SKrashen:
Heritage Language Development: Exhortation or Good Stories?
Lao, C. and Krashen, S. 2008. Heritage language development: Exhortation or good stories? International Journal of Foreign Language Teaching 4 (2): 17-18. Despite the well-researched advantages, not all young people are interested in continuing to develop their heritage language. Their apathy may be due to "ethnic avoidence," a preference for the new culture over the old (Tse, 1988), a
A longer (21-hour) school day!
Sent to the Telegraph (UK), Jan. 7It is inspiring to read about Education Minister Truss' desire to lengthen the school day ("Schools should adopt Chinese-style lessons, says minister," Jan. 3). Her proposal to add an extra 30 minutes for "enrichment" and an extra hour for homework, however, fall far short of what is needed.Let's push ahead and consider an even longer day.A st
JAN 04
The Spectacular Role of Libraries in Protecting Students from the Effects of Poverty
Stephen KrashenPublished in: iLeader: Journal of School Library Association of New South Wales 1(4): 3-6 (2012) Poverty is by far the most powerful predictor we have of school performance. This has been established in study after study over several decades. One of the best studies showing the impact of poverty comes from Australia: Perry and McConnery (2010) reported that both individual levels
Academic Jibberish
Stephen Krashen, RELC Journal. 43 (2): 283-285, 2012. “Some scholars have slipped so far into the stylized talk – excuse me, discourse – of academia that important ideas are rendered virtually incomprehensible to most people. Because it sometimes seems that scholarship is valued by other academics in direct proportion to its inaccessibility, some individuals may have an instinctive aversion to
A Short Paper Proposing That We Need to Write Shorter Papers
Stephen Krashen, Language and Language Teaching 1,2: 38-39. 2012 When we ask the time, we don't want to know how watches are constructed. Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742-1799)Our current journals in language education are full of long papers. A typical journal might have, at most, five major papers. Sometimes we have to write long papers, but much of the time, it's unnecessary: the papers
JAN 03
STEM Fever
Sent to the Wall Street Journal, Jan. 3Sandra Stotsky thinks that the "Common Core Doesn't Add UP to STEM Success" (Jan 3) and that all high school students should be required to take trigonometry and precalculus to be ready for the brave new world of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math. Even if the STEM crisis were real, this is not a good idea. Of course, advanced math classes
JAN 02
The common core ignores the evidence
Sent to the Los Angeles Times, January 2, 2013Al Austin, in his letter to the Times (Jan 2) notes that the common core calls for "a sharp reduction" in literature in schools in favor of increased exposure to informational text. This policy was created without any empirical evidence. The common core designers ignored (or were not aware of) not only studies showing that reading literature
JAN 01
Japan's 2020 push to English: A suggestion to the "panel of experts"
Sent to the Japan Times, May 31, 2013.Experts have criticized Japan's reform plan for English for not including enough hours of English instruction to accomplish its goals and have also noted the lack of resources and staffing ("English to get 2020 push but teachers not on the same page," Dec. 31, 2013).There is an easy way to help solve both of these problems and ensure that growth in E