Stroke robs man of multilingual abilities

August 10, 2011

Here’s an interesting (and heart wrenching) article about a multilingual Edmonton man who lost all of his languages after a stroke. In the Globe and Mail article, Abdul Kamal reports that, “In the aftermath of the stroke, I lost all the languages I knew – English, French, German, Urdu and Bengali. I could neither read and write nor speak and comprehend.”

Kamal is a retired professor of physics at the University of Alberta who enjoyed physics, writing, travelling, sports, theatre before his stroke, but has been unable to take part in his favorite activities.

Determined to get his speech back, he reports, “Undaunted, I rounded up my own children’s books along with picture and alphabet cards and launched an uphill battle against my formidable foe – aphasia. David drove me to the Glenrose Hospital twice a week to learn English under the tutelage of a speech pathologist.” That was ten years ago, he states. From there, he progressed from working with a speech pathologist to group language learning sessions for aphasics (people who have lost their speech due to a stroke), and working with graduate students at the University of Alberta who were working with aphasics as part of their research and academic training.

Now, at age 75, Kamal offers a message of hope to others who have lost their speech due to a stroke:

After I had the stroke, a speech pathologist told me that I would show improvements in all my mental faculties over the following year and a half. However, at 75, I’m still learning. My speech, comprehension of spoken language and syntax are still improving, albeit slowly. The message is that if you challenge the brain, it will respond. Although at a certain age our memory bank starts to deplete, I’m sanguine about the future.

Kamal’s story reminds us to value the abilities we have to speak one, two or more languages. And when self-doubt or feelings of inadequacies fill us that we are not doing enough, not good enough or not as fluent or as perfect as we would like to be, we are reminded to celebrate the abilities that we have today and commit to the lifelong process of learning, no matter where we may fall on the continuum of proficiency.

Thank you, professor Kamal, for the inspiration.

Read the whole article.

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Update – January 2018 – This blog has had over 1.8 million views thanks to readers like you. If you enjoyed this post, please “like” it or share it on social media. Thanks!

Sarah Elaine Eaton is a faculty member in the Werklund School of Education, University of Calgary, Canada.

2 Comments | languages, second languages | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Sarah Elaine Eaton, Ph.D.

English in the Workplace (EWP): Free How To Guide for Employers

June 22, 2011

I just found a tremendous free resource that I just had to share with you. Common Ground: A How-To Guide for Employers is designed for employers to help them set up and deliver their own English in the Workplace (EWP) programs.

Written by Douglas Parsons and Paul Holmes and published by the Centre for Excellence in Intercultural Education (Norquest College) in 2010, this guide details a step-by-step process. It goes over everything from conducting a needs assessment, choosing learning settings,  finding a facilitator, setting goals, developing independent learners and evaluating the program.

There even sections on how to customize an English program for a specific workplace.

Click here to download this 72-page guide is available from the National Adult Literacy Database (NALD). As with all the resources on NALD, this guide is free and you simply download it directly from their site.

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Update – January 2018 – This blog has had over 1.8 million views thanks to readers like you. If you enjoyed this post, please “like” it or share it on social media. Thanks!

Sarah Elaine Eaton is a faculty member in the Werklund School of Education, University of Calgary, Canada.

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Posted by Sarah Elaine Eaton, Ph.D.

What is “Globish”? Why should we care?

November 15, 2010

The search term “Globish” returns over 100,000 hits on Google. What is it and why should language teachers care?

The term itself is a combination of “global” and “English”.

One site describes Globish as a simplified, yet standard version of English, based on a core vocabulary of 1500 words. The word itself and the concept behind it are the brain child of Jean-Paul Nerriere, a business man who speaks English, and his own version of it, Globish, as additional languages.

The premise? That if everyone in the world who wanted to speak English learned this simplified form of it, that they’d all learn much faster and be more effective.

This is a seductive concept… Fewer vocabulary words theoretically means less work. Less work always sounds attractive to language learners desperate to gain fluency.

The work of Dr. Hetty Roessingh, a senior researcher at the University of Calgary, reveals that by Grade 1, students who are native English speakers normally have a vocabulary of 5000 words. By grade 12, that number has increased to 80,000 to 100,000 words. She argues that we should be trying to enrich the vocabulary of English as a Second Language (ESL) and English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students, not whittle it down.

What do you think? Is 1500 words enough to be considered a complete understanding of a language?

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Update – January 2018 – This blog has had over 1.8 million views thanks to readers like you. If you enjoyed this post, please “like” it or share it on social media. Thanks!

Sarah Elaine Eaton is a faculty member in the Werklund School of Education, University of Calgary, Canada.

6 Comments | ESL, languages, research | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Sarah Elaine Eaton, Ph.D.

6 Reasons I love Glee – a language teacher’s point of view

September 23, 2010

This week, the new season of the TV show Glee aired. When I first heard about the show, I wasn’t interested. At first glance it looked fluffy, silly, and not particularly engaging. I don’t watch much television so when I do pick a show to watch it needs to engage my mind, as well as entertain me. For some reason last year, an episode of Glee got recorded and I, grumbling and growling, finally agreed to watch an episode of it. I was hooked.

As a language teacher I can’t help but notice that this hot new TV show offers a veritable cornucopia of material to use in class. Here are a few examples:

  1. The characters, young high school students speak eloquently. Verbal prowess is the norm among the characters.
  2. In speaking eloquently, the characters become role models for clear, concise and articulate communication.
  3. There’s much less slang than on other comedy shows.
  4. Characters express a wide array of emotions with no vulgar language. Nothing needs to be “bleeped out”. They find appropriate words to express their feelings.
  5. Characters don’t use phrases such as “So, like…. ya know,” leaving the listener to fill in the blanks.
  6. Characters will correct each other’s language mistakes. In this season’s premiere, this exchange happened between lead characters Rachel and Finn:

Finn: Rachel is what you’d call a controlist.

Rachel: I’m controlling. ‘Controlist’ isn’t a word.

Where else on television do you get teenage characters who show their vulnerabilities as they try to find their way in the world in a lighthearted, yet serious show where being articulate, and using the English language properly are highlighted?

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Update – January 2018 – This blog has had over 1.8 million views thanks to readers like you. If you enjoyed this post, please “like” it or share it on social media. Thanks!

Sarah Elaine Eaton is a faculty member in the Werklund School of Education, University of Calgary, Canada.

Comments Off on 6 Reasons I love Glee – a language teacher’s point of view | languages, teaching, Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Sarah Elaine Eaton, Ph.D.

The Plight of the ESL Program Director

March 29, 2010

Are you a frustrated ESL program manager?

I presented a paper a few years ago at the University of Prince Edward Island called The Plight of the ESL Program Director.  It reveals findings of a research study I did about English as a Second Language program directors and managers at the university level.

Here are the two main highlights:

  • Many English as a Second Language (ESL) program managers, are charged with the responsibility of marketing their programs and recruiting students internationally, often with little or no training (Eaton, 2005).
  • Not only are they set forth ill-prepared, the repercussions for insufficient revenue generation may be harsh, including having to fire instructors or having their programs may be closed by the very institutions they serve (Mickelson, 1997; Soppelsa, 1997; Staczek, 1997), many of which regard such programs as lucrative (Rubin, 1997).

Building on the work that has been done in this field to date, this research adds in the voices of three language program directors that I interviewed for this study. All of them directed different ESL programs, housed in different academic units at the same university. They offer commentary and insight into matters of importance for ESL administrators.

At the end of the paper, I offer some recommendations on how things may be improved for the future.

The full-text paper in .pdf format is available free of charge through the ERIC database.

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Update – January 2018 – This blog has had over 1.8 million views thanks to readers like you. If you enjoyed this post, please “like” it or share it on social media. Thanks!

Sarah Elaine Eaton is a faculty member in the Werklund School of Education, University of Calgary, Canada.

1 Comment | education, language program administration, languages, leadership, marketing, recruitment, Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Sarah Elaine Eaton, Ph.D.

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