Grade 2 Oral Tetun class

Editor’s note: As the Language on the Move team is busy preparing for the “Bridging Language Barriers” Symposium to be hosted at Macquarie University on March 16, Kerry Taylor-Leech introduces us to a mother-tongue education pilot in East Timor. Mother-tongue-based multilingual education is a key strategy for equitable access to education and Kerry explains how the pilot bridges barriers to learning faced by rural children in the global south.

Registration for the “Bridging Language Barriers” Symposium closes today but if you cannot attend in person, you can still join the conversation with our team of live-tweeters on the day. Our Twitter hashtag will be #LOTM2017. Follow @Lg_on_the_Move

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Hatudu ba malai iha ne’bé ho kámera! (Point to the foreigner with the camera!). Some thirty little faces and fingers swing round in my direction. I am at the back of a classroom observing a Grade 2 Tetun-as-a-second language lesson in a school in Lautém, East Timor. Turning observation on its head, this energetic and charismatic teacher has made use of me in his Total Physical Response (TPR) lesson. The children love it and I too am enjoying myself immensely.

Grade 1 child reading independently

The lesson is taking place in a school participating in a mother-tongue based multilingual education pilot. Known in East Timor as EMBLI (in Tetun: Edukasaun Multilingue Bazia Lian-Inan—Multilingual Education in Mother Tongues), the pilot is overseen by the Timor-Leste National Commission for UNESCO and supported by a network of agencies and organisations known as Repete 13. The lesson observation was part of several visits I was lucky enough to make to the pilot schools in 2016, accompanying EMBLI trainers on their regular monitoring tours. I’ve been visiting East Timor since 2001 for work, consultancy and research. I was making this trip to catch up with the pilot, which I have been following since its inception. I’ve also followed and been involved in the sometimes-heated public debates that preceded it.

Fataluku word recognition

In 2013 the East Timorese Ministry of Education implemented a three-year mother-tongue pilot in three districts with large communities of endogenous language speakers (Galoli in Manatuto District, Fataluku in Lautém District and Baikenu in Oecusse District). Operating from pre-primary to Grade 3 level, the pilot officially ended in 2015 but was extended for a further two years and will include Grade 4 in 2017. Now is a good time to be writing about the pilot because the first results of an Endline Survey have recently been released. Conducted by the well-known assessment specialist Dr Steve Walter, the survey compared children’s performance in EMBLI schools, government schools and Portuguese-immersion schools. Not surprisingly, the results show the benefits of learning in a language a child understands best. EMBLI children showed marked gains compared to the other children, especially in reading. While test results are only part of the picture, they are exciting for EMBLI as they provide quantitative evidence that MTB-MLE is effective. The results are particularly pleasing because the schools are located in remote areas, where children’s performance has traditionally lagged behind that of children in urban schools. One of the most conclusive pieces of evidence from the survey is that EMBLI has produced children who are independent readers by Grade 1 – a remarkable achievement considering the difficult physical conditions in which these children are expected to learn.

Fataluku reading books

EMBLI’s achievements overall in the last three years have been impressive. EMBLI has adopted the Two-Track Method for literacy teaching, advocated and adapted by the Summer Institute of Linguistics. This highly structured approach is used in many MTB-MLE programs around the world. It is based on a combination of meaning (i.e., understanding whole text) and accuracy (i.e., understanding and using word identification strategies).

The method appears to work well in low-resource settings where children come from pre-literate homes and parents cannot easily support their children’s literacy development. Despite the dilapidated conditions and lack of facilities in East Timorese public schools generally, EMBLI teachers make their classrooms welcoming places where children are exposed to attractive, colourful materials in their home language in the form of pictures, big books, activity books and readers that reflect images from their everyday life and cultural realities. Children’s own work also now brightens up the classroom walls.

Teaching aids made from local materials

In low-resource educational settings, teachers have no choice but to be creative. EMBLI teachers supplement professionally produced material with literacy and numeracy resources made from sticks and pebbles, coconut shells, palm leaves, seeds, cardboard, buttons and plastic bottles. For early writing the pre-school children often use slates, a cheap, sturdy, and easily renewable resource.

In addition to these models of sustainability, one of EMBLI’s greatest achievements in my view is its empowerment of teachers. EMBLI trainers report that since their involvement with the pilot, the teachers are happier, more confident and have a sense of agency. In this video teachers and students can be seen at work (note: the video is in the official languages, Tetun and Portuguese). The slogan on the T-shirts reads “I like learning in my mother tongue.”

The pilot teachers work in tandem with teaching assistants. Although this system is not particularly new in East Timor, previously the teaching assistant’s primary role was to keep order and this was often done by means of the stick rather than the carrot.  EMBLI has encouraged collaborative planning and team teaching as well as approaches to classroom management that respect children’s human rights.

Pre-school teacher helping a child with letter formation using a slate

EMBLI trainers make regular site visits and teachers also benefit from being able to attend mostly local workshops and seminars. Travel from the districts to Dili takes at least a full day and even to reach district centres, teachers often have to leave home before dawn and walk very long distances. EMBLI has shown that on-site teacher training is a viable and cost-effective alternative to training conducted in the capital.

EMBLI is also a model of how to build trust and sustain relationships with communities. Parents are supportive of the pilot as they are more able to interact with school and they see their children are learning to read and write. To date the EMBLI pilot has successfully put into practice three essential principles of MTB-MLE: promoting fluency in community and official languages, creating a supportive environment for literacy, and empowering teachers, learners and parents. As countries of the global South struggle to achieve effective universal primary education the EMBLI pilot provides a model of collaboration and sustainable practice. In its three-year life EMBLI has made a significant difference to children’s learning and the prospects for its future look bright. As they say in Tetun and Portuguese, Parabens! (Congratulations!)

Photos taken with permission by Kerry Taylor-Leech

An East Timorese girl speaking Bunak, Tetum, Fataluku and Portuguese (Source: Wikipedia)

A response to Alexandra Grey, “We do aid, not English”

In my experience English is often promoted by aid organisations as part of a package and served up with very little consultation of recipients and not much concern for the local language ecology or the consequences of promoting English. In East Timor, where I have done a lot of research, monolingual English-speaking aid workers often expect their local counterparts to use English and even select them on the basis of their ability to speak it. Native English-speakers have earned a reputation for insensitivity to the constitutional provisions for language and flout them regularly, e.g., by using the fact that English is a working language as a get-out clause, circulating official documents in English and making no real effort to learn the official languages. Ten years after independence, English-speakers still criticise the decision to officialise  Portuguese and Tetum. These two languages are embedded in East Timorese history, culture and national identity and yet the tedious, ethnocentric, Anglophone narrative about how foolish the Timorese were to officialise these languages persists.  In his witty and critical travelogue Beloved Land, Gordon Peake takes aim at well-meaning foreigners who don’t even trouble to learn the local language and would much rather talk to each other than to the people they are trying to help.

My study of the linguistic landscape in downtown Dili (Taylor-Leech, 2012) showed how English is increasingly visible in the commercial, urban landscape, if not yet in the official one. This process contributes to a kind of double diglossia which also reflects the growing social divide that has sprung up in the wake of the aid industry. There are already Portuguese-speaking elites, a hangover from the country’s days as a Portuguese colony but now there are also English-speaking elites with the linguistic capital to make careers in the aid industry, while those who lack the capital to break out of unemployment or low-paid jobs get little opportunity to progress.

I think aid workers need to show sensitivity to local language situations and be aware of how they can promote the hegemony of English to the detriment of local language(s) and culture. I’d go further and say that if aid workers are paid to do development aid work then that indeed is what they should do. If the outcomes of development aid projects are to outlast the lifetime of the (usually short-term) project, it seems to me doubly important that aid workers build lasting relationships and do so by endeavouring to understand the local linguaculture. Capacity-building, like teaching, is not a one-way street and should build on local skills, traditions and knowledge. How is that done effectively in a dominant foreign language? There are lots of irritations that flow from being an elite foreign worker in a poor country but they are minor compared to the humiliations that aid recipients suffer from high-handed “experts” who don’t speak their language.

When I taught English in Mozambique, Mozambicans would frequently ask me how I could help them obtain status symbols like blue jeans or luxury food items. To them people like me seemed impossibly rich, although I was not on a high salary. I would count informal English lessons as a similar sort of status symbol. And be wary that people are not befriending you for those sorts of reasons, which can lead to heartbreak and cynicism. I say get engaged in local culture and local ways of knowing. Let English take a back seat and a low profile, unless you are an English teacher but even or especially then, tread lightly and carefully though the local language ecology.

A shining example of this approach can be seen in the work of one-time Portuguese teacher and now Tetum-Portuguese interpreter and author João Paulo T. Esperança. The photo above was used as illustration in a Portuguese language course in Tetum; lessons were published weekly in the East Timorese newspaper Lia Foun (New Words). João is also the author of the Tetum version of the much loved children’s story Liurai Oan Ki’ik , known in English as The little Prince.
Taylor-Leech, Kerry (2012). Language choice as an index of identity: Linguistic landscape in Dili, Timor-Leste International Journal of Multilingualism, 9 (1), 15-34 DOI: 10.1080/14790718.2011.583654

A broken arm in multicultural Queensland (Source:antilogic.co.za)

I recently broke my arm by ignominiously falling in my own living room and landing on my elbow. The force of the impact on the muscles and tendons in my shoulder broke the bone.

When I presented at the nearest emergency clinic, I entered the extraordinarily diverse world of a large Australian public teaching hospital. It was a busy night. After going through several sets of paperwork I was finally given painkillers and sat down to wait. In a blur of pain and shock only partially dulled by medication, I sat through “Four weddings and a funeral”, some hard-sell cosmetics ads and a Christian fundamentalist promo on the TV before the Canadian duty nurse called my name, took another medical history and sent me to another set of uncomfortable seats to await the hard-pressed Anglo-Aussie intern. She sent me on to an Irish nurse who took X-Rays. I left at 4.00 am with my arm in a sling and an appointment at the fracture clinic.

In a hospital outpatient clinic time passes slowly. My initial idle observations of its coming and goings turned into real interest and some serious people-watching (aka ethnographic observation). Let me describe my interactions with Queensland’s multicultural medical doctors.

Recent census data shows that overseas migration now makes up half of Queensland’s population growth, a trend predicted to continue. Reflecting this pattern, 1 in 10 Queensland Health employees comes from a non-English-speaking background. One visit to the fracture clinic of this busy hospital makes it obvious that without immigrant medical staff this hospital simply would not function. I was assigned to a consultant with the Anglo-Celtic name of Robinson but I only ever saw him in the distance, his role seemingly being to oversee the decision-making of the doctors under his supervision. Every one of the people mentioned here evidently had the right to work in Australia and, since they were all relatively young, it would be safe to assume they were recent arrivals or “new Australians”. In mentioning that they were all of non English-speaking background I don’t intend to ‘other’ them but rather to emphasise that my hospital experience was an encounter with Australian multiculturalism and ethnic diversity.

The nurse with the Italian-Aussie accent called me into the consulting area. The first doctor who treated me was a young Malaysian woman in a mini skirt. Call me old-fashioned but I still expect medical doctors to wear white coats. It seems I am hopelessly out of date. She confirmed the nature and extent of my injury, showing me some blurry X-Rays that I could not really make out. At my four-week appointment, I met a jolly Sri Lankan doctor in scrubs. He showed me a CT scanned image of my broken shoulder, this time in graphic detail. He told me I might not regain full range of movement in my arm, instructed me to keep my sling on and my shoulder still and said that I wouldn’t be driving for at least three months. At my six-week visit, my doctor was a suave Egyptian in a crisp, striped shirt, with a dry sense of humour: “Should I see my GP?” I asked him. “If you miss him”, he replied. I suppose laughter is the best medicine. The good news at this visit was that I was not a candidate for surgery. At my eight-week visit, my doctor, of possible Swiss or German origin, gave me the news that the bone had started to heal! I could remove my sling and start active exercise, I could swim but not drive and I could start physio. Judging by her accent, my physiotherapist originates from Singapore. We’ve been working together for two weeks now and I can get my arm up to almost 90 degrees with her help and encouragement.

These medicos, with their variety of Aussie ethnolects, came from an amazing range of cultural backgrounds. While I might have preferred continuity of care from one doctor, the consistency with which I was treated by a range of different doctors was reassuring. While English, which they all spoke perfectly, was the common language, they also all spoke the language of orthopaedics and rehabilitation. I was well looked after and reminded that I am lucky to have easy access to hospital care and services, a benefit that does not apply to all Australians equally.

These thoughts prompted a quick Internet search for some information about multiculturalism and healthcare in Queensland. I found plenty of encouraging material. According to the Queensland cross cultural learning and development strategy, the increasing cultural diversity of the Queensland population means that to be safe, health services need to be culturally appropriate and responsive. One of the eight core Queensland Health targets is culturally competent staff. The Queensland Health guidelines for multicultural health policy implementation also include a language services policy. Yet many people still miss out on health services or access them too late for effective preventative intervention or treatment. The Queensland Council for Social Services recognises that three at-risk groups are Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, people in rural and remote areas, and culturally and linguistically diverse communities. It proposes a number of strategies for training staff to deal with diversity.

But the Queensland government recently abolished some 14,500 public service positions, claiming that cuts will reduce unnecessary red tape and top-heavy administration. Like many Queenslanders, I find it impossible to accept that cutting support services will increase efficiency, improve access to health care or make the jobs of front line staff any easier. For many Queenslanders the future looks uncertain and what it holds for multicultural policy development, an equitable health service and quality health care remains to be seen.

Eurovision Baku 2012 (Source: i3.mirror.co.uk)

This year’s Eurovision Song Contest has come and gone with Sweden crowned the winner for 2012, also taking the title of Australia’s unofficial winner (over 130,000 people in Australia visited the SBS Eurovision websiteto vote). Until recently, I did not take much interest in Eurovision, regarding it as lame, embarrassing and a lightweight media exercise in banal nationalism.

But a few years ago my daughter, who was on an exchange trip to Norway, said she was attending an actual, live Eurovision Grand Final! The idea that she would be somewhere in the crowd prompted me to tune in and since then I have joined the throng of avid Eurovision fans. Over the years the contest seems to be taking itself less seriously and, lord knows, we could do with some frivolity in these times of political crisis and economic austerity.

Julia Zemiro and Sam Pang’s hilarious commentaries are an added bonus! They epitomise the fun of being young, transnational, multicultural, irreverent and quintessentially Australian:  “The UK’s youth policy does not seem to be working,” quipped Sam drily as crooner Engelbert Humperdinck (now well into his seventies) bombed to the bottom of the Eurovision league table! UK nul points!

Let me first recount a little of Eurovision’s fascinating history: The European Broadcasting Union (EBU) was formed in 1950 by 23 broadcasting organisations from Europe and the Mediterranean. First conceived as an international experiment in live television, the Eurovision Song Contest has been a focus for Pan-Europeanism since long before the days of satellite TV, digital broadcasting and high definition TV.  In 1954, the Narcissus Festival procession was relayed across the Eurovision network and was watched by four million viewers across Germany, Belgium, France, the United Kingdom, Italy, the Netherlands and Switzerland. In 1955, the EBU proposed the idea of an international song contest whereby countries could participate in one television show, to be transmitted simultaneously in all represented nations. The Eurovision Song Contest has been broadcast every year since 1956, which makes it one of the longest-running television programs in the world.  In response to the setting up of the Eurovision network, Eastern European television stations set up their own network called Intervision, which started its own song contest, presumably in an effort to prevent viewers being too bedazzled by cultures not approved of by the Politburo!  The two networks merged in 1993, after the fall of the Berlin Wall and German reunification.

Today the Eurovision Song Contest is broadcast throughout Europe and also in Australia, Canada, Egypt, Hong Kong, India, Jordan, Korea, New Zealand and the United States, even though these countries do not participate. These days, with the entry of former Soviet Bloc and Warsaw Pact nations and those that lie within the European Broadcasting Area or are member states of the Council of Europe, the contest has become increasingly diverse and acts as a social barometer of changing international relations in the region.

But there is another side to Eurovision that is extremely interesting from a sociolinguistic point of view.  The contest has always managed to combine a comforting picture of harmony-in-diversity with the shameless promotion of national chauvinism. Today some 43 states vie for the title of best song in Europe and when one looks at the voting trends among the competitors, they often appear to be along political and nationalistic lines with nothing at all to do with the merits of the music! Voting is the most hotly contested aspect of the contest; geography, history, culture, religion and other socio-cultural affiliations certainly do seem to influence how countries vote. The more dominant countries pack the kind of clout others command in the United Nations: The so-called Big Five countries (UK, France, Germany, Spain and Italy) get automatic spots in the final regardless of their positions on the scoreboard. Indeed, on a number of occasions the contest and its voting practices have sparked patriotic indignation and withdrawals for political reasons.

Changing Eurovision Song Contest language policies and practices also make for interesting reading. According to Wikipedia, from 1956 to 1965 songs could be sung in any language. In 1966 a new rule stipulated that songs must be performed in one of the official languages of the participating country. This rule was abolished in 1973 and performers were allowed to sing in any language they chose. Several contestants in the mid-1970s took advantage of this relaxation, including Abba in 1974. In 1977, the EBU decided to revert to the national language rule, with special dispensations to Germany and Belgium who had already been selected and whose songs were in English.

By 1999 the hegemony of English in Europe was already well on the rise. At the 1999 contest, the language restriction was again lifted and today songs may be performed in any language. As a result, many of the songs are performed either partly or completely in English. Entries are often performed in English to reach a wider audience but at the same time this practice is often regarded as being unpatriotic. In 2003, Belgium found an alternative solution, entering a song, entitled Sanomi, in an artificial language developed especially for the song. This strategy proved successful as Belgium finished second, only two points behind Turkey (but in the eyes of many it was a sympathy vote. Belgium and France had opposed the British-American proposal to put NATO anti-aircraft guns into Turkey as defence against the threat of Iraqi retaliation in the event of a U.S. invasion of Iraq). In 2006 the Dutch entry was sung partly in an artificial language but it did far less well, coming 17^th out of 23 contestants; the contest was won by the Finns, singing a hard rock song in English.

Songs have been performed in a minority language in only 19 out of 53 contests.  Much like the Olympics, French is used by the contest presenters but it appears to play a largely symbolic role. The presenters announce the scores both in English and in French, a practice which has given rise to the famous exclamation “douze points” when the host repeats the top score in French.

This year the Buranovskiye Babushki, a.k.a the Russian Grannies, took hybridity to a new level in their song Party for Everybody performed in Udmur and English.

What can I say? Eurovision may be trivial and may gloss over political tensions but nobody can deny that it is fun. On a final and uncritical note, whatever you might think about the essentialised, commodified identities promoted by the Eurovision Song Contest, for me nothing will ever surpass the sheer kitsch fabulousness of the unbeatable Abba!

Mother Language Day in East Timor

International Mother Language Day is celebrated annually to promote linguistic and cultural diversity. In East Timor, Mother Language Day 2011 provided the perfect opportunity to launch a new national education policy document promoting the use of children’s mother tongues in the classroom.

Let me begin with a thumbnail sketch of the language situation: The East Timorese Constitution of 2002 declares Portuguese and Tetum to be the co-official languages with Indonesian and English as working languages. The indigenous languages are declared national languages but they have no official status. The reasons for this decision lie in the colonial history of East Timor. It was a Portuguese colony for over 400 years and Indonesia occupied the territory in 1975 at the moment of decolonisation from Portugal. Hence, these two exogenous languages have well established roots in East Timor. A growing number of East Timorese also speak English, the language of tourism, trade, the United Nations and the aid industry, present in the country since the exit of the Indonesians in 1999. Tetum was originally a contact language which came to symbolise national identity during the Indonesian occupation, especially after the Indonesian colonisers banned the use of Portuguese. Beneath this layer of dominant languages adopted by the state lies a complex network of some 30 indigenous language varieties.

This is the broader linguistic context in which the new national education policy is embedded. Along with other international advisers from Australia and Europe, I was invited to provide advice on the formulation of the new policy.

Until now, East Timorese teachers have been expected to use Portuguese as the language of instruction along with Tetum as a pedagogic aide. Although Tetum is spoken widely as a first or second language, it is not known in all parts of the country. Moreover, few teachers are confident in Portuguese and it is mainly affluent, urban, middle class families that know this language. One consequence of this policy is that many children have been expected to learn in a language they do not understand or use, and they have not been achieving the desired literacy results. Grade repetition and school dropout are also alarmingly high. Literacy amongst East Timorese primary-age school children is so low that the Ministry of Education is now considering the use of local languages for teaching in pre-primary and primary schools to help children acquire the basic foundations for literacy development in their first language and to address some of the reasons for the high rate of school dropout.

The new policy direction is an exciting and brave initiative. Relatively few independent countries of the South have broken the norm of adopting the former colonial language as the medium of instruction or succeeded in breaking the vicious cycle of subtractive bilingualism and low educational achievement leading in turn to continued low literacy levels. The policy document sets out guidelines for using home languages for initial instruction with the gradual introduction of Tetum and Portuguese and the later addition of Indonesian and English while maintaining the home languages in the system for as long as possible.

In another posting here on Language on the Move, the blogger, Md. Ali Khan, passionately argues that in situations of extreme poverty and low human development it is a luxury for foreign advisors to talk of maintaining children’s first languages. I understand his scepticism about foreign advisers who promote idealistic notions in situations they themselves do not have to live, let alone educate their children. However, I believe advisers have much to offer provided they share their knowledge in an equitable, ethical way. There is increasing evidence showing that children whose first languages are well developed acquire literacy skills in both first and additional languages more easily. There is also evidence that children taught in the languages they know best develop their numeracy skills better than those who are not. This evidence is now coming from countries of the South as well as from the North. Literate and numerate citizens are better equipped to participate in the public life and the political affairs of their country. A literate population has better access to information about health, nutrition and maintaining wellbeing. When children learn in languages they know, they are more likely to remain in school and parents are often more willing to send their children to school. Strong multilingualism and literacy offer a way to break the cycle of underachievement and low education levels, offering a way out of poverty and a pathway towards active citizenship.

At the policy document launch I presented a seminar on the features and benefits of mother tongue-based multilingual education.  My main message was that by using and valorising children’s home languages and cultures in the classroom, teachers can promote social inclusion and contribute to peaceful nation building. If the policy document is passed by the Council of Ministers, the stage will be set for children to acquire early literacy in the languages of the home. East Timor took its first steps toward achieving mother tongue-based multilingual education on this historic Mother Language Day, 2011. I am proud to have played a small part in it.