Students' Mother Tongue May Give Them Edge in Math

Students from countries like China and Japan have a reputation for excelling in math, and an article from The Wall Street Journal suggests that the languages they speak may have something to do with their success. Learning to count and developing a number sense in English, according to studies, makes those skills more difficult to master than learning such skills in languages like Chinese, Japanese, or Turkish.

The basis for this difference is that some languages make place value and number structure easier to understand than others, according to the article. For example, in Chinese, the number after ten, directly translated is "ten-one" compared with the rather muddy English "eleven." This structure makes it easy for Chinese youngsters to understand the place values of each digit in 11.

This finding doesn't mean that parents must sign their little ones up for Japanese lessons to succeed in math, however. There are lots of ways to develop the kind of number sense kids need to succeed in school. One of our favorites, counting on, is a simple, powerful strategy recommended by numerous experts in math education. To count on, an adult can draw a series of connected squares, like the ones in most board games, on paper or simply incorporates the strategy into an existing board game. Each square should be numbered sequentially. (To preserve your edition of Candy Land or Chutes and Ladders, use removable sticky notes to number the squares.) Each player should roll the dice as usual on his/her turn, then count the spaces as they move their marker ahead. But instead of counting from one, they should count from the number they began on. So, for example, if a child's game piece is on the 14 square and she rolls a 4 on her next turn, she should count "15, 16, 17, 18."

Math proficiency is practically child's play!

photo credit: amboo who? via flickr cc

Learn to Code With Codecademy

What's the most useful language to learn? There's a reasonable argument to be made for Mandarin, but we think the answer might be Javascript. Or HTML. Programming skills are increasingly important to know in the digital age, and jobs that didn't have tech components in the past are increasingly asking for candidates who understand basic programming.

Luckily, Codecademy can give young people an edge. Codecademy is a free web-based program that teaches users Javascript, Ruby, Python, CSS, and other languages. Its also available as an app for iOS devices. In addition to learning coding languages, users can learn to build an interactive website, a Rails application, and more.

Codecademy's founders Ryan Bubinski and Zach Sims believe people learn best by doing. So Codecademy's students discover concepts by actually building things, all the while getting feedback from their peers. Learners can join the millions of other Codecademy users in study groups, question-and-answer forums, and more. While those with a background in coding may find Codecademy a bit basic, neophytes are sure to find the site both eye-opening and enjoyable.

01000011 01101111 01100100 01100101 01100011 01100001 01100100 01100101 01101101 01111001 00100000 01010010 01101111 01100011 01101011 01110011!

(Translation: Codecademy rocks!)

Specific Learning Disabilities in College

As we have written before, students who have graduated high school are no longer covered by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), which comes to an end either upon graduation or when students who will not be graduating with a standard diploma "age out" of their eligibility for public education under their state's laws (usually age 21). Instead, students in college are protected by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). The protections afforded by the ADA are broad, but there is one particular area where it differs from the IDEA that can make college entrance and college completion a problem for students who have specific areas of learning challenge.

The IDEA permits modifications to curriculum. So, for example, a student with a language disability may not be required to take a foreign language in high school, or a student with a disability of mathematics may not be required to take the same math courses as their classmates; the curriculum for each of these students can be modified in their area of specific learning disability. Note that these students may not be eligible for certain academic diplomas if their curriculum is significantly different than that of their classmates, but they are usually still eligible for a "local" diploma, one that is accepted by colleges, employers, and the military.

The ADA does not require colleges to make any modifications to curriculum. It requires accessibility, in both a physical and academic sense, but a student must be "otherwise qualified" for admission and graduation. What that means is that colleges can set standards for qualifications for students they admit, and they need not admit students who are lacking certain courses (staying with our example, this could be students who are lacking advanced math or foreign language courses), and even if such students are admitted, they may not be permitted to graduate without taking required courses or obtaining a waiver of such requirements from a college committee charged with granting such waivers.

This issue is of particular concern to some students in community colleges. These colleges are generally "open enrollment" in that they accept all high school graduates from their community. Because they do not rely on the stricter standards of selective colleges, they need a way to make sure students are prepared for college work. For students who have taken SAT or ACT exams, good scores in these exams are a way to demonstrate such preparation. Students who cannot submit strong scores on standardized tests, often because their learning disabilities impact their performance, must take placement tests to demonstrate their proficiency in areas such as reading, writing, and math. Those who cannot pass these tests are required to take remedial coursework and to pass such remedial courses in order to fully matriculate. Then, like all college students, they must also take the courses required for their major in order to graduate. Furthermore, students have to pay for remedial coursework just like they pay for regular courses, but do not receive credits towards their diplomas for these. And, often, they are limited in how many times they can take a particular course -- a "three strikes and you're out" approach.

The issue requires a balancing between the legal right of a college to set standards for admission and graduation and the rights of students with specific learning or other disabilities to be able to access a college education. There is no easy answer and it raises some fundamental questions that we expect courts to deal with at some point in the future.

How Do We Know What Babies Know?

Babies, it seems, do something new every single day. Before they are even able to control their own body movements, they are engaged in a furious observation of the world around them, learning from just about everything they see, hear, touch, taste, and smell. Although there is a wide range of “normal,” of course, lots of studies have determined which concepts babies understand at certain ages and stages. For example, there is evidence that babies recognize their mother’s face in as little as three days after birth and that they have a keenly developed number sense by six months of age.

_-0-_ via Flickr

But how can scientists determine what babies know? Asking a newborn whether the woman holding him looks like his mother isn't likely to elicit a useful response. One way to get a read on babies’ thought patterns is by performing a brain scan. But this technique isn't ideal. For example, a functional magnetic resonance image (fMRI) provides great images but is very expensive, and electroencephalography (EEG) is cheaper but doesn't yield information about impulses deep within the brain.

Instead of measuring brain activity, researchers have learned that babies’ behavior in response to stimuli can reveal a surprising amount of information about what goes on inside their heads. Most babies respond in predictable ways to novelty and many experiments take advantage of this tendency. Careful observation of babies has led to some useful, measurable methods that help researchers as they work to probe the minds of the very youngest people around.

Linguists, for example, are interested in the way very young babies hear sounds. Speakers of certain languages often cannot hear the difference between sounds in a foreign language; for example, Japanese and Chinese speakers struggle to differentiate between the /r/ and /l/ sounds, and /v/ and /w/ sound the same to speakers of Hindi and Thai. Are babies hardwired to speak a particular language from the moment they’re born, or is this selective deafness a learned trait?*

To determine what babies hear, scientists use the concept of novelty. Babies are provided with a high amplitude sucking device to measure their responses, then are exposed to sounds. To the baby, a high amplitude sucking device feels like a pacifier, but in fact it is connected to a system that measures the rate at which the baby sucks it. During the experiment, the baby listens to a recording of one of the target sounds over and over again. For a baby born in an Arabic-speaking environment, for example, researchers might choose to play “pah, pah, pah...” When the sound begins, the baby will begin to suck the pacifier at a faster rate, but as it grows accustomed to the sound, it will demonstrate its boredom by sucking more slowly. Then, suddenly, the recording will change; the baby will begin to hear “bah, bah, bah...” Adults and even young children who speak Arabic have great difficulty hearing the difference between /p/ and /b/, and most don’t notice when “pah” switches to “bah.” But most babies begin sucking much faster the instant the sound changes; their curiosity is aroused by the difference, and they become attentive and interested. To their older counterparts, the stimulus appears unchanged, but babies demonstrate a much keener sense of sound discrimination.

Another way to measure a baby’s perception is to record the amount of time she spends looking at something. Just as babies suck faster when they hear something new, they tend to look longer at things that are different from what they know or that violate their expectations. This concept, known as “preferential looking,” was first developed in the 1960s, and scientists still use it today. Researchers at Johns Hopkins University, for example, demonstrated that babies understand the limitations of the physical world by showing them a series events and recording their looking times. Some of the events were deemed “real,” in that they were possible, but some “magic” events were physically impossible. In one “real” video, a ball rolled up to a wall and bounced off. Babies weren't too captivated by that, but they couldn't take their eyes off a “magic” video of a ball rolling into, then through, a solid wall. This fascination indicates that babies as young as two and a half months had gained a great deal of knowledge about the physical properties of the world.

Babies may spend a lot of time gazing around them, reaching for objects, listening intently, knocking things over, and banging on surfaces. But the serious learning going on beneath the surface is anything but child’s play.


*Interestingly, the reason older children and adults can’t hear the difference between similar sounds in other languages has nothing to do with their hearing. The answer is found, instead, in the brain. Babies are born with more than 80 billion neurons (brain cells) and synapses (connections between brain cells) in their brains – more than are found in any adult. This means that they are prepared to detect all kinds of stimuli in the world. The problem, however, is that having lots of extraneous neurons and synapses means that information and impulses don’t travel very quickly. Imagine searching through a suitcase for a particular item; if the suitcase is filled with things, it takes a long time to find what one wants. Similarly, the multitude of structures in the infant brain can make it work more slowly. Just as taking out half of what’s in the suitcase can cut down on search time, babies’ brains reduce the synapses in the name of efficiency. As the baby observes and interacts with its environment, the cellular connections that aren’t needed get the boot. This regulatory process is known as pruning. So after spending a year or so in a Chinese-speaking environment, where the /r/ and /l/ sounds don’t contribute to meaning, the brain of an infant there would determine that being able to detect the difference between the two sounds is unimportant. That synapse is pruned, making way for more efficient synaptic connections that the baby has noticed are relevant. Pruning is thought to result in learning, as the brain customizes itself to perform optimally according to observed environmental factors.

Duolingo Offers Free Online Language Instruction

Software like Rosetta Stone has been widely touted as an effective way to learn a new language. Unfortunately, these packages do not come cheap, making them out of reach of many would-be linguists. Duolingo, however, seems poised to make expensive language-learning packages a thing of the past.

Duolingo is a free--yes, really; users won’t even see advertisements--web-based site that can teach users to speak Spanish, German, French, Italian, Portuguese, or English in simple, effective lessons. (Site administrators say that Chinese curriculum is on the way.) What's the catch to this free service? According to its website, Duolingo users -- presumably more advanced learners -- can use the learning tools for free, "because while you are learning you are also ...simultaneously contributing to translate real-world content from the Web." Advanced speakers can skip ahead to more challenging material, but beginners start with simple lessons that teach useful, basic nouns, verbs, and articles through varied examples and lots of repetition.

Imagine you are an English speaker who wants to learn French. Seconds after creating your account, you can begin your first lesson. Initial instruction methods include reading a sentence in French and translating it to English, typing an English sentence in French, selecting correct translations from multiple choices, listening to a sentence in French and typing the translation to English, and matching pictures with vocabulary. Learners can hear new words pronounced for them frequently, and if the user enables a microphone the system can even capture and correct a student’s pronunciation. Lessons are taught through a series of interactive questions, and feedback is provided after each answer so users know immediately whether they understand a concept. Forget a word? No problem. Simply hover the mouse over the word in question and a translation will appear.

Students may find their rapid progress through lessons motivating on its own, but if not, they can accumulate skill points by completing lessons successfully. And a free iPhone app is available so learners can practice on the go.

Duolingo is worth a look, whether you are a student who needs extra practice for a traditional class, a travel enthusiast, or someone in search of a new hobby.

Watch an introductory video below:

Study Shows Online Education Has Promise

Online education, particularly when it’s free, is exploding in popularity around the planet. A recent article in the New York Times explores the success of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). Traditionalists may be surprised that one of the primary findings reported in the article is that MOOCs can be more efficient and effective than traditional classes led by a teacher. Surprised? Duolingo, a popular Web-based language instruction site, commissioned a study to determine how effectively their product teaches languages such as Spanish, German, French, Portuguese, Italian, and English to non-native speakers. The results showed that the average learner with no knowledge of Spanish would need to devote 135 hours to cover a semester’s worth of entry-level Spanish curriculum, whereas the same content could be learned on Duolingo in only 34 hours! The study was small and its results can’t realistically be generalized beyond its preliminary findings. Still, the indication seems to be that, done right, MOOCs can be effective indeed. And the best part? MOOCs are free.

One problem with MOOCs, however, is that students are unlikely to finish courses in which they enroll. Perhaps it’s easier to drop a free service than one that charges tuition, or maybe students are less motivated by a computerized instructor than they would be by face-to-face interactions with classmates and a professor. Whatever the reason, the New York Times piece reports that fewer than ten percent of MOOC students complete their coursework. Still, the article reasons, if 5,000 people out of the 100,000 who initially signed up walk away with a new knowledge base, it’s hard to say that the MOOC was unsuccessful. We agree.

Photo: CC by Daniel Feldt

Foreign Language Waivers

Your blogger spent time this morning with the seniors at The Churchill School in New York City and their parents and counselors. Churchill is a terrific, New York State approved K-12 school on Manhattan's East Side for students with language based learning disabilities. Churchill wanted their seniors to have a chance to hear about the issues discussed in my book, Life After High School: A Guide for Students with Disabilities and Their Families, in time to put the information to use as they prepare their college applications.

One topic which was on the minds of many of the students and parents was how colleges deal with students who do not take a foreign language in high school. Churchill follows the New York State curriculum, but has a blanket waiver for all of its students to receive a "Regents" diploma (now the standard NY diploma) without taking foreign language courses. Since many colleges require their applicants to have taken a foreign language for admission, this raises concerns for these college-bound 12th graders. They also raised questions about what kind of language requirements they might face once they get to college.

There is no single answer to these concerns. Most colleges will accept a student who has been exempted from foreign language courses in high school because of learning or related difficulties, provided they receive an appropriate explanation for such waiver, such as a letter from the guidance counselor. However, these same schools may still require that students take a certain number of credits of a foreign language (or otherwise demonstrate proficiency, such as by taking and passing an advanced placement exam or SAT II exam). While a small number of schools may allow students to take a course in a country's culture or history as a substitute for foreign language, many schools have at least some majors that require students to demonstrate knowledge of a foreign language in order to graduate and some require all their students to demonstrate such knowledge.

Complicating matters is the fact that individual waivers of foreign language requirements at the college level are not determined until the student has accepted admission and paid a deposit, as is the case with all accommodations provided to students with documented disabilities. Students need to ask the college's Office of Disability Services about the general policies on foreign language and whether waivers are generally available. Although a student cannot get a specific answer ahead of time with respect to what he or she will be offered, schools can tell you what their policies have been and what has been offered to students with similar disabilities in the past. As with so many aspects of the college application process, especially for students with learning differences, thinking ahead is an important part of success.

The Bilingual Brain

A fascinating interview with cognitive neuroscientist Dr. Ellen Bialystok appeared earlier this week in the New York Times. Dr. Bialystok and her team of researchers looked at how being bilingual impacts not just language acquisition and development, but other aspects of brain function as well. In addition to finding that being bilingual appears to slow the onset of symptoms of Alzheimer's disease, they found that being bilingual had a positive impact on executive function skills -- those skills that help all of us manage the many tasks we do every day. When students struggle with executive function, they can have difficulties managing their school papers and personal belongings and staying on top of assignments and deadlines.

Individuals who are experienced at simultaneously processing two languages also turn out to be better at multi-tasking in ways beyond language. When researchers looked at adults who were using a driving simulator and also using devices such as cellphones (don't try this on the road!), they found that those who were bilingual had less impairment in their driving skills than individuals who only spoke one language.

Dr. Bialystok cautioned that just knowing a second language or even using it occassionally does not bring the same benefits as being truly bilingual. For the kinds of positive impacts she and her team have noted, individuals must truly use two languages interchangeably. It seems as if the practice with moving back and forth between the languages actually appears to rewire the way the brain works -- and that these changes can be documented by brain imaging studies.

For parents considering whether to take advantage of an opportunity presented by family members or caregivers to raise a bilingual child, The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association notes that language problems are no more likely to occur in children who are bilingual than in monlingual children. So, whether it is your French speaking nanny, your Spanish speaking spouse, or your employer's offer to transfer you and your family to China for a year, you may want to consider the positive impacts of introducing another language into your child's life.

Learning a Language

Students who struggle with reading and writing often find learning a foreign language to be an extraordinary challenge. Secondary schools are aware of this issue and will sometimes make exceptions to the foreign language requirement for some students who receive services under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).

In New York City, for example, students are required to take a two credit (two semester) sequence in a foreign language to graduate from high school, but a student "identified as having a disability which adversely affects the ability to learn a language may be excused from this requirement if such student’s IEP indicates that such requirement is not appropriate. Such a student need not have sequence in a second language but must meet the 44 credit graduation requirement."

This sounds like it would be a great thing for students who struggle even with English, but families should be aware that it can have a down side, and should consider the impact of opting out of foreign language courses before seeking to add such an exemption to a student's IEP. The problem is that many colleges require that their applicants have several semesters of a foreign language in high school. Furthermore, whether or not a college requires that a student has a foreign language to be admitted, many colleges require that students take a certain number of foreign language credits as part of their degree requirements. Students who demonstrate mastery of a language, usually with an advanced placement test , may place out of a college language requirement.

So, what should parents and students do? First, start by considering whether it is really necessary for a high school student to be excused from taking a foreign language. Could the student manage to get through a course with some extra support? What about American Sign Language? This is taught in a growing number of high schools and the process for learning ASL is very different from French or Latin. It may be a good choice for some students. Next, think ahead about what colleges may be of interest to your child. We know it is early, but you can get a sense of requirements for entry and for graduation. Some colleges that have language requirements for entry or graduation will permit students to fill these requirements with courses on the culture of a particular country.

There is no one answer to the language dilemma. What is important is to be aware of your options and to consider what is best for each individual student.