Students on strike in Santander, 9 May 2013

Education strike Santander, May 9

On May 9 there was a nationwide education strike (huelga) in Spain, including Santander and the University of Cantabria.   

The first time we heard about the huelga was when Corin was given this flyer (right) at university, informing students about the strike on 9-M (9th May), encouraging them to wake up, choose, get up and fight! and inviting them to assemble on 30 April for a pre-srike information session and demonstration at the university.  
Calls for student participation were broadcast via twitter and facebook (see student union twitter page from May 9 below).  Meanwhile, the student council of UC sent students an e-mail one week prior to May 9 urging them  to participate in 'huelga a la japonesa';  (Japanese strike).  Apparently it's an urban legend in Spain that the Japanese 'strike' by working harder than normal:  disruption by over-production.  Thus, this e-mail encourages students not to cut classes but, instead, focus even harder on their education that day, and attend special events designed to promote a quality education through debate, symposium, and reflection.  'The strike is not a reason not to go to class', says the e-mail.

UC student union twitter page, 9-M

During the week before and after the huelga, I asked various 'players' (i.e. parents, teachers, and students at various levels of education) to share their thoughts. Below I've summarized my findings:  

Disclaimer:  I don't know that these examples are representative; they are just the voices of the people I know here.

University exchange student (Corin)  He was concerned with whether or not he needed to go to class.  Professors assured students that classes would not be cancelled; however, on the day it turned out that most of them were. In the lead-up to the big day, he was handed strike-related flyers, received strike-related e-mails, and heard a lot of noise as students were preparing their rallying calls in the hallways.  

Spanish university student (Carmen)  She didn't have much to say about the strike; she doesn't really know what they are trying to accomplish.  She explained that it doesn't affect her because her professors are giving classes as normal.  However, she acknowledges that many students won't be in class because they will be participating in the strike.  She will not be participating.

Parent of Spanish university student (Margarita):  She doesn't agree with the strike. She pays approximately 2K euros (2600 dollars) per year for her son's tuition, and she acknowledges that this doesn't come close to covering the cost.  The state pays the rest, and she says 'as a taxpayer I know that we can't afford it.  Our country is in ecnomomic crisis'.  She suggests there needs to be a new model for financing university education.  In her opinion, the students are being manipulated by 'the left' for purposes of 'political grandstanding', and the professors shouldn't condone it by canceling class that day.  

strike in the rain!

High school students (Oscar and Paula)  As we might guess, they see it as a free day, a welcomed day off school.  Something like a 'hurricane day' in Florida!

Parent of high school students (Anita):  She feels that the Spanish education system is broken; she doesn't see how they can make any more cuts.  Education and health care are two things all governments must provide, she says, and cuts need to be made in other areas, not those two.  

Primary school teacher (Leila):  She is not going to participate in the strike, but she believes each teacher has to make his/her own decision based on conscience. Although, she points out, the children will arrive at school that day like every other day, and someone has to be there, if not to teach them then at least to take care of them.   

Primary school teacher (Pablo):  He is concerned that the new government is trying to privatize public services (education and health care) by taking funding away from public schools and hospitals and channelling it towards private alternatives. The public schools, whose mission is to provide a 'quality education for all', are therefore having to do more with less, while taxpayer funds are being diverted to private schools and used for capital improvements.  This is one of the reasons for the strike -- it's not only about cuts, but also re-distribution of funds.  

Parent of primary school children (Ignacio):  He thinks for a while, and then says 'I try to look at the situation logically.' He goes on to explain that in his opinion, health care and education should be provided by the government because they are essential for a stable society.  The problem now, in the economic crisis, is that there isn't enough money to pay for both of them without making drastic cuts.  If the option is either to make cuts or to stop providing health care and/or education, then he accepts that making cuts is the lesser of two evils.  However, he points out that the politicians are still finding money for their 'pet projects' and he blames the current economic situation on politicians, stating 'we need a completely new government.'

University Professor (Jimena):  She summarized the two reasons for the strike as follows:  

(1)  University funding:  The new government has cut funding for universities so that research is being stopped, tenured teachers are going back into the classroom, and non-tenured teachers are being laid off.  Although this is happening in Madrid and many other Spanish universities, it has not yet happened at the University of Cantabria. This, she says, is because of the UC president who is 'fighting for us'.  

In addition, the proposed changes include cutting student grants and scholarships while raising tuition.  Jimena explains that the way the system has always worked in Spain, the students pay for their university studies through a combination of grants, scholarships, other state funding, and a small parent contribution.  But now, with tuition going up and grants being reduced, it is becoming impossible for people with average incomes to afford university.  What about loans? I asked.  That's not something people do here, she explained.  But, she said 'people are starting to notice the new British system' (government loans) and 'wonder whether something like that will end up happening here'.  (Note:  The government loan system in UK should not be confused with student loans in the US.  In the UK, students do not start paying back their loans until their earnings reach a certain level; then payments are deducted automatically from salaries through the tax system.  It's a fixed percentage of income above the threshold, and typically it's thought of as an 'extra tax we have to pay because we went to university.'  If someone never earns above the pay-back threshold, they never have to pay it back, and they are not considered to 'owe' that money to anyone. They are just 'not subject to the tax.') 

(2)  School curriculum and funding:  The second reason for the strike, said Jimena, is the proposed changes to the public school system.  These include:  

(a)  More hours per week devoted to religion (studying the bible) which will be considered an academic subject for which students get a grade.

(b)  Music and art, which students are currently required to study for four years, will be cut to one year, and made optional.  

(d)  More funding is to be given to 'semi-private' schools.  She explained that there are three types of school in Spain:  Public (free), private (with fees that can be anywhere up to 6K euros a year), and something 'in the middle.'  In this middle category, parents pay about 50 euros a month and the schools also receive state funding.  There is typically a long waiting list for these schools.  The proposed change adds funding to the middle category and takes it away from the public category.

Santander, May 9, 2013

Education international, in a May 8 article, describes the reasons for the strike as follows:

Spain’s education community will use the strike to express its unanimous rejection of the reform plans imposed by the Education Ministry, under the leadership of José Ignacio Wert.  These reforms are an attack on several fronts - on primary and secondary education, on university education and on the education powers of local governments.    

Ideological reform

Wert’s Organic Law for Improving Education Quality (LOMCE) makes far-reaching changes to the current Organic Education Action (LOE, 2006) which has been in force for barely six years.  So far, no group of pupils has been educated throughout their entire school attendance under the terms of this law, and there has been no evaluation of its efficacy.

The unions believe the reforms promote an elitist, retrograde educational model. Pupils are segregated at an early age into educational streams of differing levels, while access to higher education is restricted due to a sharp rise in university fees.

There is also an obsessive attention to external evaluations, without teacher participation. The curriculum is also restricted, downgrading holistic approaches to teaching that are fundamental to the development of the individual. At the same time, the educational powers of local governments are being cut, hugely hampering the possibility of developing education policy at a regional level.

In short, unions warn that the reforms are opening the pathway to the covert privatisation of public education.

Drastic cuts

Since 2010, Spain has lost almost one-third of its education resources, with budget cuts of over €6.3 billion euros.  Thousands of jobs have been lost at every level and stage of education, while the working conditions of education professionals have deteriorated.

Grants and assistance to those most in need have been drastically reduced;  many forms of support and compensation for pupils with learning difficulties have been eliminated; and there has been an exorbitant rise in fees for certain levels of education, such as early childhood education, vocational training, and university education. 

So, on the morning of May 9, I went to the university. The hallways were quieter than normal, but there were students working in the library, professors working in their offices, a few people in the cafeteria, and the occasional burst of noise as students practiced their rallying calls and chants for the demonstration that afternoon.    

Despite the e-mail from the student council urging students that 'the strike is not a reason not to go to class', and despite Corin's professors having said they would be having class as normal, all his classes that morning were cancelled.  His afternoon class, however, was held as normal, albeit with fewer students.  

While high school students stayed at home, many elementary school children showed up to school that morning as normal because working parents don't always have other options. The teachers who did not participate in the strike took care of the children. However, they explained, 'it was a day for babysitting, not lessons.'

As you can see in the pictures, bad weather (it rained non-stop during the entire day of 9 May!) did not prevent students, teachers, and parents from 'taking it to the streets' in Santander.

Below are more pictures from the strike.  Note:  Most of the pictures on this blog post came from the website eldiariomontanes.es, in the Cantabria section.  If you'd like to see more photos of the strike, you can click on this link.

A Strange Form of Speaking; (notes on language storage, retrieval, and processing)

I'm reading a novel called ‘The Seamstress’ by Maria Dueñas (original Spanish title 'El Tiempo entre Costuras').  It's a story about love, war, and espionage set in Spain and Morocco during the Spanish civil war and second world war.  One of the characters, a young British woman named Rosalinda Fox, is described as having ‘a strange form of speaking in which words from different languages leapt about chaotically in an extravagant and sometimes incomprehensible torrent’  (page 193).  I felt an immediate bond with Rosalinda because this is a perfect description of what happens to me when I 'mix up' foreign languages.  

Background:

Building the Tower of Babel,
Bedford Master, c.1410-1430

I first experienced this phenomenon more than 30 years ago, around 1979 or 80.  Living in Bavaria, I’d become pretty fluent in German.  However, I still considered my strongest foreign language to be French, at which I had excelled in school.  At the hotel where I worked, nobody else spoke English, so I was often called upon  to translate when there were English or American guests.  I never mixed German and English in the same sentence; I could switch between them with ease.  However, one day, a call went out in the hotel, ‘can anyone speak French?’  Of course I said I could, and hurried down to the reception desk to perform my usual interpreting service.  But then it all went wrong. Although I was able to understand everything the French couple were saying, when I tried to reply, I found to my embarrassment that the words coming out of my mouth were not French, but German!  Sentences began in French but changed, somewhere in the middle, to German. My brain was telling me to say one thing, but something completely different was coming out of my mouth.  What was going on? My colleagues were looking at me as if I must be crazy; why was I speaking German when I had claimed to be able to speak French?  In the end the only way to stop it was to stop talking; I had to write out each sentence in French and then read it.  Apparently, although I could still understand French, I could no longer produce it; at least, not spontaneously.  

Because of this, I developed a theory that foreign languages must be stored in the same part of the brain (a different place from our mother tongue) and that they are layered one on top of another, with the most recently used on top.  When the brain goes into 'foreign language mode', the neural channels that send messages from brain to mouth pass through that area, and whatever language is on the top is the one that's going to come out.  

Language confusion:

So back to 2013:  After spending January and February in Spain, my Spanish, albeit limited, felt comfortable and easily accessible.  

view of Alps on flight from Bilbao, Spain, to 
Munich, Germany, March 2013

Then I went to Germany for a week.  Even though I know much more German than Spanish, it was harder to access.  German sentences kept switching to Spanish halfway through.  I was producing horrendous hybrid constructions like this one (when apologizing for not filling out the ski rental form properly):  Lo siento, ich habe mein gafas nicht mitgebracht.  I’m sorry, I didn’t bring my glasses with me.  (Spanish words in italics):

My language mixing theory, updated for the computer age, now goes as follows:  If we think of the brain as a computer, and languages as computer programs, then the program(s) for the language(s) we use every day are always running.  They reside in RAM and there is no need to reload them every time we need them. However, languages that we don’t use are stored in long term memory, somewhere on the hard drive, and before we can use them, we have to retrieve them and load them into RAM.  It wasn't that I didn't know the German words for ‘I’m sorry’ and ‘glasses.’  It was that I was trying to load a foreign language program into a place where another one was already running.

So how long does the loading process take?  I guess it’s different for everyone, just as a computer program will load faster in a computer with more power.  Age probably counts, as well as how much you've used the 'foreign language' part of your brain. Does it load in any particular order? Interestingly, what happened in my case was that the overall structure of the language loaded first, followed by specific words. As the hybrid sentence above illustrates, I experienced no overlap of grammatical structures, such as word order, between the two languages.  It was only individual words that would 'jump' language boundaries.  This suggests that the 'big picture' (the grammar) loads first, and that the 'details' (the words) come in more gradually, erratically, sometimes requiring great concentration, and sometimes falling easily into place.  In an earlier blog post, Garmisch then and now, I described an occasion on the ski slopes when I saw a sign (for a ski run I used to go down), the sign triggered memories, and the memories activated language.  I could almost feel brain neurons rearranging themselves as complete German sentences appeared in my head, like a blurry picture suddenly coming into focus. 

There's an explanation for this in the literature.  Michael Swan, in his article The influence of the mother tongue on second language vocabulary acquisition and use notes that we remember ‘fixed and semi-fixed expressions which are conventionally associated with recurrent situations and meanings.’ Therefore, specific places and situations trigger the memory of the language that goes along with those places and situations. Even, apparently, after more than 30 years.  

That night, in the hotel bar, 'it' happened again when I asked for ‘ein apfelstrudel, ein Glühwein, und ein wasser tambien’.  (It's the words you don't think about, I told myself).  

In the article mentioned above, Swan examines this phenomenon, which he calls  ‘unintentional code-switching', and how it often affects the words you don't think about, the ones linguists call 'function' words.

'Certain kinds of word may be more closely associated crosslinguistically than others in bilingual storage or processing.  In some second language learners, for instance, function words such as conjunctions are particularly liable to importation from the mother tongue and other languages.'  

Swan gives examples of Finnish students learning English (their third language) who mistakenly used Swedish (their second language) for words like ‘and’, ‘but’, and ‘though.’  Like me, the students knew the correct words, but, as Swan points out, 'knowledge and control are not the same thing.'  

where did that French word come from?

On day 3, just as Spanish and German were sorting themselves out, there was a further layer of complication, due to the word mal. It's a word in German (meaning time) and Spanish (meaning wrong).  When I used the word (correctly) in a German sentence, I immediately recognized it as ‘a Spanish word’, jumped to the conclusion that I’d made another mistake, and kept frantically trying to come up with the correct word  (which, of course, I’d already used).  In the midst of this confusion, what should pop up to join in the fun but fois, the French word for time.  Where on earth did that come from?  It was as if a new program, the 'emergency foreign language override program’ had gone into action, searching the depths of the language storage area for more options.  

A few days later I was back in Spain, and as expected, the German program lingered a couple of days in RAM before going back into long-term storage.  My second day back, Corin started laughing at me in the supermarket; I had just asked the cashier for ein bolsa, bitte.  One bag, please. (German in italics). For the first couple of days back, I had to stop and think about every single Spanish word, resulting in a strange, staccato form of speaking.  

And so I was left to reflect on the mysteries of how we store, retrieve, and process languages.  As a student and teacher of languages and language teaching, I wanted to know the science --  the cutting edge research from the field of neurolinguistics!  But I didn't want to slog through pages of intimidating academic articles.  I wanted to read something that gave funny examples and explained the key points in layman's terms.  In the end, when I couldn't find an article like that,  I decided to write one myself.  

Anecdotal research:

First, I wanted to find other people who had experienced this type of erroneous language processing, and where better to look for corroborating evidence than the blogosphere?  It turns out that there are plenty of examples.  Below I've shared some of the best stories from my fellow bloggers, with links to their respective blogs.  

Life in Ljubljana:  Kristina Reardon, in her blog post Third language learning, relates her experience mixing up Spanish and Slovenian.  She tells funny stories about 'my brain’s inability to keep my Spanish and Slovenian separated in my head.’  She relates putting Spanish words into Slovenian sentences even though she knew perfectly well the correct Slovenian word in each case.  She describes how, when switching back to Spanish after learning Slovenian, there seemed to be 'a weight on my brain' and how she felt that Spanish was 'buried somewhere in my brain.'   

Phrasemix:   Then there’s Aaron, the guy who switches from French to Japanese in mid-sentence.  In his post Mixing up two foreign languages he describes his theory about why this happens:  ‘It’s odd that I would think of the Japanese word instead of the English, but I think that’s a product of how I mentally file my languages.  There’s a separate file for foreign languages that I search in, and when I can’t find what I’m looking for in the French pile, I pick up the closest thing I can find, which ends up being Japanese’.  

Taken by the Wind:  My next example is travel writer Reannon, who writes a hilarious account of mixing up Spanish and German called Do you ever mix up your second and third languages?  She writes:  'My German hung awkwardly between me and the confused Mexican woman as I tried to think of a way to explain why a Germanic language had suddenly taken my Spanish language skills hostage'. She also describes having to resort to 'staccato' Spanish.

Kalinago English:  My final example is Karenne Joy Sylvester, who describes her experience (also with Spanish and German) in Brains = filing cabinets or QuadPro hard drives?   It's a short post, but the comments section has many more examples of others' experiences.  

Academic research:

Next I looked for some 'proper' academic articles about what happens in the brain when we process language.  My first question was where/how languages are stored, and my second was why/how they get mixed up.  

A.  Where are languages stored in the brain?  

I started with an article in the science section of the New York Times called When an adult adds a language it’s one brain, two systems.  Sandra Blakeslee describes a study in which MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) was used to discover where in the brain languages were stored.  The subjects were all bilingual; however, half of them had acquired two languages at the same time in childhood, while the other half had learned their second language between the ages of 11 and 19.  The question at hand was whether there were differences between the two groups regarding where they stored the different languages.  Below is an excerpt, or you can click the link above to read the full article. 

Aspects of language ability are distributed all over the brain, Dr. Hirsch said. But there are some high-level, executive regions that are usually localized in a certain neighborhood on the left side of the brain, but are sometimes found in the same neighborhood on the right side, or on both sides. One is Wernicke's area, a region devoted to understanding the meaning of words and the subject matter of spoken language, or semantics. Another is Broca's area, a region dedicated to the execution of speech as well as some deep grammatical aspects of language. The regions are identified by observing brain function.

None of the 12 bilinguals had two separate Wernicke's areas, Dr. Hirsch said. In an English and Spanish speaker, for instance, Spanish semantics blended with English semantics in the same area. But there were dramatic differences in Broca's areas, Dr. Hirsch said. 

In people who had learned both languages in infancy, there was only one uniform Broca's region for both languages, a dot of tissue containing about 30,000 neurons. Among those who had learned a second language in adolescence, however, Broca's area seemed to be divided into two distinct areas. Only one area was activated for each language. These two areas lay close to each other but were always separate, Dr. Hirsch said, and the second language area was always about the same size as the first language area.

This implies that the brain uses different strategies for learning languages, depending on age, Dr. Hirsch said. A baby learns to talk using all faculties -- hearing, vision, touch and movement -- which may feed into hardwired circuits like Broca's area. Once cells in this region become tuned to one or more languages, they become fixed. If two languages are acquired at this time, they become intermingled.

But people who learn a second language in high school have to acquire new skills for generating the complex speech sounds of the new tongue, which may explain why a second language is harder to learn. Broca's area is already dedicated to the native tongue and so an ancillary Broca's region is created. But Wernicke's area, which handles the simpler semantic aspects of language, can overlap.

This is far from being the whole story, of course.  Jennifer Wagner, Ph.D. student in Languages and Linguistics at the University of South Australia, points to newer research such as this 2010 report suggesting 'nouns and verbs are stored in different parts of the brain, similar to how our mental lexicon is further divided into phonological, semantic and grammatical areas (for example, function words are only stored in Broca's area.)'

Noam Cbomsky

Other studies have shown that there's more going on in Broca's than just speech processing and function word storage.  Two studies using MRI, Tettamanti et. al, 2002, and Musso et. al, 2003, found that Broca's area activated when learning new grammatical rules.  More interestingly, it did not activate when subjects tried to apply non-grammatical (i.e. false) rules they had been taught (for example, 'negatives are formed by putting no before the fourth word in a sentence'.)  This suggests that Broca's somehow knows the difference between possible and impossible grammar rules; it knows how grammar works on a fundamental level.  Maybe Chomsky's 'universal grammar' is in Broca's?  (More here on Chomsky's theory of universal grammar).  

For more fascinating facts about Wernicke's, Broca's, and other areas of the brain that are used in language acquisition, understanding, and production, check out Language in the Brain.

So far, then, the science seems to back up the anecdotal findings.  Broca's area, where speech is processed, creates a separate space for languages learned after the age of first language acquisition.  The 'language mixing' phenomenon seems to occur only when speaking, suggesting that it is processing and production, rather than knowledge, that is affected. Furthermore, Broca's area is where function words are stored, and it's the function words -- the ones you don't think about -- that are most affected.

B.  Why do we mix our foreign languages?

Now back to the original question:  The next two articles examine theories about why this phenomenon occurs.

(1)  In Second language transfer during third language acquisition, Shirin Murphy describes L2 (second language) interference in L3 (third language) 'often without conscious awareness’, and how 'short L2 function words appear unintentionally in an L3 utterance.'

Murphy points out that interference from L1 (first language) is rare, suggesting that the brain recognizes whether we are using our 'base' (native) language or what Murphy calls a 'guest' language.  When in 'guest language' mode, we may experience  'failure to inhibit a previously learned second language adequately,' resulting in two of the 'guest' languages getting mixed up.  Level of activation is another factor.  At any given time, according to Murphy, different languages are at various stages of activation depending on proficiency and recent usage. A highly activated L2 (one that’s been recently used) is more likely to show up uninvited in L3 sentences.

(2)  The last article I read was Faulty language selection in polyglots (no link; not available electronically).  Benny Shannon first explains how what he calls ‘faulty interlingual selection’ is different from 'code-switching', as follows:

‘Whereas code-switching may be likened to the (planned or spontaneous) joint employment of two (or even more) instruments (e.g. musical instruments) that are at one’s disposal, faulty interlingual selection may be likened to the faulty, unintended employment of one instrument instead of another.’  

Whereas Murphy described languages as being 'base' (native) or 'guest' (foreign), Shannon, divides language status into three categories:  dominant (native), foreign (fluent but not native), and weak (in the process of being acquired).  He presents the hypothesis of 'the last language effect,' where the ‘intruding language’ is more likely to be the last language acquired and/or used.  Shannon suggests that this happens because the weak languages are stored in a ‘push button stack’ in our brains.  

‘Of special significance in this stack is the terminal position, that occupied by the last language the speaker studied or acquired (typically, this language is also the polyglot’s weakest language).  This terminal position is constituted by slots assigned to lexical items which have not yet been assimilated into one’s general conceptual database.  Whenever a new language is acquired, new values are assigned to these slots.  As long as the language has not been mastered, or as long as another language has not been acquired, the lexical items of this language occupy the slots in question.’  

If this is the case, and if there is more than one weak language (i.e. two or more languages still in the process of being acquired) then there are two or more competing lexical items in each slot.  Attempting spontaneous production of language (i.e. speaking) in this situation must be like a computer struggling to run too many programs at the same time and making that dreadful grinding noise -- or worse, locking up....

Conclusion:

Tower of Babel; Pieter Bruegel the elder, c. 1563

I've described my experiences and theories, as well as those of others.  I've read some articles from the field of linguistics.  I have a much better understanding now of the phenomenon of language mixing; what I still don't have, however, is a good name for it. The linguists call it 'crosslinguistic transference', 'inadvertent code-switching, or 'faulty language selection.'  The language teachers called it 'interference' or 'transfer.' The bloggers call it 'mixing up languages.'  I prefer the quote I used at the beginning:  'A strange form of speaking where words from different languages leapt about chaotically in an extravagant and sometimes incomprehensible torrent.'  Vivid and eloquent, but not very academic sounding, and too long!  If you can think of a good name, please post it in the comments section below. 

To conclude, then, the science seems to support what those of us who experience language mixing feel instinctively: that our foreign languages are indeed stored in a separate area of the brain from our native language.  Although there's nothing in the science to suggest they are stored on top of each other, that's still how I imagine it (note my feeling 30 years ago that German had 'layered' itself on top of French; note Kristina's feeling that Spanish was 'buried' in her brain, and note Shannon's hypothesis of a 'push button' system in which words from different languages compete for the same slot).  How well we keep these languages differentiated depends on many factors including proficiency (how well we know the languages) and activation (how recently we've used them).  

Which brings me to those people who are able to switch between several languages simultaneously and easily.  How do they do it?  It's probably a combination of brain structure and constant practice. An integrated Broca's region means they are not running all their different languages as separate programs. Without that anatomical advantage, the next best option is to keep all languages activated by speaking (not just reading and writing) in them regularly.  

As it happens, even computers and their complex advertising algorithms are not immune to language confusion.  It's been two months since I came back to Spain from Germany, but Facebook is still sending me ads for 'Spanisch, ganz einfach!' 

Bibliography: 

The Seamstress, Maria Dueñas, Penguin, London, (2009)

Swan, Michael: The influence of the mother tongue on second language vocabulary acquisition and use; ELT applied linguistics (2008)  

Life in Ljubljana, Third language learning

Kalinago English, Brains = filing cabinets or QuadPro hard drives?   

Phrasemix.com: Mixing up two foreign languages 

Taken by the wind:  Do you ever mix up your second and third languages?

Blakeslee, Sandra: When an adult adds a language, it's one brain, two systems, New York Times (1997)

Ekiert, Monica:  The bilingual brain, Working papers in TESOL and applied linguistics, Teacher's College, Columbia University; Volume 3, No 2, (2003)

Nouns and verbs are learned in different parts of the brain; Science Daily, (2010)

Tettamanti, M., Alkadhi, H., Moro, A., Perani, D., Kollias, S., and Weniger, D. (2002); Neural Correlates for the Acquisition of Natural Language Syndicates, NeuroImage 17, 700-709

Musso, M., Moro, A., Glauche, V., Rijntjes, M., Reichenbach, J., Büchel, C., and Weiller, C., (2003); Broca's Area and the Language Instinct, Nature Neuroscience 6, 774-781

Examining Chomsky's inborn universal grammar theory, Boundless.com

Language in the brain, Boundless.com 

Murphy, Shirin; Second language transfer during third language acquisition, Working papers in TESOL and applied linguistics, Teacher's College, Columbia University; Volume 3, No 1, (2003)

Shannon, Benny; Faulty language selection in polyglots, Language and Cognitive Processes, Volume 6, Issue 4, (1991)

University of Cantabria: The exchange experience

It's midterm exam time at the University of Cantabria; a good time to look at the exchange experience and report on Corin's findings so far.

This blog post will focus on assessment, university life, and advice for future exchange students.  A separate post discusses text books.   (Plus I've thrown in a couple of pictures for good measure).  

Right:  The port, Santander.



Assessment:

One of the first things Corin noticed is that grading in Spain is different.  This includes the grading scale, the grading calculations, and the final exam schedule.

Grading scale:  The percentage or letter grade system is not used in Spain.  The chart below shows how the grading scale is different between the USA, England (where I went to university), and Spain.  

Country	Number scale	Letter scale	Excellent	Good	Pass	Fail
USA	Up to 100	A-F	A:  90-100	B:  80-89	C: 70-79	D/F: <70
England	Up to 100	None	70-100	60-69	50-59	< 50
Spain	Up to 10	None	7-10	6	5	< 5

Final grade calculation:  In Spain, the most important grade is the final exam.  Although in most classes there are other tests, the grades are not counted if the final exam grade is higher.  If a student fails the final exam, he/she can re-take it (the exam, not the class) the following semester.  The chart below shows how the grade is calculated for Corin's four classes:

Class	Grade calculation
Physics	10% lab, 40% tests, 50% final.  The final exam grade over-rides any lower test grade.
Partial differential equations	45% midterm, 55% final.  If you fail the midterm, the final counts for 100%.
Statistics	40% midterm, 40% final, 10% participation, 10% homework.   Final exam grade over-rides lower midterm grade.
Spanish for engineers	This class is pass/fail or students can choose to take the final exam and get a grade.

I think I like this system.  It could represent the best of both worlds.  In my field, language teaching, it makes sense to assess students based on their proficiency at the end of the semester rather than using the 'averaging' system.  What does it matter if they struggled in the beginning as long as they have arrived where they need to be by the end?  Of course, I also appreciate the argument for continuous asssessment: that basing a semester grade on one exam is stressful for students and having 'a bad day' can unfairly penalize an otherwise strong student.  That's why I like the Spanish system, where the final exam grade is the class grade if it's as good as, or better than, the cumulative grade.  Otherwise, the cumulative grade counts.

Left:  A windy day in the Bay of Santander. 

Revision and final exam schedule:  The spring semester classes at UC end on May 31 and then the exams start on June 3 and continue until June 22.  This is a much longer exam period than in the USA or England.  In England there is a 'revision week'  following the end of classes for students to study for the exams, then the following week is 'exam week.'  In Spain, the exam period lasts three weeks, with revision time included.

Below is a chart showing the difference in the scheduling of revision time and and final exams in the USA, England, and Spain.

Country	Revision period	Exam period
USA	None:  Final exam week follows final week of classes	One week
England	1 week between final week of classes and final exam week	1-2 weeks
Spain	Included in exam period	Three weeks

There is one more difference related to assessment; it's the way professors give students their test grades.  There is no expectation of, nor option for, privacy.  The results are announced in class and posted on the door, together with the students' names.  Nobody minds, that's just how it's done here.

University Life:

Studying:  There are no group study rooms in the library; it is a place for independent, silent study, and this is enforced.  Instead, students go to one of the many cafés on campus when they want to work together.  Some Americans aren't going to like this, but, just like everywhere else in Spain, there is alcohol available in the campus cafés.  The legal drinking age in Spain is between 16 and 18, depending on the region.  All types of alcohol are available, but most students drink beer, coke, or water.  It's cheap; for 2 euros (less than 3 dollars) you can buy a beer and a snack. The cafés are part of the university; not run by a for-profit company.

Student ID:  The university has an agreement with Banco Santander to provide students with a student ID that is also a debit card.  With this high-tech, multipurpose card they can  access university computers and print documents (there's a chip terminal on the computer keyboards so they don't need to enter a username and password, just a four-digit PIN).  They use the same card to make purchases in and out of the university, and as a bus pass for the city of Santander urban transportation system.  One card, many uses!  The picture shows the #4 bus, which goes from the barrio pesquero (where we live) to the university.  

Some advice for future students:

No matter how well you have prepared, you will need to be able to tolerate a level of uncertainty when you first arrive.  Pre-departure orientations tend to focus on 'being a good tourist', warning you about pickpockets, educating you about cultural differences.  That's fine as far as it goes, but what you really need to know when you get here is how to register for classes before they are full, where the classes are, what buildings to go to, and how to communicate with the school about schedule changes. Don't expect everything to run smoothly, there will be mixups, schedule conflicts, and schedule changes.  These are things you cannot foresee or prevent, and there are things you cannot fix until you arrive because you need information that you can only get once you are here.  So just be patient and stay in touch with your advisor at your home university.  Classes here start in February, so schedule changes happen too late to meet the home university add/drop deadline.  This means that your home advisor will need to do some over-rides for you.  Also, because classes here finish in June, your home university will not be able to report that you have successfully completed your classes by the end of the spring semester in the USA.  This will throw a spanner into the works of financial aid and scholarships, and, again, will require over-rides.  Knowing that these things will happen, and that there is a system in place to correct them, is important for your peace of mind.