The ability to speak multiple languages is considered an advantage throughout the world. Studies show learning a foreign language correlates with higher scores on assessment tests, including the standardized college admissions test used in the US, the SAT. Historically less concerned with foreign language instruction, the United States is increasingly aware of the need to reform its approach to education as American students consistently rank below the global average in assessment tests and the nation finds itself faced with challenging economic and foreign policy issues.

Speaking a foreign language is an important trait employers often seek in their staff. “Being able to communicate in a colleague’s native tongue helps business negotiations as well as social interactions with that colleague go much more smoothly than does working through a translator. There are just some cultural aspects of communication that do not translate well,” says Kathy Mahnke of the University of Denver. Simply put, the face of business is changing. As companies in every nation and industry find global competition, they are forced to rely on those most capable of communicating with the world.

While multilingual college students may have advantages over monolingual peers, challenges remain. Before students even arrive on campus, they must demonstrate proficiency in the dominant language of study. In the US the TOEFL is the standardized evaluation used to ensure immigrant or international students can adequately perform with English-language instruction. Even with high test scores, students may feel socially isolated as they find everyday idioms used in the classroom setting intimidating since mastery of a language does not necessitate a seamless cultural integration.

Students face increased competition when navigating the college application process in a foreign language. With a growing number of foreign language applicants, schools are able to be more selective. In turn, students may find language ability alone may be insufficient when measured against more culturally robust candidates.

Addressing the needs of a student body that speaks multiple languages, colleges offer a range of assistance programs. Multilingual staff may be available to assist foreign language students in completing application materials, and multicultural organizations or language conversation clubs can help students acclimate. Some universities connect instructors with experts to understand the specific challenges multilingual students face.

To address the needs of globalization, colleges will find it necessary to support multilingual students. A better understanding of foreign cultures and the importance of knowing multiple languages can direct schools’ efforts. Personalized services such as cultural mentors could help students adjust to foreign language environments, as well as more formal assistance programs.

College students who want to be competitive upon graduation face many challenges, but command of a foreign language goes far to bridge the gap between cultures and offer a unique vantage point. By simply knowing another language, students distinguish themselves from their monolingual peers. As colleges realize the importance of a more global approach to education and adjust their curricula and course offerings, multilingual students will gradually find the college environment becoming less one of extra challenge and more one in which they’re poised to succeed.

About the Author: Marina Salsbury planned on becoming a teacher since high school, but found her way instead into online writing after college. She writes around the Web about everything from education to exercise.

English is a tough language to learn. With thousands of immigrants moving into the United States each year, learning to speak English has become a major concern for millions of Americans.

Believe it or not, learning to speak English is more than simply learning to conjugate verbs and memorizing vocabulary. Learning any language is more of a social experience than it is a textbook experience. Here are a few principles you will need in order to learn English (or any other language).

Don’t be afraid to sound silly:

English is a tricky language to pronounce. You will pronounce words wrong. When I was learning Spanish, I remember a friend of mine saying “Somos novios” instead of “Somos nuevos.” He had just said that we were lovers instead of saying we were new. However, the more you speak, the better you will get at speaking it. Having a good sense of humor goes a long way.

Going along with that, don’t be ashamed to ask someone to repeat something or define a word you don’t recognize. Although some people may become frustrated with you, most will appreciate the attempt you’re making to learn the language.

Make friends that speak English:

Those striving to lose weight always do better when they do it with a friend or group of friends. As mentioned before, learning a language is a social experience. If your friends speak your native language, then chances are, you’ll speak your native language with them. If your friends speak English, than you will be forced to speak English around them. Whatever experience you can have with the language will reinforce what you learn.

Fully immerse yourself:

When you watch movies, watch them in English. Change your computer’s language to English. Listen to English pop music. This isn’t to say that you should give up entirely on your native language and culture, but make a fully concerted effort to live, breath, joke, cry, and laugh in English. Your level of commitment to this process will determine your success level

Don’t settle for “What is your name?”:

Some people try to talk only about subjects they are familiar with. I knew a man who lived in the United States for almost twenty years but knew only how to talk about things related to his painting business. Don’t shy away from unfamiliar subjects. You can often talk around words that you don’t know. For example, if you’re talking about soccer and don’t know how to say the word ball, you can say something like, “that thing you kick around on the field.”

Carry a notebook to jot down words you wish to look up later. If necessary, explain that you aren’t very familiar with the vocabulary of a subject and ask them to slow down. Prepare for situations where you know you might hear words you aren’t familiar with. For example, if you are looking for an apartment, you may want to learn words and phrases related to that.

About the Author

Stephen Sharpe has worked for MyCollegesandCareers.com for more than 8 months. My Colleges and Careers is an online database which helps future students find online schools. Through an education, you can acquire your dream job.

It’s really hard running a blog and working a full-time job as a school manager, as many bloggers know. There are weeks that I work 60-80 hours at work and put in another 25 on the blog. It’s become so overwhelming keeping up with everything. I have been so hard-headed in that I wanted to learn to do everything by myself, but I now need assistance if this blog is going to expand. The one other person who has been helping with the blog also acknowledges that we need extra help.

This year my primary New Year’s resolution is to enhance and expand the resources provided for parents and teachers who are raising or educating bilingual children. One major goal that I would like to focus on is including more effective bilingual teaching strategies as well resources for ESL-an essential component of bilingual programs in the United States.

We always have tons of ideas of how we might provide useful content to our readers, but lack the time to create it. This year I’m dedicating myself to making the time-in any way necessary. Some additional goals that I would like to have for the blog are:

1. Show our readers who I am and let them get to know me. There is one driving person that is behind this blog and I want to begin to introduce myself to readers. I want to connect with people and get to know them.

2. Hire frequent contributors. If I really am going to make the time to create the content that I envision for the blog, then I will also need to delegate to other writers. If you are interested in becoming a frequent contributor, we can only afford at this time to pay $10 a post. Email us if interested.

3.Create “how-to” and practical resources for raising and educating bilingual children-which we already do, but I want next year’s materials to be much more strategic and focused. I want to create blog posts, e books, online classes, and other resources for readers. I don’t have it all mapped out, but I will get there.

4. Get to know my readers. I want to engage more with my readers when they leave comments and cultivate conversations on Facebook posts. I want to meet people.

5. I want to have an editorial calendar where I map out content and themes that will be highlighted each month. I want to be more strategic in my planning of content so that my partner and I can better delegate tasks.

I’m excited to write these down and publish them so that we can make them a reality! What are some of your New Year’s resolutions??

-Melanie

Our fourth entry for our second annual student writing contest for Hispanic Heritage month is from Andrew Berthelson, a sixth grade student from New Mexico.

Eddy Trujillo was my great grandpa. He was a very brave man. He was born in Mexico. He fought in World War II. He was a family oriented person. He was very kind to everybody.

My grandpa is important to me because he made a lot of changes in people’s lives. He would play a lot of practical jokes on people to cheer them up, and help them forget about their worries. He made a lot of thinking puzzles that I play with right now. He has changed me and my family’s lives.

I learned how to be considerate of others. He taught me to be kind and listen to others. I use this today to make others happy. With this I can make people glad and they are kinder to others.

I hope to speak Spanish like my great grandfather. His life was spent with others I hope to do the same. My great grandfather was a great Hispanic in my eyes. I hope to do everything he did in my lifetime.

My grandpa is important to me because he made a lot of changes in people’s lives. He would play a lot of practical jokes on people to cheer them up, and help them forget about their worries. He made a lot of thinking puzzles that I play with right now. He has changed me and my family’s lives.

Stay tuned for some additional student essays! After we have uploaded all of the articles, our readers will have a chance to choose a first, second and third place winner.

Read additional student essays here.

Our third entry for our second annual student writing contest for Hispanic Heritage month is from Kaylee Dunnigan, an eighth grade student from New Mexico.

I truly love poetry; I find it one of the most bewitching things that one can come across. One of my favorite poets is Julia de Burgos- her work is just phenomenal, you can feel her emotions and thoughts leak out of her work. Her life and ambitions were astonishing and yet her days ended in a somber way. I do not think that Julia de Burgos had ever written poetry for money, but she wrote it for her own self-joy. You can see she did not have heartless intentions when writing poetry because they were always filled with her deepest contemplations and emotions. You could always feel whether she was writing from perturbation or ecstasy- either way her words were filled with passion.

Her poetry has not only touched my heart and soul, but to no end of others. She has composed over 200 creations. Yet it is not only her poetry that has influenced me, but the story of her life is outstanding. She was born in Puerto Rico, first-born out of thirteen children and had taken to writing at a young age. Then by only the age of 19 she had acquired a university degree. She has been an advocate for the independence of Puerto Rico, and she had been a civil rights activist for women African and African-Caribbean writers in the United States. She lived in both the United States and Puerto Rico multiple times. Julia de Burgos had two marriages, both of which broke into pieces. She suffered from depression leading to her being an alcoholic and sorrowfully died of pneumonia.

Julia de Burgos’ work was always and has always been astounding. My favorites include To Julia de Burgos and Yo misma fui mi ruta. To Julia de Burgos is a poem that she had written “to” herself. To Julia de Burgos was most likely written in her later years as she was going through depression, because you can feel her anger and self-hatred that she harbors and tries to keep at bay. I like this poem so much because she is angry in a matter of fact way, but you can still feel the sadness her words inflict on herself-it seems to bring a sense of piece of mind. Her life has made such an impact on me because her poems bring you these feelings and thought that I have never really experienced in such a way-you could say that it leads you to a new light of day.

My second favorite poem is Yo misma fui mi ruta. This poem is about her trying to be and do what she could. I took this as in her mental state and though not in her physical sense. In the poem she was, at the beginning, going in and out of what she had to be and what she was. She wanted to be “an attempt at life”. Then I take the next part of the poem as her trying her hardest to continue forward as things keep painfully dragging her back. It continues on to say that she is what she is, and she’s where she was, but then she thrives to be “what men wanted her to be”. I am devoted to this poem because she progresses or tries to progress toward her goal, even though it seems hard for her to accomplish such a task.

Poets are writers, and writers express their feelings through their writings. I have read many books and poems of sorts but Julia de Burgos’ work has expressed her emotions the best. By just reading a piece of her work you could understand exactly the feeling she was having and the one that she was trying to convey to her audience. Julia de Burgos was and is still considered one of the best Latina poets of both her time and ours. Even though her life was hard on her she got to express her feelings through her extraordinary work. For these reasons and many more Julia de Burgos will always be the greatest inspiration to me.

Stay tuned for some additional student essays! After we have uploaded all of the articles, our readers will have a chance to choose a first, second and third place winner.

Read additional student essays here.

This month we hosted a contest for a logo for the Multilingual Mania blog. To date we received a total of 29 submissions for the blog header and logo design. We are at a loss at this point of which one to pick because we want all of them! We really value your feedback, so we wanted to show you the top ten picks that we have chosen, and hear your feedback about your favorite design!

You can see the top ten picks that we chose and can vote on our logo design poll by clicking here. Please keep in mind that we can ask the designer to make changes to it if you like the design but not the color scheme. You can also leave your comments and feedback if you have any suggestions. We will have this logo poll up for the next few days, and then we will chose our final design.

UPDATE: Thanks for everyone’s feedback. We took our top ranking design that readers voted on, and asked the designer to make a few slight revisions. Please help us vote on our final logo by clicking here.

Thanks for helping us out! We will let you know soon which we pick!

Our second entry for our second annual student writing contest for Hispanic Heritage month is from Diana Vargas, a seventh grade student from Texas.

Do you admire a Latino person that has done something good for society? A person who you admire a lot, because he did or makes something that inspires you to follow each time that you fall, and that makes you feel proud of being a Latino? Well I’m sure you do, and I know that you also know that the Latinos that have developed a huge influence in America as well as other countries of the world. The population and culture of the United States continues to grow, and many Hispanics are starting to get an education and a good career. One good example of this is a person who sacrificed and worked very hard to make his dream become truth. Do you want to know the name of this person? Well I invite you to continue reading.

The person who I admire is a humble man. This person studied hard and worked hard in the fields to become what he wanted to be. His determination and courage encourages me to proceed and to have dreams in my life. This person is Jose Hernandez. This person has made an enormous impact on me, and helped me to realize what I want to be when I grow up. I want to follow his steps and try to go to the moon. Maybe I could participate in a significant discovery or find a cure for one of the illnesses that we have today. I would like to become an astronaut, and I know that I would make that dream become truth.

Why is this person important to me? Jose Hernandez is important to me, because I feel that his infancy was similar to the one that I had when I was younger. When Jose Hernandez was little, he and his family were very poor, and they had to work very tough every day in the fields picking up vegetables and fruits to have food in their table. They also could not have the pleasure to buy new clothes and shoes. Furthermore, they could not celebrate Christmas Eve with a big and delicious turkey on their table. Instead of that they had to wear old shoes, and eat a poor food. All of this is something real, something that happens to many families, and I feel motivated by his story and my story. I know that if he could do it I can do it and I can change my life and future.

How has this person made a contribution to the society? Well Hernandez is a person very dedicated to his job. He had worked for the NASA, and he had gone to special missions to the space. He also worked at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory of California. While there, he along with a commercial colleague developed the first full- field digital mammography imaging system (wikipedia.org) 2011. This invention aids in the early detection of breast cancer and gives many people a chance to live.

It is clear that Jose Hernandez is a Latino that shows determination, responsibility, commitment and courage. Jose Hernandez person did not allow the barriers that he would face in his life prevent him from being successful (wikipedia.org, 2011). I think that J. Hernandez is a wonderful example to follow to all the immigrants who came to “El pais de los suenos” (the dreams country). I think that if you put your mind in what you want to be, and you study hard the way Hernandez did, your dreams can become truth. It does not matter if you are poor and with a lot of barriers in your life. I’m proud of being a Latina and I’m proud of Jose Hernandez. He is a person who places in high the names of all the Latinos in the United States.

Stay tuned for some additional student essays! After we have uploaded all of the articles, our readers will have a chance to choose a first, second and third place winner.

Read additional student essays here.

Our first entry for our second annual student writing contest for Hispanic Heritage month is from Priscilla Dueñas, a twelve year old student in the seventh grade at Lincoln Middle School.

Sonia Sotomayor, Supreme Court Justice

About Sonia
Sonia Sotomayor was born on June 25, 1954. She is the 111th justice, the first Hispanic justice, and the third female justice of the Supreme Court. She was born in the Bronx, New York, and is a Puerto Rican descendent. She graduated A. B., Summa cum lade, from Princeton University in 1967. She had received her J.D. from Yale law school in 1979, and was editor at Yale law journal. She was an advocate for hiring Latino faculty. Sotomayor was also an assistant district attorney in New York 5 years before private practice in 1984. Sotomayor played a role in the boards of directors for the Puerto Rican defense and education fund, the state of New York mortgage, and the New York City campaign.

Why Sonia is important to me
Sonia Sotomayor is important to me because Latina and Latino men and women have a stereotype- people think because they are Mexican they aren’t as good or as smart as other people. And as a Latina I find that very offensive. Since Sonia was also Latina she had a stereotype against her too. But she still made it to be a Supreme Court Justice, even tough Sonia grew up poor without a father. Most wealthy and successful people would not even get to meet the president. Sonia met the president and is in high ruling. I am not poor and I have a father and a stepfather to help and support me. Sonia’s story helps me to believe that I can achieve many great goals in my future.

Sonia’s contribution to society
Since Sonia has been in the Supreme Court she has inspired many young Hispanic students; I am one of those many students. Many students from the Cesar Chavez charter school in Washington D. C. told Channel 8 news that since Sonia has been in the Supreme Court they have been given hope to excel to a level they never thought possible. She has given Hispanic students with stereotypes hope.

How Sonia’s story affected my life
Ever since I heard about Sonia Sotomayor in 2009 I realized I can do many great things in my life and future. I don’t just need a job; I want a career. I realized I always wanted to be a college teacher and inspire students and help them learn. Before I didn’t think that a girl from a small town of La Union, New Mexico could do it. I have more hope tanks to Sonia, and I know now I have a chance I m already headed down the right path. I recently moved out of the small town of La Union to Rio Rancho, New Mexico. I have better learning conditions and more opportunities. By Sonia I learned I can achieve great goals and work hard to get there and not give up.

Sonia in conclusion
Sonia Sotomayor is a woman, who against all odds achieved a great goal. She never gave up and she tried her best. I hope to be like her some day and make history and help a society. I will never give up, because I was inspired by a great woman. That great women’s name is Sonia Sotomayor.

Stay tuned for some additional student essays! After we have uploaded all of the articles, our readers will have a chance to choose a first, second and third place winner.

This week’s Parent to Parent interview features Ana L. Flores, co-founder of Spanglishbaby, an online community of parents raising bilingual children.

Tell us a little bit about yourself and your family. Are you monolingual? Multilingual? In which way are you raising bilingual children?

I was born in Houston to parents from El Salvador. I moved back to El Salvador with my mom when I was six and lived there until I moved back to the States for college. During that time, I would visit my dad in Houston every year and got to live in both cultures and both languages. I speak both Spanish and English fluently and don´t remember ever learning either one.

I met my husband in Mexico City, where he´s from, and we moved to Los Angeles together where we´re now raising a bilingual and bicultural girl. We only speak Spanish to her and are making sure she will be placed in a dual language immersion program when she starts kindergarten next year.

Why is it important to you that you raise your children to be bilingual? Why is bilingualism important to you?

It is important that my daughter speaks, writes, and reads Spanish fluently because it is the bridge, the connection to her family in Mexico and El Salvador. We have no family members in our city, so it´s vital that she feels she belongs and is part of a familia when she sees them. Also, I want her to be able to have more doors she can feel confident to open when the time comes for her to go to college and to work.

What challenges have you faced as a parent who is raising bilingual children?

I have to admit that so far it hasn´t been too challenging because my girl is only four and she still gets to be surrounded by Spanish most of her day. My hope is that if we continue this way and she´s accepted into a dual language program, then we won´t have too many challenges to deal with because of a lack of motivation or rebellion to want to speak it.

What have been your greatest successes or celebrations in raising bilingual children?

My biggest celebration was two months ago when my sister and 6 year old niece came from El Salvador to spend 10 days with us. My girl and her prima got along like sisters and all thanks to the fact that she speaks Spanish so well! My niece does understand English, but prefers Spanish, so they definitely were able to bond. The best part is that now anytime my girl starts wanting to talk to me in English I remind her that we need to speak Spanish so her prima can understand her. That trick always works!

What tips or suggestions do you have for other parents who are raising bilingual children or would like to raise bilingual children in the future?

To start as early as possible and talk, read, sing to them in the minority language as much as possible. Find or start a playgroup with other kids that are also learning the language and meet with them as often as possible so your kid will feel connected to them and to the language. If you have the means, travel to countries where the language is spoken. This is the best way to make the language relevant to kids and motivate them to speak and learn it.

Bio: Ana L. Flores has over 15 years of experience as a content creator and television producer, with a specialty in the U.S. Hispanic industry. After becoming a mom, she co-founded SpanglishBaby, the online community for parents raising bilingual and bicultural kids, which was chosen as a Must Read Mom’s Blog by Parenting Magazine and featured on CNN en Español, PBS Parents and Vme TV among others. In December of 2010, Ana appeared on the cover of Hispanic Business Magazine as “The New Face of Social Media.” Ana is currently writing the forthcoming SpanglishBaby book which will be published by Bilingual Readers in the fall of 2012.

Parent to Parent is a weekly interview series that features parents who are raising bilingual children. If you would like to participate in the interview series and share your experiences with other parents, please contact us at multilingualmania(at)yahoo(dot)com.

More Parent to Parent Interviews:
Parent to Parent: It’s About Much More Than Bilingualism
Multilingualism Fosters Greater Understanding and Acceptance of Other Cultures