April 2017 Richard Gentile, Editor Volume 37, Number 2 [email protected]
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™ LILT NEWSLETTER ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ April 2017 Richard Gentile, Editor Volume 37, Number 2 WWW.LILTFL.ORG [email protected] NO PART OF ANY LILT NEWSLETTER MAY BE REPRODUCED WITHOUT WRITTEN PERMISSION FROM THE EDITOR. ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE To Adrienne Greenbaum for her many years of service As my term as President comes to an end, I am happy to to the organization and invaluable and insightful input at have had the opportunity to lead LILT out of hiatus. The our Executive Board meetings. last two years have had both their challenging and To Nancy Russo-Rumore for her advice, ideas and rewarding moments as the Executive Board and I actions which brought LILT into the 21st century by worked many endless hours to assure the continuation securing LILT’s not-for-profit status, making LILT tax of LILT. Working collaboratively, we successfully offered exempt and a public charity, and registering LILT with an exciting conference, professional development the New York State Attorney General. workshops, student competitions, student plaques, To Ron Taub for his incredible expertise in managing poster contests, awards, grants and stipends. our treasury for many years, and for obtaining LILT’s I am pleased to know LILT will indeed have a bright and CTLE approval from the NYS Education Department. promising future. I must thank each member who I would like to reiterate, if you have an interest in helping submitted his or her application for the numerous LILT, please reach out. Whatever time and expertise you positions available for our upcoming elections. It will give can offer to LILT is welcomed, as there is no job too big me great pleasure to present the newly elected, dynamic or too small - more hands make light work. The more and professional officers to the membership at our LILT involvement from our diverse membership, the more Spring General Membership Meeting. successful the organization will be at meeting the needs I would like to thank all the members for your active of our professionals. involvement and communication in letting us know what The LILT Executive Board and I wish you all a smooth was working and not working in meeting your needs and and successful end to the school year. I look forward to expectations. Your input allowed the Executive Board to seeing many of you as we honor our retirees, our bring the necessary changes where needed. An outgoing Executive Board Members and recognize organization’s strength and longevity are derived from its award winners at our Spring General Membership constituents, and your continued involvement of time, meeting in June. effort, and honest communication will help LILT continue It has been an honor and privilege to serve you as to thrive. President of LILT, I would like to thank my team of officers: Michele Ortiz, Donna DiNatale, JoAnne Orlando and Ron Taub, and my Executive Board Members: Richard Gentile, Ana Aguiar-Mady Adrienne Greenbaum, Gene Lowenberg, Joan FROM THE EDITOR Militscher, and Anahí Walton-Schaffer. Their As noted in January, this will be my last edition as editor dedication and allegiance to the organization, and their of the LILT Newsletter, 62 editions over 15 years. There support during my Presidency allowed me to lead in a have been many articles on various aspects of LOTE positive direction. acquisition and teaching, and I hope you have found the At this time, I would like to mention and thank those majority of them interesting and informative. stepping down from the board after many years of I wish the new editor of the LILT Newletter all my best in committed service. Most have served since the inception continuing to inform the membership of everything LILT, of LILT. To Richard Gentile, my immediate past as well as the latest developments in the LOTE president and mentor, who was an invaluable partner community, be they regional, national or international. during these last two years. His wisdom, advice, CONGRATULATIONS TO THE NEW RETIREES guidance, ability to bring balance and new views to the board were essential. Rita Fasano, Kathryn Laurie, Amalfis Mejia, Gina Palasciano, Diana Riccoboni and Josephine Tardio. proficient at multitasking, setting priorities, and, perhaps, ELECTIONS FOR 2017-2019 better able to withstand the ravages of age, a range of Sometime in early May, LILT members will recent studies suggest. receive a list of the proposed candidates for Indeed, some preliminary research suggests that people the LILT Executive Board, 2017-2019, and who speak a second language may have enhanced defenses against the onset of dementia and delay a ballot. Kindly return the ballot as soon as Alzheimer’s disease by an average of four years, as possible so the new candidates can be WSJ reported in 2010. announced at the LILT Spring Membership The ability to speak more than one language also may Meeting. help protect memory, researchers from the Center for Health Studies in Luxembourg reported at last year. THE BILINGUAL BRAIN IS SHARPER AND MORE After studying older people who spoke multiple FOCUSED, STUDY SAYS languages, they concluded that the more languages The ability to speak two languages can make bilingual someone could speak, the better: People who spoke people better able to pay attention than those who can three languages were three times less likely to have only speak one language, a new study suggests. cognitive problems compared to bilingual people. Those who spoke four or more languages were five times less Scientists have long suspected that some enhanced likely to develop cognitive problems. mental abilities might be tied to structural differences in brain networks shaped by learning more than one Not so long ago, people worried that children who grew language, just as a musician’s brain can be altered by up learning two languages at once were at a the long hours of practice needed to master an developmental disadvantage compared with those who instrument. focused on only one. Now, in a study published in the Proceedings of the New research suggests that even babies have little National Academy of Sciences, researchers at trouble developing bilingual skills. Northwestern University for the first time have Researchers at the University of British Columbia’s documented differences in how the bilingual brain Infant Studies Centre reported that babies being raised processes the sounds of speech, compared with those in a bilingual family show from birth a preference for who speak a single language, in ways that make it better each of the native languages they heard while still in the at picking out a spoken syllable, even when it is buried in womb and can readily distinguish between them. a babble of voices. Moreover, bilingual infants appear to learn the grammars That biological difference in the auditory nervous system of their two languages as well as babies learning a appears to also enhance attention and working memory single language, even when the two languages are as among those who speak more than one language, they different from one another as English and Japanese, or say. English and Punjabi. “Because you have two languages going on in your Reprinted from the Wall Street Journal, April 30, 2012 head, you become very good at determining what is and Submitted by Nancy Russo-Rumore, Emerita is not relevant,” says Dr. Nina Kraus, a professor of LEARNING GLOBISH neurobiology and physiology at Northwestern, who was Stand on the promenade of any British seaside resort on part of the study team. “You are a mental juggler.” a summer’s afternoon, and you will hear the full, In the new study, Kraus and her colleagues tested the remarkable range of accents of this small island pass by involuntary neural responses to speech sounds by soon enough. comparing brain signals in 23 high school students who Stand on the seafront in Brighton, and the experience is were fluent in English and Spanish to those of 25 rather different. The accents come from all over the teenagers who only spoke English. When it was quiet, planet. Most people seem to be speaking English, which both groups could hear the test syllable — “da” — with is what they are meant to be doing. But it may not be no trouble, but when there was background noise, the English as we know it. brains of the bilingual students were significantly better at detecting the fundamental frequency of speech For if English is now the language of the planet, Brighton sounds. might be the new centre of the universe. There are about 40 language schools operating within the city. And at the “We have determined that the nervous system of a height of the season – which is right now – about 10,000 bilingual person responds to sound in a way that is students crowd into town, thronging the bars and cafés, distinctive from a person who speaks only one practising their fragile English skills. language,” Kraus says. Through this fine-tuning of the nervous system, people who can master more than one It’s great business for the locals. This trade seems to be language are building a more resilient brain, one more recession-proof; it is certainly weather-proof – these Spring General Membership Meeting Thursday June 1, 2017 The LILT Executive Board cordially invites all LOTE teachers to its annual LILT Spring General Membership Meeting. Please join us as we honor our retirees – Rita Fasano, Gina Palasciano, Diana Riccoboni and Josephine Tardio, and the recipients of our awards and scholarships. If you know of any other LILT member who is retiring and may meet constitutional requirements for recognition, please contact Michele Ortiz as soon as possible at [email protected]. Note: Please have your check postmarked (US Post Office only) no later than May 19, 2017.