Comments on: Schools transforming multilinguals into illiterates?

By: NAMI NARIMATSU

NAMI NARIMATSU — Wed, 06 Sep 2017 13:40:00 +0000

Through reading this article, it can be true that formal education may make it difficult that bilingual students maintain their home languages. Especially, bilingual children, who was born in English speaking country, tend to rely on only English. I am currently an assistant teacher at a Japanese community school, seeing some students who are reluctant to speak Japanese and others who like speaking it. I also notice that the gap between these two groups becomes larger as they grow up. Some common factor of students who do not like speaking it are to go to Australian schools and to speak English as home. Maintaining bilingual skills is probably attributed to formal schools and family environment.

By: 000

000 — Wed, 06 Sep 2017 01:15:00 +0000

In reply to Language on the Move. Wow. I'll definitely have a look at it! Thanks so much for recommending this to me!

By: Language on the Move

Language on the Move — Wed, 06 Sep 2017 01:04:00 +0000

Thank you for your comment! You might enjoy reading a recent Macquarie PhD thesis about Burmese migrant students in China. Among other things, the researcher, Li Jia, found that the students (who were mostly ethnic Chinese) had been socialized into believing that Burmese was useless. However, in China they actually discovered that the best job opportunities for them were available if they were proficient in Chinese AND Burmese because they could be employed as intercultural mediators.
The thesis is available for open access from http://languageonthemove.com/phd-theses/

Li, Jia. 2017. Social reproduction and migrant education: A critical sociolinguistic ethnography of Burmese students’ learning experiences at a border high school in China. Macquarie University. http://languageonthemove.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/LI_Jia_Social_reproduction_and_migrant_education.pdf

By: Gloria Christabel

Gloria Christabel — Thu, 17 Aug 2017 06:21:00 +0000

I come from a multilingual country or nation and on the outside, this is regarded as an admirable attribute. What many do not know is, of the four languages that I speak, the English Language is the only one that I’m fluent in, in speaking and writing. Looking back on it now, I realize that the reason why my proficiency in the other three languages, Malay, Tamil and Malayalam are not on par with the English Language, is that they were not given the due attention and importance they deserved. While I learned Malay in school, as it is the national language, once I got into college, Malay was regarded as extremely unimportant in comparison to the English Language. The same thing happened when I went into university to pursue my Bachelor’s degree. It was the same unrelenting cycle. Today, while I can speak the “kitchen” version of the language, as mentioned in the article, I find it very challenging to speak and write in formal or the standard Malay language. There were never any Malay language classes included in the curriculum and that definitely took a toll on my command of the language. Today, the language is possibly on the brink of death, as it’s only being survived by Malaysia and even in Malaysia, it has taken a back seat. I’m not discounting the importance of the English Language in the world today, but it is sad to see such disregard for the language of the country that I grew up in.

By: Australia’s Asia Literacy Debate | Language on the Move

Australia’s Asia Literacy Debate | Language on the Move — Tue, 02 Oct 2012 13:24:36 +0000

[…] population of speakers of the four strategic languages as potential language learners, as Susana Eisenchlas and others have pointed out here on Language on the Move, often this group is seen as a problem […]

By: Michael

Michael — Mon, 24 Sep 2012 15:06:30 +0000

very illuminative article! i have made some similar experiences in Berlin.

By: Ingrid Piller

Ingrid Piller — Sat, 14 Jul 2012 03:03:12 +0000

An additional layer of complexity is added by the fact that the substantial overlap between "foreign language" and "community language" is either not recognized or only seen as a problem. Some of the most frequently taught "foreign languages" (Chinese, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean) are also major "community languages." However, instead of recognizing this fact as an opportunity, it is widely seen as a problem. Most heritage speakers end up being better off choosing another language or no language at all, than pursuing their heritage language through mainstream schooling. While there are very few provisions for community language speakers to pursue their languages through mainstream schooling, they are being treated differently when it comes to assessment. Michael Clyne (2005) has a thorough discussion of rationales, problems and inequities in Australia's Language Potential (pp. 109ff.). The national curriculum is set to follow that model and to also consider heritage speakers as having "an unfair advantage" over non-heritage learners when it comes to assessment. Currently, implemented only in NSW, what is particularly noteworthy about differential assessment is that it is employed only with reference to four Asian languages (Chinese, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean) (see NSW Board of Studies). The Sydney Saturday School of Japanese has repeatedly pointed out the fact that this is clearly disciminatory (e.g., this newsletter or this petition).

By: Khan

Khan — Fri, 13 Jul 2012 20:15:01 +0000

An excellent post indeed. While the institutional support to a selected set of languages have its roots in the history, politics and socio-economic conditions of the people whose languages gets such supports as your post nicely brings out, I think it is equally important to focus at the differnt layers of institutions and the complex ways in which social actors occupying differnent positions in the institutional and social hiearchy respond to policy in their everyday institutional lives. In my study in Pakistan, those who raise the voice of nationalism, national language or local languages are the ones who have control over the valuable linguistic resources. They are the this segment of the society in Pakistan which can be called full bilingual and biliterate. Taking Ruiz vocabulary, they create languages as problems for others and for themselves, languages as resource.
Khan

By: Rosemary Kuwahata

Rosemary Kuwahata — Fri, 13 Jul 2012 10:24:57 +0000

Do I dare mention that 2 of my children obtained OP 1 score on the QTAC scale for determining eligibility for University entry?

By: Rosemary Kuwahata

Rosemary Kuwahata — Fri, 13 Jul 2012 10:20:20 +0000

Some high schools in QLD have (an) immersion programme(s), which teach basic subjects in the ‘foreign language’, French or Japanese for example. I don’t know how well they work or how well the students enrolled in those programmes cope with the same subjects in English.
An acquaintance of mine who is Japanese and married to an Indonesian man, enrolled their daughter at a certain high school specifically because it was starting up a ‘Japanese Emersion Programme’ and after 5 years at the school, although not bilingual, she is proficient enough to function comfortably in Japanese.
I have 4 Australian/Japanese children and their education has been quite varied. Various mixtures of place of birth and early development /schooling settings, later schooling / university settings and opportunities for language learning and practice (at Australian schools/universities and the weekend Japanese Language School) and visits to Japan have lead to surprising results in their current language capabilities and their interests.