Challenging the English-only orthodoxy :linguistic pluralism recognition and diversity rather than assimilation

It will be argued here that in the Unonia International School many students' language\ud repertoires are central to their lives in ways that differ from those in national schools,\ud and that these students can benefit from an enrichment of their language repertoires.\ud I trace the issues involved which have led to a situation where there is a preponderance\ud of monolingual input to the programmes and curriculum provided in such schools, and a\ud failure to acknowledge bilingualism as an autonomous discipline, a case argued in the\ud text. An assimilationist pedagogical ideology towards English at the UIS is considered\ud inappropriate for international school students, who are seen as living in an\ud `international space' where English-as-an-International-Language is but one part of\ud their language repertoires, their mother-tongue(s) maintaining a prominent position in\ud their identities as regards sociocultural, cognitive and academic formation.\ud This study is a natural development of my Institution Focused Study, which investigated\ud students' views of their languages. The data collected for the present study consists of\ud discussions with parents, teachers and administrators at the Unonia International School,\ud and is analysed to ask how these constituent groups perceive, understand and value the\ud effectiveness of the mother-tongue programme at the school. Sociological developments\ud in the world at large, namely 'the new capitalism,' will also be introduced as possible\ud explanations for ways in which more satisfactory outcomes for students are not\ud achieved.\ud The impact and influence of the curriculum model of the International Baccalaureate on\ud the language choices of students, of the body responsible for accreditation, the Councilof-\ud International-Schools, and of the body which supports subject committees, the\ud European-Council-of-International-Schools will be investigated and recommendations\ud suggested which may be more positive for developing satisfactory trajectories for\ud international students.\ud The aim of this study is thus to investigate the views of the UIS community involved\ud with the mother-tongue programme

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead