,
France where she had to communicate in French with her
exchange family and with other exchange participants. In her
own words “There was a kind of beauty in the idea of
teenagers from all around the world coming together … It is
amazing to realize the difference learning a language can make
in a person’s life.”
Presentations and workshops should be of interest to language
teachers and should preferably be given in the target language.
If dealing with general language topics, they should be given
in English. Proposals may address theoretical, curricular,
methodological or technical aspects related but not limited to
the following suggested topics:
·
Connecting disciplines through languages.
·
Study abroad opportunities.
·
Language needs for different professions: translation &
Catherine is a very accomplished young woman. With her 3.92
GPA, she has been able to balance gracefully her academics
and other extracurricular interests. She loves music, plays the
trumpet and is a member of the Symphonic Band, Jazz Band
and the Pit Orchestra for many theater productions that involve
music. This year alone, Catherine served as President of the
Outdoors Club and was a member of Club Council, Model
UN, French Club, Safe Rides, Book Club, Operation Smile
and the National Honors Society. She did all this while
working as a secretary for a local law firm.
interpretation, tourism, social work, law, business, etc.
·
Language study by implementing interactions.
·
Innovative approaches in Foreign Language teaching.
·
Interdisciplinary study abroad programs.
·
Internationalizing your school/campus.
·
Incorporating film and new media into your language
Catherine will attend The Ohio State University where she will
major in French and International Studies (with a
specialization in International Relations and Diplomacy) in the
College of Arts and Sciences. She will participate in the
International Affairs Scholars Program which is a program
focused on a living and learning environment. The IAScholars participate in seminars with world affairs experts,
attend cultural events, study abroad and continue their
advanced foreign language training. Catherine received the
OSU Provost Scholarship and the National Buckeye
Scholarship. She hopes to work as an interpreter or a diplomat
in the future
classroom.
To propose a presentation or a workshop, please use the
enclosed submission form. Proposals will be accepted until
January 31st, 2012.
CEU credits are offered to participants.
Conference registration fee is waived to presenters.
We wish Catherine the best in her future endeavors.
For information, contact Prof. Lilián Uribe at uribe@ccsu.edu
or visit www.modlang.ccsu.edu
Organizational News
Alliance Française de Hartford
Harpin/Rohinsky Scholarship Fund
Academic Year 2011-2012
Our congratulations go to Ms. Catherine
Bengtson, a student at Glastonbury High
School who was selected to receive the
Harpin/Rohinsky Scholarship for $3,000
for the academic year 2011-2012.
Catherine loves the French language and
culture. This love prompted her to
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CT COLT
Winter 2012
Attn: Jennifer Page
Alliance Française Summer 2012
Trip to GASPE
Re: AF Connecticut
Note that passports are now required for travel to Canada.
The Alliances Françaises of
Hartford and New Haven along with
the Alliance of Northwest
Connecticut are offering another trip
to Quebec with Prométour. This
time, the trip will be longer- 8 days/
7 nights- and will include visits to
Quebec City, Tadoussac, Matane,
Percé, Bonaventure Island, and
Rimouski with a return to Quebec
City at the end of the trip. The dates are Tuesday, June 26 to
Tuesday, July 3, 2012. If there are 25 participants, the cost will
be $1690 which includes coach transportation from the
Hartford area and transportation during the trip, 7 nights in 3
and 4 star hotels (with private bath), 7 breakfasts, 1 lunch, 4
dinners, 1 québécois meal at Quebec City’s charming Aux
Anciennes Canadiens, tours and visits with a two hour
cruise/whale watching on the St. Lawrence, bi-lingual tour
guide and a $25 tax deductible contribution to your local
Alliance Française. Featured are the beautiful rugged coastline
of the St. Lawrence with its charming fishing villages, Forillon
National Park at the farthest point of the Gaspé Peninsula with
its stunning cliffs, picturesque coves and pebbled beaches,
visits to art galleries and vineyards, picnicking overlooking
Cap-Bon-Ami, and a stay at the famous Tadoussac Hotel. If
there are 12-14 participants, the price will be $2190.
Those participants sending their deposits by November 5
qualify for a $70 reduction.
There is a $105 discount for 3 people sharing a room.
Highlights of Quebec City include the changing of the guard, a
visit to the impressive Musée de la Civilisation, breakfast at Le
Parlementaire/ the restaurant of the Assemblé Nationale, the
view of the Observatoire de la Capitale, and a visit of a
submarine at the Musée de la Mer. In Bonaventure Le Musée
Acadien focuses on the rich culture and history of the
Acadiens du Québec. A narrated cruise around Bonaventure
Island and Percé Rock will permit participants to view as
many as 100 kinds of birds including puffins and the famous
fous-bassin.
NNELL Northeast Regional
Workshop
by Kate Krotzer, NNELL CT State Representative and
Glastonbury Foreign Language Teacher
There will be time to explore, shop, taste local specialties such
as maple butter, and to photograph the spectacular scenery and
wildlife.
On Saturday, September 24, 2011, the NNELL Northeast
Regional workshop titled “Engaging Digital Natives” was held
at Smith Middle School in Glastonbury, CT. Over forty- five
foreign language teachers of various languages and levels
from the northeast region attended the event and participated
in the workshop sessions.
If you have questions or would like a detailed itinerary with a
reservation form, contact tour coordinator Sharon Straka:
skstraka@gmail.com. Deposits ($350 per person) can be made
with credit card by calling Jennifer Page at Prométour 1-800304-9446 or sent to:
Prométour
339 St. Paul East, Montreal QC J7V9Z1 CANADA
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Winter 2012
to visit places without leaving their seats. Traveling to Mexico
with the Monarch Butterflies also offered a way for teachers to
engage students through travel and culture with a focus on the
migration of the butterflies, native travelers to Mexico.
Participants explored ways to build literacy skills in the
foreign language through the session Building Communities
Through Children’s Literature, where the presenters shared a
model for creating a partnership within the district and across
levels. High school students created children’s stories in
Spanish and shared them with FLES students at different
schools. Students at both levels were engaged in using the
target language for a real life purpose. In the session Literacy
in the FLES Classroom, presenters highlighted ways to
incorporate literature into curricular units through fun and
enriching activities in the target language. Digital Storybooks
focused on podcasts and other digital storytelling methods as a
way for students to create their own audio stories while
building language skills.
Rita A. Oleksak, Director of Foreign Languages/ELL in
Glastonbury, CT, and NNELL vice president, kicked off the
day long workshop with a keynote address, “Language
Communities: Engaging Digital Natives.” She captured the
theme of the workshop as she highlighted examples of
communities in foreign language learning, from the across the
district, between schools, and within the classroom. She
motivated the participants to embrace 21st century skills in the
foreign language classroom. From teachers collaborating on
discussion boards, to using Google Earth to bring students to
Puerto Rico, and creating digital scrapbooks with Voicethread,
she noted that the use of technology and 21st century skills are
seamlessly integrated into foreign language classrooms in
Glastonbury to ensure students’ interest and engagement for
optimal language learning. She encouraged participants to
consider, “If it’s not engaging, and it’s not real life, why teach
it?”
Barbara Lindsey, Director of Multimedia Language Center at
the University of Connecticut, offered a range of technology
resources for use in the foreign language classroom in her
session on Global Show and Tell. Participants browsed sites
such as Diigo, the lunch box project and Skype in the
classroom as ways to engage students in the target language.
Prezi and Voicethread were also explored in a break out
session as online presentational tools for both teachers and
students.
The session on the Elementary Camp Experience described the
role of a language summer camp to engage learners and whet
their appetite for the school year program. Examples from
Glastonbury’s elementary French, Spanish, ELL and Chinese
Startalk camps were provided to illustrate a camp like
environment. The Centers in the Foreign Language classroom
also offered participants a way to create a collaborative,
independent learning environment through the use of learning
centers.
Examples of language communities and 21st century skills
were the focus of each of the breakout sessions related to the
theme “Engaging Digital Natives.” Participants had the
opportunity to attend three different sessions and collaborate
with presenters on a variety of topics involving critical
thinking and problem solving, communication, collaboration,
and creativity and innovation in the foreign language
classroom. Sessions included Google Earth, Building
Communities Through Children’s Literature, Global Show and
Tell: Finding and Participating in Fun and International
Language Projects, Fostering Language Communities: The
Elementary Camp Experience, Literacy in the FLES
Classroom, Digital Storybooks, Traveling to Mexico with the
Monarch Butterflies, Prezi and Voicethread, and Centers in the
Foreign Language Classroom.
In the Google Earth session, participants learned how to use
Google Earth to fly their students anywhere and back in a 15
minute class period, aligning the target language and culture
with social studies and geography. The presenter explained
that students are engaged with the technology that allows them
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CT COLT
Winter 2012
The various sessions were well received and the presenters
were very knowledgeable and enthusiastic as they shared and
collaborated with colleagues. Each participant left the
workshop with many ideas to bring back to the classroom.
Delegates at the November meeting in Boston and online from
the general membership. It reads as follows:
In addition to the structured sessions, participants also
benefited from sponsor such as Santillana where they could
browse the company’s wide array of authentic children’s
literature, and Sony /Sans where there was a display of a
digital language lab. Glastonbury currently has three fully
digital labs; one at the high school (grades 9-12), middle
school (grades 7-8) and at Gideon Welles (grade 6).
Participants could experiment with the lab’s many functions
for language learners. NNELL is also grateful to TPRS for
their sponsorship of this event.
The American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages
(ACTFL) acknowledges and encourages using the potential of
technology as a tool to support and enhance classroom-based
language instruction. ACTFL also acknowledges the potential
of well supervised and articulated distance learning programs
to fill a need where classroom teachers are not available.
However, because language is one of the most complex of all
human activities and interactions ACTFL also recognizes the
pivotal role of a qualified language teacher to incorporate and
manage the implementation of technology so that it effectively
supports the language learning experience.
Position Statement
The workshop was timely as language teachers are working to
teach their students how to be successful in the 21st century.
As teachers strive to engage digital natives in language
classrooms, it becomes important to continue collaboration
and support for the profession. Many thanks to all the NNELL
Northeast Regional workshop attendees, presenters, and
sponsors for their support of this event.
The use of technology should never be the goal in and of itself,
but rather one tool for helping language learners to use the
target language in culturally appropriate ways to accomplish
authentic tasks. Further, all language learning opportunities
whether provided through technology or in a traditional
classroom setting, should be standards-based and help
develop students' proficiency in the target language through
interactive, meaningful, and cognitively engaging learning
experiences, facilitated by a qualified language teacher.
ACTFL Update
ACTFL Headquarters
Marty Abbott has been named the new Executive Director of
ACTFL.
Therefore, ACTFL strongly advises school and university
administrators to place the responsibility for language
instruction in the hands of qualified language teachers rather
than solely in technology programs. Cost-cutting measures
such as replacing teachers with software or online programs
for language learning or launching new language programs
using language software or other technologies will
disadvantage language learners if learners will have
significantly fewer opportunities to develop language
proficiency under the necessary conditions of a dynamic
environment and interaction with and guidance from a
qualified language teacher.
Research Priorities
ACTFL has undertaken an initiative, under the direction of
Immediate Past-President Eileen Glisan, to first look at the
current status of research in our field regarding critical topics
that can inform language learning and teaching. A task force
identified the topics and then selected authors to review the
research in the various areas and write up a report of their
findings. These papers will become a special issue of Foreign
Language Annals, edited by Eileen Glisan and Richard
Donato, which will be published next spring thus finalizing
phase two of the project. The recommendations made by each
paper for further research will provide the basis for the next
steps of the project.
The position statement on Alternative Teacher Certification
and Add-on Certification or Endorsements is still undergoing
review and revision and should be finalized by November.
Position Statements
Legislative Update
The ACTFL Board approved the Position Statement on the
Use of Technology after incorporating input from the ACTFL
Organizational members provided at the Assembly of
ACTFL has been working to advance two issues with
Congress: first, addressing the Title VI cuts to international
and language programs which includes the National Foreign
Language Centers and second, the reauthorization of the
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CT COLT
Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), formerly
known as “No Child Left Behind.” In regard to the Title VI
cuts, ACTFL has signed on to the letter written by the
Coalition for International Education along with JNCL.
ACTFL also wrote its own letter supporting Title VI and has
information on its website regarding how others can contact
their congressional representatives to promote the restoration
of funding.
Winter 2012
elementary class can be viewed at www.actfl.org on the
main page.
New Technology Award for K-12
The ACTFL Board approved a new award for excellence in
the integration of technology into language instruction at the
K-12 level. This new award was established to complement
the existing similar award for postsecondary. The award will
be given for the first time at the 2012 Annual Convention in
Philadelphia.
ACTFL has supported Congressman Rush Holt and Paul
Tonko’s introduction of H.R. 1994, the “Excellence in
Innovation in Language Learning Act”. The bill provides
American students with access to high-quality world language
instruction starting in the early grades, creates state language
councils to share best practices and coordinate language
programs across the state, and establishes a national
coordinating body made up of leaders from different agencies
to ensure that evolving national security and economic needs
are met. . Information is on the ACTFL website about how
members of our profession can contact their congressman to
sign on to the bill. ACTFL has also been working with
members at the local level to contact their Senators about
sponsoring a similar bill in the Senate. Please contact Marty
Abbott if you are interested if you or your state would like to
reach out to your Senators. Common Core Standards/Standards for Foreign
Language Learning
With the task force on the impact of the National Standards for
Foreign Language Education wrapping up its work after the
three-year grant and finalizing its report, the ACTFL Board
approved an effort to “refresh” the existing language standards
based on the 21st Century Skills map and other innovations
that have occurred since the release of the original standards in
1996. In addition, this effort will include developing a
companion document to the Common Core standards for
language arts and mathematics that will identify how the
national standards for language education support and
reinforce the concepts included in the Common Core. It is
important to remember that the term “Common Core” refers to
those subjects that will be tested at the federal level and does
not refer to whether or not the subject area is a core subject.
“Foreign Languages” is listed in the legislation as a core
subject. However, similar to social studies, science, the arts,
and other subjects, it is not tested at the federal/national level.
The development of this document will assist language
educators and administrators to promote the case for
integrating language education into instructional programs K16.
Modern Greek SIG Proposal
The ACTFL Board approved the establishment of a new
Special Interest Group (SIG) for Modern Greek. This is a
conditional approval pending the SIG meeting the conditions
of a new SIG and having a successful business meeting at the
annual convention in Denver.
21st Century Skills Map
ACTFL in collaboration with the Partnership for 21st Century
Skills released the World Languages 21st Century Skills Map
on March 29, 2011 in a press conference held on Capitol Hill.
Among key spokespersons for the map launch were Tony
Jackson from the Asia Society and Charles Kolb from the
Committee on Economic Development. The highlight was the
lesson demonstration by students from Mount Vernon Woods
Elementary in Fairfax County, Virginia from a Chinese FLES
class focused on geography and math. The skills map can be
d o w n l o a d e d
f r o m
http://www.p21.org/documents/Skills%20Map/p21_worldlang
uagesmap.pdf and a video of the entire program including the
News from CT Schools
Regional Collaboration –Think
outside the box!
Have you ever tried to plan a field trip and were unable to get
enough students to participate? Do sports, clubs and other
student commitments conflict with trips and special events?
Do you have a limited number of students in your program? Is
the price prohibitive? If you answered “yes” to any of these
questions you are not alone. There is nothing more frustrating
Page 27
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Winter 2012
his guidance.
T h e
3 0
students from
the
two
schools who
went to the
m u s e u m
started the day
with a meet
and greet in
French to get
t
h
a
n
researching and
planning an
e x c i t i n g
c u l t u r a l
experience only
to find you
cannot fill a
bus.
High school
students are
Stephanie Duchesneau and Linda Zabor
being pulled in
with Simsbury and Farmington students in many directions
the Berkshires.
and must be
active
in
school, receive high grades and work part time jobs to earn
money. For the past three years, Simsbury, Granby and
Farmington high school French teachers have reached out to
each other to join forces to keep our programs vibrant and
offer extracurricular language opportunities. Simsbury and
Granby have an exchange program with our sister school in
France. Granby has a long standing relationship with a school
in France but the teachers needed another school to help with
host families, expenses and planning. Simsbury was looking
for a sister school. This union has turned out to be a wonderful
three way collaboration.
to know each
other.
This
was followed by a guided French tour and a drawing session
outside with Jeff Brewster. The students were able to draw the
same scenes that had been recreated around the campus by a
local artist. These straw figures brought the paintings to life
and the beautiful campus served as a background for a new
perspective. The group gathered for a French picnic lunch
provided by the Harvest Café in Simsbury and finished the day
by choosing to return to the museum, draw or take a tour of
the nearby studio.
Une Visite à Vernon
At the end of the summer, both Farmington and Simsbury
teachers wanted to take students to an exhibit of Camille
Pissarro. Due to student schedules and upper level class
numbers along with the cost of the bus to Massachusetts, the
teachers knew it would be a struggle to get enough students.
The two teachers joined the schools and went together sharing
the preparation and expenses. Due to the collaboration, the
students were able to experience art at it’s best. Municipalities
have been discussing sharing regional expenses during these
challenging economic times and we can do the same. CT
COLT has regional representatives who can put you in contact
with department heads and teachers in nearby schools. The
benefits of this type of collaboration foster new collegial
relationships and friendships and bring students together to
speak the target language and share experiences. It is time to
think outside the box!
By Jaya Vijayasekar
Marion Fouan,
the
new
coordinator of
the Center for
the ToulouseConnecticut
partnership
(formerly
Center for the
Teaching of
French),
visited with
Rockville High School students on Monday, December 5,
2011. She presented in French to groups of students on various
topics including a comparison of schools in France and the
United States, the culture and customs of the two countries,
the timely topic of shopping and pastimes. Students posed
questions for Marion and took notes which were later used in a
questionnaire and reflection. Students were amazed to learn
that French students were required to take courses in
philosophy and had school days beyond 6 P.M. One of the
classes even explored philosophical topics such as academic
leveling and were curious to learn our guest’s views.
Impressionist Art Class in the Berkshires
French students and teachers from Simsbury and Farmington
high school traveled together on September 27 to the Clark Art
Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts. This collaborative
experience organized by Linda Zabor and Stephanie
Duchesneau also included guest artist, Jeffrey Brewster who
accompanied the group to the exhibit featuring the peasants of
Camille Pissarro. Jeff Brewster visited both schools before the
trip and introduced the art of Pissarro and that of other French
painters. Students began a basic impressionist drawing with
Students sang two songs in French for Mademoiselle, “Vive le
Page 28
CT COLT
Winter 2012
vent…” and “Il est né le divin enfant.” In turn Marion shared
one of her favorite songs, “Sinsémilia- Tout le bonheur du
monde” with students and taught them the lyrics. Two
students, Riley Aafedt and Julianne Collopy brought their
saxophones to class and were able to accompany the class as
they sang, “Vive le vent...” the French version of “Jingle
Bells.”
Marion spent the day at RHS and even attended our faculty
meeting.
The RHS World Language Department and students would
like to thank Mademoiselle Fouan for taking the time to share
her views on many topics with us and look forward to her next
visit.
Mlle. Fouan works with PIER (Programs in International
Educational Resources), the Cultural Services of the French
Embassy and the State of Connecticut. Her
main
responsibilities for this year are giving the Test de
Connaissance du Français (TCF) three times a year, organizing
cultural and pedagogical programs and continuing and
strengthening exchanges between schools in Connecticut and
in the Académie de Toulouse. She can be reached at
marion.fouan@yale.edu.
learners they are working hard with their team-member and
trying to move onto the next challenge.
Below please find the various challenges in “The Latin
Amazing Race”
Challenge I: Identify pictures of constellations, mythological gods
and goddesses, famous Roman places and people by writing down
and recording your answer on the sheets provided. When you are
done identifying all the pictures, bring your answers to the judge to
be checked before moving to Challenge II.
Latin Amazing Race at AITE
Challenge II: Dare to survive during Caesar’s reign! Translate the
“Veni, Vidi, Vici” was echoed in the hallways of Academy of
Information Technology and Engineering in Stamford, CT
from the victorious teams participating in Mrs. Koltypin’s
“Latin Amazing Race” which was held on Monday, Oct 24th
and Tuesday, Oct 25th.
following Latin words and expressions into English. Bring your
answers to the judge to be checked before moving on to Challenge
III. NO SHARING ANSWERS!! (You can use your books to
find the answers)
Challenge III: The Olympics are taking place at AITE this year!
Latin I, II, III and IV rose up to the challenge and dared to
compete against their fellow Latin scholars in completing all
seven challenges first.
One team member at a time must walk around the 2nd floor hallway
starting from Room 200, turning RIGHT and walking around AITE
2nd floor “Circus Maximus” WEARING A TOGA. You must greet
anyone with, “Salve” and “Quid nomen est tibi?” and “Vale!” in the
hall. The person you greet in the hallway must answer your question
to “Quid nomen est tibi?” before you return back to the room. Upon
your return you must pass the toga along to your partner who will do
the same walk. Once the both of you have completed the Olympic
walk you may move on to Challenge IV. Points will be deducted if
caught running!
Amazing Race, although a fun activity, fully engages all
students and reinforces Latin Grammar, History, Literature
and even Physics! The various challenges directly tie into the
curriculum effectively and the teacher is able to assess and
inform students of their knowledge level, based on their
performance during the game.
Challenge IV: Some barbarians came at night and wrote some
graffiti on the wall in Rome. They left some endings blank. You
must complete their Latin and write in the correct endings. Bring
your answers to the judge to be checked before moving to Challenge
V. NO SHARING ANSWERS!! (You can use your books to find the
answers)
The “Amazing Race” is an excellent interdisciplinary exercise
which helps students make Latin fun by engaging students in
helping them extend their vocabulary level with translation
and identification of historical figures while also challenging
them to partake in a Roman Feast, a food challenge!! Students
are then asked to build a coliseum made out of toothpicks and
marshmallows!
Challenge V: You are in Leonardo da Vinci’s Anatomy class. You
must identify all of the body parts in Latin or else you will not be
able to become his apprentice.
Students gain a better appreciation for the Roman culture,
architecture and history through this very creative learning
style which engages all types of learners in Mrs. Koltypin’s
Latin Class. Whether they are visual, audio or kinesthetic
Challenge VI: Food Challenge! You have been invited to a Roman
banquet. To be a polite guest, you and your team partner must eat
Page 29
CT COLT
everything in the bag. Once everything is eaten, circle what you ate
in LATIN on the food list provided and bring your empty bag and
answers to the judge to be checked before moving to Challenge VII.
(If you throw up or choose not to eat something, points will be
deducted)
Winter 2012
succeed. If the student wants to become a lawyer, taking Latin
will also be helpful because most of the terms used in the law
field are in Latin. The Latin language is in so many aspects of
our life that it seems impossible to not realize the benefits that
knowing the Latin language can give each and every student.
Challenge VII:Congratulations! You have been hired by Nero to
Nevertheless, learning the Latin language is not the only
benefit from taking a Latin class. In the Latin class students
are not only exposed to the diverse language and the study of
this language, but they are also exposed to a great wealth of
history, culture, and architecture. The Latin language was a
language spoken by the Romans when their civilization was
just starting to become more technologically advanced and
diverse. By studying Latin, students are learning about the
culture of the Romans and the great deal of history that comes
with this. The Latin class will thus greatly aid each and every
student with their history classes as they will have a firm base
in the Roman culture. And to top all of this off, students in the
Latin classes also learn a great wealth about Roman
architecture. However, it may seem as though knowing Roman
architecture is a thing of the past, yet, Roman architecture is
still around today and is still being used today. Students that
take Latin are not just taking a foreign language class; they are
taking a history, science, cultural, English, and architecture
class. And as if all of this wasn’t enough, students in the Latin
class are also learning mythology. So if you really want your
student to learn a great wealth of knowledge, placing them
within the Latin class is the best way to go because each
student that takes Latin is taking a class that will aid them in
every subject they will ever take in their High School career.
build a new coliseum for Rome. Make Rome proud! Your material
can be found in these bags. Once you have completed this challenge
you are DONE with the Amazing Race!
Why Study Latin?
by Brittany Flittner, AITE student
The Latin language has been around for hundreds of years, but
why are students still learning the language today, especially
since it is a dead language? What sort of significance could a
language that no one speaks anymore have to us today? Latin
is not just a dead language, but also a culture, and a period in
time that has influenced the way we live today in more ways
than one. Everywhere we turn, something within our own
culture has been borrowed from the Latin culture. The
architecture that we witness throughout the streets of New
York, the vocabulary that is used to test students on the SAT’s,
and the history that we learn, all of this comes from the Latin
language and the Roman culture.
Today our society focuses on learning the main languages
such as Spanish and French. While these languages are
essential to learn and speak as they are becoming more
prevalent, studying the Latin language could have more of an
impact on students today. Although Latin is not spoken today,
the knowledge of the language is extremely vital in every
student’s career. Whether the student wants to become a
doctor, a lawyer, a teacher, or an architect, the knowledge of
the Latin language is extremely important to know. 60% of the
English language comes from the Latin language. And thus
having knowledge in the Latin language, allows students to
know an extremely large base of the English language.
However, the words that come from the Latin language that
are in the English language are not easy words that every
student already knows. They are words that most students do
not know and most will probably never see until their college
years. But if they take Latin in middle school as well as high
school, they will have a strong foundation of a higher level
vocabulary. Not only will this aid them in their English
classes, but it will also aid them on their standardized tests.
Knowing the Latin language will allow students to score
higher on the SAT’s and essentially be accepted into a better
school with a greater chance to receive a higher scholarship.
Learning Latin means you are learning a great deal of
language and vocabulary, a great deal of history and culture,
and a great deal of mythology and architecture. Yet, the ways
that Latin helps students in their academic careers are endless.
Everything today was somehow influenced by the Latin
culture and it still continues to be influenced by the Latin
culture. It seems pretty obvious now why students today are
still studying a dead language. The knowledge that each and
every student will gain from the study of Latin supersedes the
study of any other language. Being in Latin is equivalent to
being in five different subjects at once. It aids you in every
area of life and by taking Latin, every student will be better for
it.
Remember to contact
Paul St. Louis directly at
pmsaint@verizon.net
if you want to receive a
paper copy of future
newsletters.
Once in college, the foundation of the Latin language will
greatly aid most students. If the student wants to become a
doctor, they will have to learn a vast amount of Latin
vocabulary because all of the medical terms are in Latin. If
they already have a base foundation from taking four or more
years of Latin in High School, their college classes won’t be as
challenging and thus the student will have a better chance to
Page 30
CT COLT Board of Directors 2010 – 2012
Officers/Executive Committee
President
LINDA L. DALPE (2012)
Enfield High School (860) 253.5556
1264 Enfield Street
Enfield, CT 06082
E-Mail: ldalpe@enfieldschools.org
Vice-President/President-Elect
MICHAELA VOLOVSEK (2012)
William Hall High School (860) 232-4561
E-Mail: michaela_volovsek@whps.org
Treasurer
PAUL M. ST. LOUIS (2012)
275 Cedar Swamp Road
Monson, MA 01057-9303
(413) 267-4282 E-Mail: pmsaint@verizon.net
South Central (2012)
KAREN DE FUR, Ed.D. E-Mail: kdefur@juno.com
New Haven Public Schools (203) 946-7591
East Central (2013)
DOMINIQUE GÁLVEZ E-Mail: Dominique_galvez@yahoo.com
East Hampton High School
Southeast (2011)
LAURIE BARRY (860) 739-1439
East Lyme High School
E-Mail: laurie.barry@eastlymeschools.org
Organizational Directors
ACTR
JOHN ROOK
Glastonbury High School
(rookj@glastonburyus.org)
Alliance Française
LINDA ZABOR (MmeZabor@aol.com)
Farmington High School
CITA
GIANCARLO DESTEFANIS
(gdestefanis@snet.net)
CLASS
CAROL CHEN-LIN (cchen-lin@choate.edu)
Choate Rosemary Hall, Wallingford
(203) 697-2080
CLASSCONN
SHEILA HOULIHAN
(shoulihan@npsct.org)
Newington High School (860) 666-5611 X168
Immediate Past President
JAYA VIJAYASEKAR (2012)
Rockville High School
70 Loveland Hill Road
Vernon, CT 06066
(860) 870-6050 Ext. 329 E-Mail jaya.vijayasekar@vernonct.org
CT-AATF
BRIGITTE LANGE (Brigitte.lange@reg5.k12.ct.us)
Amity Regional High School (203) 397-4830
Ex-Officio Director/Director-At-Large
CT-AATG
CHRISTINE RAPP DOMBROWSKI
Southern CT State University (203) 392-6770
(christinedombrow@aol.com)
CT-AATSP
AILEEN DEVER, Ph.D.
(Aileen.Dever@quinnipiac.edu)
Quinnipiac University, College of Liberal Arts
(203) 582-8500
NNELL
KATE KROTZER (krotzerk@glastonburyus.org)
Glastonbury Public Schools
CONNTESOL
DOROTHY MULFORD (203) 576-8097
(dmulford@bridgeportedu.net)
Adult Learning Center, Bridgeport
Recording Secretary
STEPHANIE DUCHESNEAU (2012)
Simsbury High School (860) 658-0451 Ext. 628
sduchesneau@simsbury.k12.ct.us
Corresponding Secretary
NANCY SILANDER (2012)
E. O. Smith High School
1235 Storrs Road
Storrs, CT 06268
(860) 487-2236 FAX: (860) 429-7892
E-Mail: nancysilander@gmail.com
DR. ADINA ALEXANDRU
(aalexandru@southingtonschools.org)
Southington Public Schools (860) 628-3229 X431
CT State Department of Education - TBA
Regional Directors
Northwest (2012)
ELIZABETH LAPMAN
E-Mail: lapmane@region10ct.org
RSD #10 – Lewis Mills High School (860) 673-0423 Ext. 5412
North Central (2012)
JAMES WILDMAN
E-Mail: wildmanj@glastonburyus.org
Glastonbury High School (860) 652-7200 Ext. 2119
Northeast (2012)
MANUELA WAGNER, Ph.D.
E-Mail: Manuela.wagner@uconn.edu
University of Connecticut
West Central (2012)
ALISA TRACHTENBERG
E-Mail: trachtenberga@bethel.k12.ct.us
Bethel High School (203) 794-8600
Southwest (2012)
DENISE MASSARI
Darien High School E-Mail: dmassari1021@hotmail.com
CT COLT Web Site: http://www.ctcolt.org
OFFICIAL ADDRESS:
CT Council of Language Teachers
c/o Linda L. Dalpe
1090 Main Street
South Windsor, CT 06074 E-Mail: ctcoltorg@yahoo.com
c/o Paul M. St. Louis, Co-Editor
275 Cedar Sw amp Road
Monson, MA 01057-9303
Non-Profit Org.
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PAID
Hartford, CT
Perm it No. 5213
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Serving Connecticut Teachers Since 1968
In This Issue
Upcoming Events
T echnology A cadem y
January 12, 2012 (Enfield High School)
M ay 12, 2012 (Southington High School)
Poster C ontest
W orld Languages: G ateway to the M arketplace
D eadline M arch 2, 2012
E ssay C ontest
D eadline for Submission: M arch 8, 2012
R hym e C elebration
In the G arden
The M organ School
M arch 14, 2012
P oetry R ecitation C ontest
April 26, 2012
Bristol Eastern High School
Fall C onference
W orld Languages: G ateway to the M arketplace
O ctober 29, 2012
C oco Key R esort, W aterbury, C T
Newsletter Submissions
Please send documents in M SW O R D (Times N ew R oman, 10 pt, single
spaced) and please send photos as separate files (preferably jpeg or gif).
Please do not embed photos in your articles.
A N ote From The President...
In M emoriam - Kenneth Allen Lester
In the Beginning
W hy I Joined C T C O LT
W hich W ay Forw ard in a Tongue Tied America
Let’s Stop Being the Butt of the Foreign Language Joke
W orld Language Advocacy - now is a good time
A Summer Immersion in G reece
Just speak English...and French...and M andarin...and...!
Adina’s Technology Tips
2011 Fall C onference
Keynote Address by D r. Timothy R eagan (10/31/2011)
Introducing M arion Fouan
Announcing the First Annual Student Essay C ontest...
Kristen V rabie’s Photo W ins Honorable M ention...
Poetry C ontest C hanges
C all for Proposals – 6 th Annual C C SU C onference...
Alliance Française N ew s
N N ELL N ortheast R egional W orkshop
AC TFL U pdate
N ew s from C T Schools
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page 2
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Deadline for Submission of Articles for the Spring Issue of
CT COLT World Language News Exchange is
March 15.
Please send articles for the next newsletter to Silvia Bettega
(bettega@comcast.net) and to Paul St. Louis (pmsaint@verizon.net) by
March 15, 2012
Help us keep our membership records updated!
The CT COLT World Language News Exchange, Issue No. 137, January 10, 2012. This newsletter,
published four times a year (November, March, June and July), is distributed only to CT COLT current
members. Advertising in this publication does not represent official endorsement by the Connecticut
Council of Language Teachers, Inc. of the products and services described or promoted herein. Your
opinions may be sent to CT COLT, 1090 Main Street, South Windsor, CT 06074 or e-mailed to
bettega@comcast.net or pmsaint@verizon.net.
If you have moved or had a name change,
please visit the CT COLT web site.(http://www.ctcolt.org)
and click on the “Membership” button. Then, click on the link to the
“Member Update Form,” fill it out and submit it.

Winter 2012 - Connecticut Council of Language Teachers

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