Comments on: National Languages Curriculum

By: YUYANG SHE

YUYANG SHE — Thu, 09 Nov 2017 00:46:00 +0000

It seems to be the case for language learning in most areas. The stereotypical language learning at Chinese schools has been regarded as force-feeding and ineffective. Students just learn how to deal with the exams and have no actual progress in language use. I have a similar second foreign language learning experience. It was required to pick up a second foreign language during my bachelor degree, so I chose to study French. Unfortunately, I failed the first semester. Then I decided not to go for the class and study myself. I passed the exam and I was quite surprised that most of the students could not “speak” French. I didn’t really reflect on this experience but the post is really inspiring.

By: Flora Launay

Flora Launay — Mon, 06 Nov 2017 01:13:00 +0000

This article reminded of another article on Language on the move, entitled “How to solve Austrlia’s language crisis?”. I am now not even surprised that languages in the Australian national curriculum are not given the place they should have.
It is a shame that students in Australian schools are not given more opportunities to learn a foreign language from a young age.
I am very shocked that even after 280 hours of formal French instruction, students cannot even utter a proper sentence. I am clearly wondering what they actually do in class…
The problems you have highlighted need to be worked on not only by implementing a new curriculum, but also by training language teachers properly, by integrating the students, the parents, the teachers, the headmasters of the school and all the other stakeholders in the process.
It is not enough to simply write a new curriculum that might not even been properly implemented in the actual classroom practices.

By: Roxxan

Roxxan — Sun, 05 Nov 2017 10:17:00 +0000

Thanks for the interesting post. I have a similar experience of learning a foreign language. There is a compulsory course -Japanese language in my university, every student need to learn although not all of us are willing to learn. On the other hand, teaching resource, teacher’s quality and teaching time can not match a high quality level. As a result, the majority of us only learn for passing the final exam, and we forget most of what we learn after the exam. Although it might be beneficial to spend a limited time in each week to learn a language; however, that is absolutely not enough for even knowing a new language. Although we might know the information relates to what we learn, we will gradually lose the ability of ‘recognise’ it.

By: Hanne Houbracken

Hanne Houbracken — Sun, 08 Oct 2017 05:40:00 +0000

As soon as I read “the children are taught French for one hour each week”, I knew these children would have no actual knowledge of French even after multiple years of education.
In the Belgian education system, children start learning French at the age of 10 for three hours each week. Then during high school, until the age of 18, students receive 4-5 hours of French every week. Even with this many hours of French in my life, I still can’t say I could have a proper conversation in French. And even with an education system which focuses so much on languages, schools in Belgium still get criticized for not having an adequate level in French/German/…

By: Yeongju Lee

Yeongju Lee — Tue, 12 Sep 2017 05:15:00 +0000

It is very interesting that your daughter did not forget French and had the same level of proficiency as that of other students even though she had took a year off of learning French. As you mentioned, I agree that the reason of this tendency is because of the amount of time they are exposed to, are taught, and learn. If you have got only an hour or even a few hours of class, but just one per week, it doesn’t actually make big changes in your language proficiency. There are many learners who devote large amount of their time in learning language and still, some learners are struggling to remember linguistic knowledge and make it as their own. However, taking one class in a week or spending little time in learning langugae does not mean totally useless. It still helps you to have intrinsic sense and confidence.
When I did my research paper, my topic was about the exceptional case study of the idea that once people use or learn a certain language knowledge, the knowledge disappears, derived from the theory of the critical period of language learning. However, as the experience of my participant who has been studying and learning English for about 20 years and had a time when she stopped learning and using Engligh for about 5 years. She stopped learning English after she got a job, web-designer that did not require her to use English much. She thought she forgot much of English knowledge and her skills; however, once she started learning English again, she realised that she still had that knowledge and she was able to find herself trying to use pre-existing knowledge to produce new linguistic knowledges.

By: Binisha Sharma

Binisha Sharma — Thu, 07 Sep 2017 05:05:00 +0000

In context of my home country Nepal, the situation is similar. First thing is that the school curriculum of Nepal has not focused in any other foreign languages other than English and second, teaching foreign language in private schools is used as a tool of marketing. My cousins used to study in an “A graded” school where students were taught Spanish and Chinese language. They did not have any text books or workbooks to learn. A casual teacher used to come once in a week for his 40 minutes long language class. He used to make the students sing some Spanish and Chinese songs in his language class. The LSRW skills of language, vocabularies and grammar were never taught to the students. After taking Spanish and Chinese language class for 4 years neither they cold pronounce any Chinese or Spanish words nor can they form any sentences!

By: How the presence of a bilingual school changes the linguistic profile of a community | Language on the Move

Thu, 31 Jul 2014 00:29:12 +0000

[…] neoliberal credo is that parental choice will create high-quality education. Does that mean that we do not have high quality language education in Australia because there simply is not the demand for language […]

By: Should Australians learn another language? | Language on the Move

Should Australians learn another language? | Language on the Move — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 23:48:15 +0000

[…] above: as the rest of the world is becoming bi- and multilingual, Australian kids are missing out until we get serious about improving language education in this country. EmailPrintMoreDigg Pin ItShare on Tumblr This entry was posted in: In the media, Language […]

By: Ingrid Piller in conversation with Susie Elelman on 2GB | Language on the Move

Mon, 29 Oct 2012 12:00:19 +0000

[…] lucky to have so many languages spoken in the community but we are not using those resources and currently we are not doing languages education very well. Thus, we risk being left behind our multilingual neighbours and trading partners: bilingualism […]

By: L Cerny

L Cerny — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 22:24:57 +0000

Backpackers from many countries come through our beautiful city of Townsville. They all speak English, and often other languages, very well. It is embarassing that other countries can provide a successful language component into their curriculum and we have not managed to do so. The is a program called AIM – Accelerated Integrated Method- which has seen much success in many countries. Our National Curriculum planners should have a close look at it.

By: Peta Lowry

Peta Lowry — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 17:22:35 +0000

remaining 12 to 18 mths here in Italy. Our biggest concern at the moment is how we maintain their language learning when we return to Australia, without having to go to the added expense and time to do it outside of school hours.
Hence my interest in the national curriculum discussions. Any ideas or suggestions on how we tackle this would be greatly appreciated.
Just back to my comment about grammer, why was it ever dropped from the curriculum in the first place? I never got taught it and now as an adult am struggling to learn a second language mainly due to the fact I dont have any understanding of the basics of languages. By the looks of this post I probably dont even spell it properly…….
Good work Ingrid, keep up the questioning of the new curriculum and I hope you can make a difference.
Regards
Peta

By: Peta Lowry

Peta Lowry — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 17:18:47 +0000

Ciao Ingrid, great post and I agree 110% with what you say, however my experience is now slowly starting to change my mind about languages education in Australia. Ours is a long story, but to cut it short we relocated to Italy in August 2009 with the sole purpose of providing our two children, then 6 11 with a bilingual education because we could not achieve this in Australia. My husband I are both monolingual and have no other language in our family. Both our boys went straight into Italian public schools and are now fluent in Italian and in fact doing better than most of their peers with their Italian language studies. One big realisation is that both boys are now learning English grammer in Italy, something they would never have achieved in Australia. This is also meaning that they are learning what languages are all about and giving them an understanding of why they are so important. Both will be going on to learn at least one more language and hopefully more during their

By: Angela

Angela — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 03:27:07 +0000

My son, fluent and literate in Japanese, was recently set a new “challenge” by his non-native Japanese teacher at school, after numerous attempts by me to have his particular language-learning needs in that area recognized. Since his peers, who have had weekly Japanese lessons for the past three years, are now being introduced to hiragana, the most elementary of the three Japanese scripts, the teacher gave him a Japanese text that had been transliterated into the Roman alphabet and asked him to reproduce it in hiragana! Having been educated in Japan solely through the medium of Japanese, my son did not recognize the text in front of him as in any way related to that language. But he soon got the hang of it and gave it a go – only to be reprimanded for making “mistakes”. I was particularly bemused by this approach since the teacher is Chinese and as such could be an enormous help in my son’s ongoing (private) study of kanji.

By: William Steed

William Steed — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 12:04:06 +0000

A worthy post.

My anecdotal experience with high school language teaching includes my friend who taught Indonesian without qualifications (though did speak Bahasa well) and my own (10-20 year old) experience as a student. I was mostly discouraged by the attitudes of staff and students (two languages at a time is too difficult – you should drop one).

Im equally discouraged by the mystical surrounding of knowing languages. The myth in Australia is that languages are difficult, and only special people can learn them. If you know a language, you apparently have some kind of mystical power. Sure, some people may have to work a little harder than others, but languages are no harder to learn than maths or piano or riding a horse. Its easy to get a base, and more work is needed to get a polished ability.

I dont think we can get any further with Australia and languages until we can somehow dismiss this mystic cloud around language-learning.

By: Loy Lising

Loy Lising — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 07:15:14 +0000

Hi, Ingrid. In 1985, Bill Cope and Mary Kalantzis published a report on their national survey of languages other than English in Australia project. Based on the results of their interviews with members of the communities and high school students of German and Macedonian ethnolinguistic backgrounds, they focused their discussion on and explored the question: Community Languages: Politics or pedagogy? It seems to me that the answer to this question then and the answer to it 25+ years later remains the same – that national language planning in this country is very much based on politics, on what is perceived to be popular, and never on sound pedagogy. I did a quick check, and youve guessed it; they are not referenced either.

By: Nadia

Nadia — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 04:38:49 +0000

Your critique of the Australian language teaching system explains a few things. I have tutored students learning French in school and have been uniformly appalled at their lack of proficiency at the outset. It seems that for students to do well at a language, they must have some outside intervention – tutoring after school, extended stay in France, or at the very least a French-speaking relative, as well as extreme dedication to getting it right. This is in stark contrast to the almost daily second-language classes I have attended in five countries, across three continents while growing up. While student success varies based on many factors, including innate aptitude and interest, I cant help feeling that even the brightest Australian students seem to not even be given a fighting chance, at least in mainstream schools.