Bilingual teaching improves Spanish

Study followed 244 students from four bilingual schools in Andalucía

ANDALUCÍA -- The headline is not a mistake. System Magazine, the International Journal of Educational Technology and Applied Linguistics, recently published an article in which it reported that it had followed written and spoken work by 244 13- to 17-year-old students for three years. The report concluded that being taught in English not only doesn't harm their usage of Spanish but does improve the development of their academic expressiveness. The study followed the development of the students' linguistic structure in one language (complex syntaxes and textual cohesion mechanisms) through three academic years, using the textual analysis system called Synlex. The data collected reflect the harmonious development of cognitive academic language proficiency (CALP) that appear in English texts. which are then put to use in Spanish. These conclusions contradict the extended opinion that developing profficiency in language hurts the development of others.

Updated official Spanish dictionary now accepts tuit, hacker, chat, SMS, 'bloguero', 'USB' and more

MADRID -- Not everyone is ecstatic at the invasion of new words, particularly from the English, worming their way into Spain's official dictionary. But that always happens at the Real Academia Española de la Lengua, defender to the death of the Spanish language ('to the death' because you're honoured with membership until you die). It's taken thirteen years for the new version to appear with almost 5,000 new entries and over 22,000 modifications to existing ones. This, the 23rd edition, appeared in its paper version on Thursday, October 16, and was presented to King Felipe VI on the following day.//The Academy's greatest challenge was to get up to date with the language of computers, IT and the Internet -- most of which are originally English, of course. This after all, is the only Spanish-speaking country that uses the word ordenador instead of computadora for 'computer'. Computadora was first used for 'calculator'. But then, there are very many Spanish words used almost exclusively in Latin America (some 19,000). Here are some of the new words accepted by the RAE (with a daring bit of translation or interpretation):