May 2021

What Color Is Your Paragraph?

2022-10-14T14:00:40-04:00By |Articles|

Meet the award-winning narrator of the America’s Bilingual Century audiobook, who does more than just deliver the spoken text. Sean Pratt has narrated more than a thousand audiobooks, including Steve’s America’s Bilingual Century. You would think that a professional audiobook narrator sees words on the page that they’re reading from. Sean Pratt, who’s won six awards from AudioFile magazine and snagged two Audi Awards nominations, does see them, of course. But there amidst the black type, he spies something else that the rest of us don’t. “I look for the [...]

Read More

Becoming Visible with Workplace English

2022-10-18T15:58:46-04:00By |Articles|

In California’s affluent Silicon Valley, there are thousands of residents whom Dr. Guadalupe Valdés describes as “the invisible people.” They are the gardeners, the cleaners, the cooks: the cadre of tradespeople who are nowhere near affluent. They are the Latinx immigrants, primarily from Latin America, working in low-wage jobs. Although they brought little from their countries, their low income and diminished class status traveled with them. But so did their aspirations. The major hurdle many of them face is not being equipped with the English they need in their workplaces. Guadalupe’s English Together program is changing [...]

Read More

February 2018

‘On the Other Side of the Curtain’: Jean Kwok’s Bestselling Novels Reveal What It Means to Live in Other Languages

2021-05-20T11:58:30-04:00By |Articles|

Since her debut novel, Girl in Translation (which was translated into 16 languages), Jean Kwok has earned the coveted status of international bestselling author. Her newest work, Searching for Sylvie Lee, is a Today Show Book Club pick and earned Jean another spot on the New York Times bestseller list. It comes with a list of encomiums as long as a kite string: O Magazine, Buzzfeed, the Washington Post, CNN, Time, Newsweek, and more. Language plays a key role in all of Jean’s fiction, and together with reading, it has been central to Jean’s own [...]

Read More

January 2018

Our Towns: A book, a journey, and an often-surprising view of multicultural America

2020-01-15T17:30:12-05:00By |Articles|

To talk of bilingualism in America is to speak about more than just language. Our not-so-secret wish at America the Bilingual is that aspiring to be bilingual will inspire an appreciation for those who have come to this country from elsewhere, and with other languages. They are following the lodestar that has long shaped America’s history. They’ve come to make their lives here, raise their families, help build—literally and otherwise—their communities. Yet if you rely on just national news to know how we’re all getting along with one another in our communities, you might conclude [...]

Read More

Can Bicycles Make Us Bilingual?

2020-01-15T17:28:52-05:00By |Articles|

YES, say four researchers from universities in China, Thailand and Italy. More precisely, the study they conducted on Chinese university students in the throes of learning beginner-level English showed that the students who studied while pedaling stationary bikes did significantly better than their counterparts who studied while merely stationary, sitting at their desks. Wheel of linguistic fortune What’s more, the researchers reported, “effects were present even when tested after a month.” Along the lines of the adage about how you never forget how to ride a bike once you learn, the “bicycling bilinguals” of the study [...]

Read More

’Tis the season to speak German: Thank Deutsche for some of our best-loved Christmas carols

2022-03-08T13:46:13-05:00By |Articles|

If you celebrate Christmas, come December, you might begin to experience what the Germans call Vorfreude: joyful anticipation. Vor roughly translates to “before” or “in front,” and freude, to “pleasure” or “joy.” Even for those of us not lucky enough to speak German, we know how to sing it—after a fashion—at Christmastime, in joyful anticipation of December 25. Some of the best-known Christmas carols have their origins in German. Here are four that you may know. A Christmas tree on the Potsdamer Platz (Sony Center) in Berlin, Germany. (Wikimedia Commons) [...]

Read More

December 2017

Podcast Index for Teachers, Parents and School Superintendents

2019-12-17T13:55:05-05:00By |Articles|

Here's an index of podcasts by subject matter for teachers, parents and school administrators. Dual Immersion—for those interested in the benefits of teaching languages in the elementary schools Episode 24         Dual-Language Education, Report #1: The Revolution Begins Episode 25         Dual-Language Education, Report #2: Winds of Change Go-To for Teachers—encouragement and ideas Episode 12          Eastern Star: The Nick Staffa story Episode 17          When a gap year becomes a bridge year Episode 18          Bill Weir Loves Language Teachers— Wishes He Had Listened to His Validators for Language Students—for students wondering if language learning is worth it Episode [...]

Read More

November 2017

Steve Leveen’s Response in the WSJ

2024-05-01T17:23:46-04:00By |Articles|

  Ed. Note: A July 16, 2017 op-ed in the Wall Street Journal maintained that “fluency in coding is a more useful skill than French, Spanish or Russian.” Steve disagrees! Here is his letter to the editor that was published in the July 25th print edition of the Journal. The world is not headed toward one language. The fact that we see signs in English around the world doesn’t mean the Japanese or Chinese or Egyptians are abandoning their native languages. Rather, they are learning English and becoming bilingual. The U.S., on [...]

Read More

How We Made It: From AIRdaily to airwaves

2019-09-06T14:17:37-04:00By |Articles|

Ed. Note: The AIRdaily, an online forum for podcasters, recently ran this story on Steve and Fernando.  Florida-based AIR producer and retired CEO-turned-podcaster Steve Leveen brought his pitch to the AIRdaily in early January 2017 with hopes of finding a producer to help bring sound to his idea. Independent audio-maker Fernando Hernández answered that call from the other side of the country, and the podcast America the Bilingual began its journey to becoming sound waves. Four months later, their first episode was published. Now six months into the collaboration, Leveen and Hernández share their experience in a Q&A [...]

Read More

August 2017

Let’s Talk with One Another

2019-09-06T14:17:42-04:00By |Articles|

In my continuing quest to learn Spanish, I’ve developed a technique I use when we go out to eat. If I suspect that our server may speak Spanish, I’ll ask “¿Habla español?” If he or she says “Sí,” I say, “Estoy aprendiendo. ¿Me puede ayudar?” (“I’m learning. Would you help me?”) Invariably, the answer is “¡Claro! (Of course!)” and then we not only have a conversation in Spanish, but we all have more fun, too. Life is sweeter when you can live it in a second language. But these conversations are short. It’s harder to arrange longer [...]

Read More
Go to Top