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Why don't you use an answering machine on your 1-888 line to let callers know that it is after hours and that the show they are hearing on the radio is a re-broadcast?

Not all of us listen to you every day or know when the show is live and when it isn't. I heard your show while driving home last night, and I spent lots of time listening to your phone ringing, and nobody picking up. I figured it was ringing because there were so many callers.

The on-air broadcast finally said this was a re-broadcast only at the very end of the show. Why couldn't you have said that during the break in the middle? Or, better yet, why don't you invest in an answering machine to pick up when you are not there?

posted 4 years, 7 months ago
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To the mother who boasts of having a beautiful daughter:

Why are you calling people who disagree with you "idiots"? Could it be that you yourself are one? (You know, it takes one to know one!)

You claim that Measure 58 would "limit students' access to equitable education". It seems you would rather stick to bilingual education is Spanish and English. What is equitable about that? There are at least two things wrong with that:

a) It treats kids from Spanish speaking countries different than those from all other countries.

b) It may not be all that great for the Spanish speaking kids either, because we basically let them hang on to Spanish for ever, .... thus robbing them of an opportunity to become truly fluent in English.

It seems that most immigrants from Europe, Africa and Asia come to the United States with the intent of blending in and adapting to their new country. But many people from Latin America arrive here with no desire to blend in. What is equitable about that?

There is something basically unfair about treating Latinos any different than people from other parts of the world.

posted 4 years, 7 months ago
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We are ALL the products of total immersion. When we were born, our first experience was that of total immersion in a new language. And we all succeeded, even though we had no prior knowledge of reading or writing in that language!

Total immersion works, simply because a child's brain is wired to act like a sponge and absorb new languages. We should make use of that ability while we can, because - unfortunately - the ability gradually fades away, probably around the age of 10 or 11, as we grow into teenagers.

My sister and I are both perfect examples. We were both totally immersed in a foreign language, not once , but twice. Both times, it took only a year to absorb the new language. And neither one of us was in any way "special" or "gifted". We both were average students in school, getting by with lots of Bs and Cs.

1. CROATIAN is our mother tongue.
2. SPANISH was our second language. I was 7 and a half. My sister only 4.
3. ENGLISH was our third language. I was 8 and a half. My sister only 5.

Our family moved to Chile for a few years. The first year, we easily picked up Spanish, mainly playing with the kids in our neighborhood, and me also in first grade. Well, they actually promoted me to second grade immediately, because they found out I could already read, write, and count. But, my sister was only in kindergarten, with no reading or writing capabilities, and yet she picked up Spanish easily too. Informally, just playing, ... like a sponge!

The next year, I was placed in an English private school in Chile, where total immersion was the rule. There were lots of local Chileans in that school, but the rule was that we had to speak English all the time, while we were on school premises. All the classes were in English. This time, I was a bit older, and it was a bit more traumatic, but - again - within a year, I became fluent in English.

My sister also picked up English in her second year, but her school was not as strict about it as mine, so it wasn't English all the time. She still picked up the language, but I think it took her a bit longer than a year.

The point is, children will absorb whatever they are exposed to. IF they hear English all around them, and nothing but English, they will easily pick it up. If my mother had come to school with me to translate everything into CROATIAN for me, I would have never become proficient in English. If I had played only with other CROATIAN kids, I would have never absorbed SPANISH, the way I did playing with the local Chilean kids.

Kids from other countries who come to the United States get plenty of their own language and culture at home. If they are ever to learn to be fluent in English, they should be exposed to it 100% at least while they are in school. No special teachers are needed. Just put them in with other English-speaking kids. The more native English speaker around them, the quicker they will pick up the language.

Older kids, who arrive to the US as teenagers, might need some help transitioning into English, since they have already lost some of the ability to absorb a language automatically, and are also faced with having to deal with a much richer vocabulary in their daily classes.

I confess that I got a bit of extra help too, when learning my third language: ENGLISH. The one exception they made for me in that English private school was that I was exempt from having to learn LATIN. During Latin class, I was given an extra dose of ENGLISH language. Even more immersion!!!

TOTAL IMMERSION WORKS. It's the only thing that works. Just think of your own experience with a foreign language in which you were NOT totally immersed. Did you try to learn some French or some Spanish in high school? How fluently do you speak it as a result of that? How can you expect any more than that from kids from other countries who are given only a little bit of English instruction per day?

It's a pity that Bill Sizemore's name has been tied to this Measure, because of his bad reputation. I hate to agree with him. But, the fact is that TOTAL IMMERSION simply WORKS. We humans are wired for it!

posted 4 years, 7 months ago
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