Learning English is something that you really have to do if you want to make it big in today's world. Between the type of English common in the United States and the type of English common in the United Kingdom, most of the world's population is represented in terms of people that know how to speak English. All of the major business is transacted in that language and everyone that happens to be rich, successful or otherwise powerful in the world today learned English at some point in their life.
Now that it has been established that learning English is essential, it is time to think about the different times in a person's life that learning English can be ideal. While there is no one particular ideal age at which to learn English, there are times when it can be better to do so and those times are discussed at length below.
From Birth
The absolutely most ideal age at which learning English can happen is at birth. When a baby speaks their first words, if those words are in English, then English will be the first language that they learn. This also makes it the easiest language for them to learn as many babies never end up learning another language after they have learned their initial one. Some people just have a mental block when it comes to learning languages, which is why English as their first language is absolutely the best way to go.
During Primary Schooling
If a child has not learned English as their first language, then the next best time to get them to learn it would be during the time in their life when they are thinking about doing primary schooling. Primary schooling is extremely important and allows children to expand their knowledge and grow on multiple fronts during the second group of formative years in their life (the first being their pre-school years). Because of the rapid rate at which children tend to learn at this age, English language training is definitely a good idea.
During Secondary Schooling
If a child has gone through the initial and primary school years of their life without learning English, then you will want to make sure that you start them on an English language learning course right away. While secondary school students are still learning a lot, the information that High School gives them is largely specialized information. This is quite different from the formative study they undertake in primary school which in turn means that teaching them something as basic as a new way of speaking is a lot harder to do.
During Post-Secondary Schooling
While a large argument is currently raging across academic circles at which time is better to learn English between secondary and post-secondary schooling, most people tend to believe that post-secondary schooling provides an environment that makes learning a new language a lot easier to do. People are exposed to new ideas and concepts that might completely change the way they look at and think about life in post-secondary school and that makes taking on big new challenges like learning English easier to do than it would be in secondary school.
As an Adult
It is possible for an out of school adult to learn English, but it is at the same time a lot harder to do. The thing that makes it easier for adults to learn English sometimes is the fact that adults that are out of school tend to have a far more disciplined approach to things like this and for that reason have the ability to grasp information pertinent to their life at a relatively quick pace.
Conflicting data on the extent of the impact that nationally certified teachers have on student achievement do not paint a complete picture of the benefits of the rigorous certification process on the participants, their schools, and their students, a report by a group of teachers that have earned the credential concludes.
Teachers certified by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, the group says, should take a more active role in policy discussions and instructional decisions, and promote a definition of teacher quality that goes beyond test results.
“If we continue to sit by and let others define effective teaching, we will always be reactors, not actors, on the school reform stage where the policies that control our daily work play out,” says the report
, “Measuring What Matters: The Effects of National Board Certification on Advancing 21st Century Teaching and Learning.” It was commissioned by the national board and the Center for Teaching Quality in Hillsborough, N.C., which led the project.
After studying research on the program that spans more than a decade, the team of 10 teachers found “a great disconnect between what matters most to teaching effectiveness and what was actually being measured by researchers, both in terms of teacher efficacy and student learning.”
The certification program, which requires candidates to undergo a lengthy process of assembling a portfolio of their work and pass content-area tests, has received conflicting reviews on its value.
Last month, for example, a 17-member panel of the National Research Council found that teachers who earn advanced certification from the NBPTS are more effective than teachers without the credential. The panel, however, said there’s little evidence to show the program has transformed the teaching field in the broader ways its founders envisioned.
Moreover, it’s still unclear whether the assessment process itself leads to better-quality teaching, because too few studies have examined that issue. Beyond the classroom, the panel adds, some research suggests that schools are not yet making full use of the expertise of teachers who qualify for the credential, and that the teachers themselves, once they earn it, often move on to schools with more-advantaged student populations. ("Credential of NBPTS Has Impact", June 18, 2008.)
Other studies, however, have not found an advantage, based on test-score gains, for students taught by certified teachers.
Those who have successfully navigated the intensive certification process say the program has transformed their careers and affected their teaching beyond what test results can measure.
“The research uses limited pieces of information, such as a students’ test scores from a year or two,” said Andrew Kuemmel, a teacher in Madison, Wis., who contributed to the study. “If you’re looking at multiple measures of student achievement, I do believe national-board-certified teachers would have a much greater effect” on student learning than noncertified teachers.
Certifying Principals
The Arlington, Va.-based board, which began issuing certificates to teachers in 1995 and has since awarded nearly 64,000 credentials to the nearly 100,000 teachers who have tried for it, is working to create a similar model for recognizing outstanding principals.
The board has approved a plan to establish a certification program for school administrators of similar rigor to the one for teachers. At the request of several school-administrator organizations, the NBPTS conducted a feasibility study and found a potentially strong demand for such a program.
“Without saying the word ‘urgent,’ I think there is a strong need to get this going,” said Nancy M. Davenport, the president of the National Association of Elementary School Principals. “Principals with national certification will be better able to support the teachers in the building.”
The national board is now seeking about $7 million to craft standards for administrators and certification requirements. It hopes to launch the program in about three years, according to the group’s president, Joseph A. Aguerrebere.
“It requires coming to consensus about what principals should know and be able to do ... and how to measure and assess it,” he said. The board is also working on developing standards for teacher leaders, to help certified educators continue their professional growth.
“So often, these teachers are all dressed up and have nowhere to go,” Mr. Aguerrebere said, referring to their advanced preparation and few opportunities to contribute beyond their classrooms. “This would help teachers take the next logical step” and be leaders in their schools and districts.
Education plays a very important role in bringing the standard of the students high up. Good quality education has direct and positive relationship with the out come of the qualified students. It provides a basis for fundamental learning. The education strengthens the foundation of basic intelligence among each individual student.
Information System is a vast subject with a wide scope of specializations with in it. There have been many approaches to the field of decision making, ranging from strictly quantitative as typified by the methods of operations research – to those based on human and organizational behavior. Decision making is an essential part of management. The process by which one arrives at decision is quite complex: in fact no one process can be applied to all the decisions.
Geography influences our everyday lives. Where we live, work, and play defines 'place' for us. GIS is a comprehensive tool that inventories, analyzes, and reports geographic relationships so that communities can provide the best environment for their clients - the residents, businesses, and visitors of the community.
Geographical (Geospatial) Information System is recent addition to our vocabulary. It does a complex analysis of spatial data and non spatial information. The analysis is related to a geographic location. Computer cartography and GIS methodology using digitized maps is now changing the way digital spatial data are used, revised and assessed.
What We Can Do with a Geospatial Information System (GIS)? In addition to making maps and maintaining the database, GIS also makes it possible to ask questions that are typically difficult to ask in absence of a computer? Where are the properties whether the assessed value has increased or Decreased? Is their value consistent with those of similar properties in the neighborhood? What vacant properties are larger than 100,000 square feet, are zoned commercial, and are within a half-mile of the interstate interchange? What school students are eligible for bussing based on their distance from the school? What properties above a certain elevation will be affected by shutting down this water tower for maintenance? Given requirements for response time, which is a function of street distance and driving speed, what is the best location for the new fire station? Is there a spatial pattern (clustered location, time of day, how the crime was conducted) in the recent outbreak of house burglaries? And so on.
It is important to note that only trained manpower can achieve the best results. There are few academic institutes which impart training and offer degree course in Remote Sensing and GIS. In comparison to the available manpower, the professional work available in the market is very much. Thus an imbalance is observed in the supply segment. Here two questions emerge: one, how to increase the quantity of the qualified manpower? and second how to increase the quality of the qualified manpower? These questions take us further to look in to the need of a standard curriculum development.
The only thing I know about Rudy Manikan, and the only reference to him that I can find on the Internet, is that he was the guy (and I'm only guessing he was a guy) who said this:
If you educate a man you educate a person, but if you educate a woman, you educate a family.
At the top of google it said: Did you mean Ruby Manikan?, and after that, only the first two links are about Rudy Manikan. All the rest of them seem to be about Rudy Someone and Someone Manikan both getting involved in the same thing, list, whatever. I found the quote in a quote book, not on the Internet at all.
But if Rudy Manikan is right, and I suspect he may well be, then maybe all the stories like this are not such terrible news after all.
By the way, a little more googling, and it turns out that someone called Lucha Corpi said something very similar also. I don't know which of these two people came first or said it first, or whether the second one got to independently or stole it without realising, or what.