Hanna and Prash discuss English language in higher education research and practice, in the understudied context of the South Pacific, and Prashneel’s new book, English Language-Mediated Settings and Educational Inequality: Language Policy Agendas in the South Pacific published by Routledge in 2025.

Transcript

Hanna: Welcome to the language on the move, podcast a channel on the new books network. My name is Dr. Hanna Torsh, and I’m a lecturer in linguistics and applied linguistics at Macquarie University, in Sydney, Australia.

My guest today is Dr. Prashneel Ravisan Goundar. Dr. Prashneel is an academic based in the graduate research School in the University of New England. His research interests span applied linguistics, sociolinguistics, and educational linguistics. Today we’re going to talk about his new monograph, which will be published next month. English language, Mediated Settings and educational Inequalities published by Routledge. Welcome to the Show Presh.

Prash: Hi, Hanna, thank you for having me.

Hanna: It’s lovely that you could be here, and I really am really excited about introducing your work to our audience, so can you start us off by telling us a little bit about yourself, and how you got interested in the topic of your book.

Prash: Well, thanks personally to you for inviting me and reaching out. It’s always good to expand on your work and put yourself out of your comfort zone and rethink what you have done. So, the book obviously was part of my PhD. Thesis. But I’ll start just a little bit about myself.

So, I’m originally from Fiji. and I moved to Armidale, which is in the New England region in 2022 to complete my PhD. I’d started working on my PhD in Fiji, but because it was during the Covid period in 2020, and there were restrictions on travel and all of that, so I couldn’t move until mid of 2022, when things got a bit better. Back home back in Fiji I was an academic as well. I taught linguistics and applied linguistics courses for a decade or so. and part of what we had to do was we had to make sure that we upgraded our qualifications. We were given a timeline to do this upgrade, and I started looking at research topics.

Fijian streetscape (Image credit: Felix Colatanavanua via Wikipedia)

The way it kind of worked was the former Prime Minister of Fiji had gone into a function and had spoken at length about the English language problems that he had come across, and he had mentioned some of the civil servants, teachers or professionals who were writing emails. He noticed a lot of spelling mistakes, sentence structure errors, grammatical errors, and things like that. That’s when my my research skills kind of just picked up on this. And I started to think, well, he’s saying that. But does he have any form of data to back up his ideas? Or why have we come to that conclusion? Why is that the case? So that’s when I started to think aloud about this, and I thought this was going to be an interesting topic to investigate.

I sent research proposals over to a few universities, and that landed at UNE and my primary supervisor Finex Ndlovu he picked up on that, and he said, well, this looks like an interesting topic, but there would be other elements that I would like to add on to that. And that’s how I started working on my PhD which I finished in 2023. And that’s when we then started to see how the thesis could then be turned into a monograph and published as a book. So, I sent out the proposal to 2 publication houses and Routledge had sent it out for review, and they got back, and the review was very positive. And I thought, okay, now this is the time to start revising and reworking on how I can reach out to a wider audience who would be interested in this language, planning language policy, medium of instruction book. So that’s how it came about.

Hanna: Fantastic. Well, we’re glad that it did! It makes me feel like very old to think that you were doing this in Covid, because in my mind, Covid was just, you know, last year. But you’ve done so much since then, so I’d like to start in terms of delving into your book to focus on two of the things that I found really innovative and exciting about your research. And that is, of course, that it explores a really under-researched context. So that’s the first thing. And then the second thing is that it’s very participant centred. So, it really allows the participants to have a voice. Could you speak to those two aspects, or expand on them a little bit for our audience?

Prash: Absolutely, so if I did a quantitative study and just looked at a language test to see what the students were doing, or how they were coming into the university with a particular school, I think the study would not have been of merit in the sense that we are just looking at it from the statistics point of view. To just say, this is the level the students have entered the university, this is the level that they are leaving out from the University. What I wanted to go into was why they were at that particular level. What actually happened at the back end of it. And this is where the whole story about the Prime Minister comes into place is that something must have happened along the way for them to have a particular level of English when they entered a university, and that space was under researched.

Other researchers or scholars in Fiji had looked at primary school level of English, they had looked at high school level of English, or they had used interventions in those spaces, but they did not move on to the university and try to investigate. We have students who end up at the 3 main universities in Fiji where they all have English as the medium of instruction. But Fiji is so diverse. The linguistic background spans over 300 islands that we have, and you have students who would come from maritime schools who are very in rural areas. And then you have students who come from urban schools, and they enter the university. But for someone to just say, oh, well, you all come from schools. You should have the same level of English is very unfair. It’s an injustice, because that’s not how it works. So that’s the whole space that I really wanted to tap into and see what we could do to address these issues or what we could do to find out what these issues were, and that’s where the methodology came into place.

So I’ll tell you a funny story about this when I wrote the proposal, and I had sent it out to my supervisors, and I said, This is what I would like to do, and this is what I want to find out, and I remember them writing back to me and saying, Well, have you thought about how you’re going to give voice to the students. and that kind of put me into. Okay, how do I do that? So, I started again, looking at different methodologies. The most suitable one I found was grounded theory, methodology, and why it was suitable was it generates. The findings are centred with the data. So, the data actually generates the themes. The data actually brings about all the information that you could possibly gather. Then I started reading more about grounded theory, and then I noticed it was not used in the South Pacific context. When it came to language testing regimes, it wasn’t in that space. So, I said, okay, this is a new element. That’s coming into the picture and grounded theory, because it is of 3 different coding systems that go into its open coding, selective coding, and theoretical coding, these 3 different stages let the findings shine in their own spaces. Because you have this open coding where we had rural schools’ data. We had data about urban schools. We had data about tertiary institutions. And then we streamlined what we got from there into the selective coding space to look at. Okay, this is from, you know, these 3 streams. Then we grouped it to put rural schools and urban schools together. Whether it’d be primary schools or high schools. We put that information together. Then we moved on to getting the higher education data together as well. So, these were the new elements that kind of came about in the book. The methodology allows the participants to go on and speak about that information that they have.

So, we were able to have the total participants I had in the study which was 120, who did 2 language tests, one at the beginning of the year, and at the end of the year. We had writing interventions that I used to give them feedback on how they were progressing. And then, when we looked at the data at the end again qe showed improvements, but then I still wanted to know what had happened. So, we chose 30 participants to have an interview, and they were all randomly selected. It wasn’t someone who has performed the best was selected, or people who were low. And then I started to talk to them about their background educational background in terms of their primary school and high school level of English. What had happened, and those findings then told us a whole new picture.

Recently, even last year, if Fiji has started looking at examination results, and they have tried to look at what’s happening, and they want to have an educational review. So, I recently wrote a newspaper article. and I explained in that review that it’s not just blaming the students and saying that we need to do this review because the students did not perform well or we need to do the review because the teachers are not doing their job. What are the elements that are contributing to the unsatisfactory level that the Ministry of Education or the Fijian Government is looking at? And so, I put my whole findings forward. And a lot of people sent me an email. And they said, yeah, it was spot on that these are the things that in reviews in previous years people have not considered, and they have just put a blame on somebody in that aspect. So yes, the voices that have come from the grounded theory methodology. Now, I’m trying to look at avenues where I can put this through…

Hanna: Yes, contribute your voice to the debate?

Prash: Yes, exactly.

Hanna: So you looked at a 120 students, you tested them at the beginning, and at the end of their first year at university. And then you interviewed 30 students. So, to kind of understand their experiences with English language, learning in all those diverse contexts.

Prash: Absolutely.

Hanna: It’s so relevant to other contexts in English language teaching all over the world where you do have this diversity of educational spaces, particularly in rural and regional areas, but also with you know, with diverse access to resources in all sorts of different spaces, like, even in the same city, you can have very diverse access to resources in the same educational contexts.

Prash: Yes, that’s so true.

Hanna: It’s important, and, as you say, that you are now introducing this into the political space is also so fascinating, and that it wasn’t there before is shocking. But it’s fantastic when you know your research has an impact or can have an impact. So, I guess for our audience, we’d really like to know a little bit more about what you found. So, my next question is, you talk about these different ways in which students in different parts of Fiji, in the primary system, and the high school system, too, I’m imagining, have this unequal access to essentially quality, English language, learning. Can you tell us a bit more about what your main findings were? What were some of the things that you found, and what were some of the main barriers. preventing equal access for all students to quality. English language learning, and teaching?

Prash: You have already mentioned, coming from same region schools, but they have different kind of access to resources. That’s exactly what we discovered in this particular project. So, I spoke to the students. One of the students told me, he came from a rural school. So, the two main islands in Fiji they have Viti Levu, and Vanua Levu. So, he came from one, and he said to me, he said. when I was in second grade, the library had 10 books. When I left the 8th grade to move to high school the library still had the same 10 books. There was no movement in the in the 6 or 7 years that the student was there, so I said there was no new books? He said, no. Ten books for 300 students who would have studied in that whole period. So if we are saying English should be improved, and it can be improved by reading. Well, do we have the resources to give to the students? You can’t just say read, read, but well, let’s look at our backyard. We don’t have those books to give.

Related to that the students told me, about what they found in their library. This is another student, but it’s related to what I just spoke about. The library only had books for upper primary. They didn’t have any books for lower primary. So, if you have students who are from one to four in those classes. They didn’t have books to look at, and it’s the same with other schools. People had books for lower primary, no books for upper primary students, or vice versa. In the high school context as well.

Students also told me that because they came from maritime schools or they came from rural schools there, what happens is they come from very small communities, and it’s so small that you kind of know everybody in the community. So, the students are also very familiar with the teacher who was teaching, so the teacher would not use English to teach English instead of using, you know, English to teach a reading of English class or a grammar of English class the teacher was using a vernacular. What led on from there was when this particular student she moved to high school. She said “I was in culture shock because all the students were speaking in English, and I’m coming from a rural primary school”, an island primary school, and she was so depressed she told me. She said she spent the first year of high school in isolation. She would sit under the tree and just try, and you know, be herself, or she would go to the library because she had no voice. She didn’t know how to communicate. There was a huge language barrier for her.

She wasn’t able to even have a simple conversation with the teacher to talk to the teacher, and I remember her telling me she said, I tried to go and talk to the teacher. I tried to make time to go into the teacher, but the teacher has so many classes. The teacher has so many students, she said. I couldn’t get through to talk to her on how I could improve my conversation skills, or in general, you know my skills in the English language. That was the other situation. A similar one. Another student said to me, she said, I didn’t care that we had to speak in English. I spoke in iTaukei, which is an indigenous Fijian language, she said. I spoke with people of other languages who would speak in English, but I had no words, so I would speak to them in the iTaukei language and just try and make a conversation. But it was hard. It was very hard. It was depressing, for some of the students. How would you go about solving this kind of issue?

So, what I do recommend in the book is that for the students who are coming from these schools, once we know that yes, they are having this kind of issue, we need to set up basic academic kind of skills training for these students so that we nurture them to then progress gradually into the class, and they don’t feel that isolation. They don’t feel that they cannot talk. And the other aspect about resources was very interesting. So, as I said, it’s always vice versa. You cannot have a balance in this. One of the students from a rural school said. which was, I found it a bit funny the way he explained it, he said “oh, well, we didn’t have a lot of resources.” This is a very rural school in Fiji, he said, “we only had seven laptops”, and I said to him, “seven laptops in a rural school. I think you were well in place”, you know. At the same time I spoke to another student who came from the same region but attended an urban school with no computer access. They didn’t have any Internet; they didn’t have any computer access. So, the distribution of resources is unequal here. So how do we look into that.

Another student told me, she spoke to someone who came from another urban school and she also attended an urban school. Sha said “we did not have the same textbook access, they had more textbooks than us, or they had more teaching and learning resources, such as charts. They had access to those things as well”. So, I noticed that students actually make this comparison when they are there in the same space. They do talk about all of these things. And yeah, these are different barriers that they have in trying to excel in exams, because in high schools as well, the medium instructions is in English. But if we don’t look at it right from the beginning when they come here. And that’s when you know the blame game starts. And in the last examination results that came out for Fiji they were 76% pass rate. And everybody was, why is it so low? Why is it? 76? But yes, you’re not looking at the circumstances that the students go through that the teachers go through. Because yes, you can say to the students, but then the teachers can also be like, well, be didn’t have the books to do this.

Another interesting issue is the shortage of teachers which has two aspects. One is a literal shortage. One student said they didn’t have an English teacher for two terms completely, because the teacher fell ill. Now there was no one to step in to look after these students for two terms, and it was an examination class to prepare for an external exam. So, in the third term they got a substitute teacher. But instead of learning, it was just rushing through to cover whatever they could cover to sit for the exam. Who can you point to in in that space? Well, should we say that the school would have had to make contact with the Ministry of Education to try and look for someone to come into this place should we point to the teacher and say, well, if you were unwell, you should have informed us in advance. Should you point to the head of department and say, why didn’t you have a contingency plan in place to get someone to cover that shift as well? It’s a whole structure, who do you kind of get into that space as well. So yeah, it was fascinating to listen to their stories.

Hanna: It’s so relevant as well, these structural educational issues. And they’re also often interconnected with issues around medium of instruction in lots of contexts. We could, we could talk about that for the whole podcast, but I want to move on to your monograph. You used a language testing tool to assess students at the beginning of the semester, and at the end of the year which hadn’t been used in in fact, I think you said it hadn’t been used in the region outside of Europe and the “global north”. The Common European Framework of Reference. So can you tell us a bit about why you chose that tool, and how you argue it should be used to better meet the needs of learners in the Fijian context, because it was developed in quite a different context, as we know.

Prash: That’s a very interesting question that you have asked, because a lot of people come back to me and say, oh, so how did you choose this or what made you think about this one? So, when we had conversations about this, I needed to have a tool that I could use to measure students at the beginning of the year and at the end of the year to check. So, what could work in that? So, I started to investigate language testing regimes, and the book covers all of these aspects about the history of all of those, and what I found was tests such as TOIC test, TOEFL test or IELTS test, Cambridge examination language tests, they all went back to the CEFR, which is the Common European Framework of Reference for languages. The CEFR was where all these other tests got ideas from, and they built onto that. So, I said, instead of using, let’s say, a TOEFL test to do the testing instead of looking at IELTS test to do the testing, why not look at how the CEFR can be used in this context. And then I understood that the CEFR has got so many different sorts of scales for different aspects.

So, if you’re looking at writing, my study looked at academic writing. It had about six different ways of looking at writing. And because it comes from because it comes from Europe it had gone through about 2,000 different descriptors before it was designed. And that’s when I said, okay, if there’s so many languages in Europe, and they have looked at 2,000 different descriptors to come up with this standard one. This could now be suitable for the Fijian context because of the different languages that are being used in this context. And what I found is you already alluded to is that in the South Pacific context that had not been used. The CEFR was very new in that aspect, and the IELTS test is an ongoing thing. So, in Fiji or in Australia the IELTS test is used generally for migration purposes for scholarship purposes. But that’s not what my target audience was my target audience was looking at higher education students and trying to align their educational needs. And this particular framework, the descriptor. So, there are 6 descriptors to this. A1 and A2 indicate that the students are basic users. And then you have B1 and B2, which say, the students are independent users. And then you have C1 and C2, which say, these students are proficient users. And that’s exactly what we wanted to find out from the student when they entered the university, what kind of user can we classify them into? And this really kind of matched into that. And when we it was so nicely utilized when we looked at it at the end of the year we found improvement they had made on the scales.

So, the 120 students who set the test at the beginning of the year, what I found was that 62 of them were at A1 level. And 49 of them were at A2 level. Both were at basic user levels. So, throughout the year, what we did was we had writing interventions for academic writing to improve this skill, because that’s the lower end of the scale, and we tried to see how we can improve on that. So, they had paragraph writing activities that they did. They had some rewriting activities. They worked on academic writing. There were three interventions, academic writing, essay, writing, that they did, and at the end of the year, when we checked how the cohort had done so from the 120, 12 of them moved from A1 to A2, but the significant change that came was 90 moved to B2. And then that’s becoming an independent user. Interestingly, 8 of them moved from A2 at the beginning of the year to C1 as proficient users. But of course, this is just to do with their writing skills. We’re not looking at anything else, so we can’t say, well, very brilliant. They are very proficient speakers. But no, no, we’re just looking at the writing part, so I don’t want to excite the audience too much.

Just to see it function in in that aspect was really something good that came about. So, I sent the book to the Deputy Prime Minister in Fiji, and he has written a blurb in the book as well, and it was good that it’s getting to people who make decisions to see where I can come in, and how I can contribute to that conversation as well.

Hanna: Congratulations! That is fantastic result, isn’t it, that the Deputy Prime Minister not only has read your book but has endorsed it.

Prash: Yes, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

Hanna: So, my last question, which is for those of us who are, you know, interested in researching in this space for emergent researchers, for students, linguistics and applied linguistics, and also language teaching students. What is the kind of key findings that you would like us to take away from your exciting and wonderful new book?

Prash: So, I’m trying to share and not over share, so that readers would want to read the book, and I don’t want to give too much away. What I would say, is like the book has connected three different spaces. That is the higher education, language testing regimes, and the grounded theory methodology. So, it’s an interconnection of these three different things that have come about in this book and I think readers and emerging scholars or established scholars like yourself. The book will give you how grounded theory can be applied into language, education, research. When I started looking at grounded theory methodology, it was mostly used with clinical psychology, or it was used in the sciences to get their data. And I read through Urquhart’s book, Cathy Urquhart. She has got a fantastic book that looks at grounded theory methodology. And the book was my bible, because it showed you the steps that you need to do to arrive at the data, how you collect information, and then how you analyse and interpret the data.

One of the [thesis] examiners praised the methodology of the research and said that he didn’t think that theory could be utilized in this way in a language testing or language education, research, so to say, so that that I thought was a very good compliment. I think leaders will then be able to use that space as well, coming towards higher education because they have been findings of different spaces in that language, medium of instruction, language policy. And this here, this is trying to get the student to say, well, what do you think we can do to improve? Or what is the problem that you are facing at this particular juncture. and what I found with the the university students, the way they talked about coming into lectures, and not being able to understand the delivery of the lectures. They said we wanted to just leave everything and go out. We couldn’t process the kind of language that was coming through to us, and then to start writing that seemed a bit challenging for them.

However, one of the things that I think scholars will be happy to hear, I asked the students. I said, what did you think the language test that you did, what did you think about the academic writing interventions which I monitored throughout there. The students gave very honest feedback in that aspect. Some of them said it was very challenging, which is fine, because you want to know what they felt. Some of them said that they found it useful because each had a task that they had to do. And then, obviously, I was giving feedback to them on how they would improve on the next task, or that particular task. They found that very helpful. They said the writing in interventions they found it to be helpful because essentially academic skill, academic writing skills is not just a 1 1-year thing or not a one semester kind of thing. Students go on to the 3 year or 4-year program, but they need to be able to submit assignments. They need to know how they go about making an argument or supporting a discussion. So, this whole book kind of outlines how helpful this were to them.

So that’s one of the things I could say. The other aspect that the students brought about was not only having teachers but having motivated and passionate teachers. That also really contributes to how the students perform in the class. And I mean, I don’t want to boast here, but I’ll tell you. I used to teach the academic English course many years ago, and I would have a lecture at eight o’clock, and there were 700 students in this class. One day I noticed the attendance would be 90%. There would be 90% students in the class. The students told me that, sir, the subject is very boring, but you make it so exciting that we show up. We want to know, and they would not feel sleepy in the class, because I would deliver the language academic English in such a way that it sorts of hit them, that why, they were in the class, or why they were doing that. So, I think if that filters down, or if that tickles down to primary school teachers or high school teachers, and they are that they know they don’t just there, because in a fortnight they’re going to be paid. They they’re there because they make a difference to the life of the student that it takes them. You know, from primary to high school, from high school to university, and it’s just going to be good in that aspect to look at it. So those are the key things.

Hanna: I think that’s fantastic place to end Prash! That’s so important. And I think it’s lovely also, for I know some of my students who are English language teachers or teachers in training will be listening to this. And I think that’s a really lovely point to end on which is that, yeah, it’s not just about having teachers, of course, although, of course, that is of paramount importance. But it’s about having passionate and motivated teachers. And that’s very impressive to get 700 students to turn up at 8 o’clock in the morning. I think that speaks. That’s a great compliment for any teacher.

Thanks again, Prash, and thanks very much to our audience for listening. If you enjoyed the show, please subscribe to our channel, leave a 5-star review on your podcast app of choice and recommend the language on the move podcast because we talk about fantastic topics like this. And our partner, the new books network to your students, colleagues and friends until next time.

Master of Applied Linguistics and TESOL students at Macquarie University (Image credit: Jung Ung Hwang)

As pre-pandemic levels of migration have been restored or exceeded, international students are once again in the spotlight.

Canada is planning to cap international student visas and Australia plans to raise English language proficiency requirements for student visas. The stated rationale is to “improve the quality of students’ educational experience and reduce workplace exploitation” and to “support international students to realise their potential.”

I argue that raising the English proficiency requirements for university admission is not a good way to achieve the stated rationale. International students’ educational experience and their successful integration into the workforce can be improved in a different way.

Why are language proficiency tests used for university admission?

A certain level of language proficiency is undoubtedly required to be able to study in a degree program.

However, standardized language proficiency tests that are designed to be used on a large scale, are, in fact, not good predictors of academic success, and are not viewed as such by university teaching staff and other stakeholders. After all, language proficiency is just one aspect of the many facets that contribute to students’ academic achievement.

Furthermore, language testing is administered selectively and not every applicant’s  language proficiency gets tested, entrenching inequality between different student groups from the outset.

Why is language proficiency testing not enough?

Successful communication depends on many factors, including the communication skills and supportiveness of the interlocutor. In standardized English language proficiency test situations, the interlocutors are trained assessors, who focus on language skills, fluency, and accuracy in a controlled test environment. In real life, however, interlocutors are not trained language experts and not necessarily supportive either, as adult language learners experience all too often.

Here’s an example from Yumiko, a Japanese international student featured in the forthcoming book Life in a New Language. In the first few months of her time in Australia, Yumiko only ordered orange juice because hospitality staff could not understand her Japanese accent when she said ‘apple juice’ (probably sounding like “apuru juice”). Not only did she not achieve the desired result but interlocutors often responded to her in an unkind way. This is an example of a social situation that isn’t academic in nature; however, unfortunately, international students do get judged as competent or incompetent in such situations, which of course, has very real consequences for them.

While language proficiency tests give an indication of general language proficiency, it would be unrealistic to expect them to replicate all the potential language use situations in a university student’s life. Therefore, raising the language test score requirements for university study is unlikely to significantly improve students’ educational experience.

How do we improve student experience then?

Instead of having a higher score on a standardized language proficiency test, what truly helps improve the students’ educational experience is language support and experiential learning that enable them to function in their future workplaces. Language support should be provided to all students with a dual purpose: on the one hand, to assist with their studies – as a more immediate need – and on the other, to gain effective communication skills for employability.

Besides the generic university-wide academic language support that most universities provide, discipline-embedded language support can be provided to all students and not just international students. This is to avoid the ‘sink-or-swim’ approach that they experience in higher education.

At the same time, valuing and building on the multilingual repertoires of students can provide a superior learning experience for all. An inclusive environment clearly benefits all. Engaging with languages in their studies and classes opens up new ways of knowledge production for students. For instance, in a recent seminar activity on the topic of wellbeing for language teachers, my class explored two Japanese concepts as part of the seminar activity. This led to an interesting discussion on what other wellbeing concepts there are in other languages and what we can learn from them.

Preparing students for the workplace

Furthermore, students need to be prepared for workplace requirements both linguistically and by building skills and connections through work-integrated learning (WIL). Learning activities that require students to research and engage with professional bodies are a good start to build awareness and language skills. This can then lead to learning activities and assessment practices that require industry project participation. For instance, Applied Linguistics and TESOL students at Macquarie University design language testing activities for English language schools as part of a unit I teach on language assessment.

In conclusion, setting up additional barriers to admission does not support students. What does support students is creating safe spaces with supportive interlocutors where they can simultaneously grow their linguistic repertoires, their disciplinary knowledge, and their workplace skills.

References

Bodis, A. (2017). International students and language: opportunity or threat? Language on the Move. Retrieved from https://languageonthemove.com/international-students-and-language-opportunity-or-threat/
Bodis, A. (2021). The discursive (mis) representation of English language proficiency: International students in the Australian media. Australian Review of Applied Linguistics, 44(1), 37-64.
Bodis, A. (2021). ‘Double deficit’ and exclusion: Mediated language ideologies and international students’ multilingualism. Multilingua, 40(3), 367-392. doi:doi:10.1515/multi-2019-0106
Bodis, A. (2023). Gatekeeping v. marketing: English language proficiency as a university admission requirement in Australia. Higher Education Research & Development, 1-15. doi:10.1080/07294360.2023.2174082
Bodis, A. (2023). Studying abroad is amazing, or is it? Language on the Move. Retrieved from https://languageonthemove.com/studying-abroad-is-amazing-or-is-it/
Piller, I., & Bodis, A. (2023). English Language Proficiency for Australian University Admission. YouTube. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUSqSSploSE
Piller, I., & Bodis, A. (2024). Marking and unmarking the (non)native speaker through English language proficiency requirements for university admission. Language in Society, 53(1), 1-23. doi:10.1017/S0047404522000689
Piller, I., Bodis, A., Butorac, D., Cho, J., Cramer, R., Farrell, E., . . . Quick, B. (2023). Submission to the Joint Standing Committee on Migration Inquiry into ‘Migration, Pathway to Nation Building’. Canberra: Parliament of Australia. Retrieved from https://www.aph.gov.au/DocumentStore.ashx?id=8c0d9316-2281-4594-9c7b-079652683f54&subId=735264

Image from a university website

“An amazing student experience awaits you!” – “a multicultural vibrant experience” in a “stunning landscape” covered by “year-round sunshine.”

These phrases do not come from a tourist brochure, but the websites of Australian universities. They are accompanied by stunning images of urban or natural landscapes and aim to attract international students.

International education is often hailed as a way to keep economies growing as higher education has shifted towards a commercialized model. However, the efforts to increase enrolment numbers are also accompanied by worries that in the haste to attract more students, the admission requirements – in particular that of English language proficiency – are lowered.

Gatekeeping

Countries built on immigration are looking to recover the immigration loss caused by the pandemic years and the ensuing border restrictions. A new proposal to overhaul the Australian visa system has attracted attention as the country is forecast to grow by 715,000 from 2022 to 2024.

International students are affected, of course, as student visas and possible immigration pathways attached to students visas are discussed in the report. In particular, the English language requirements for admission into university courses are recommended to be raised from a “low base” of Band 5.5 on the International English Language Testing System (IELTS) to be able to meet the language demands of the labour market after graduation.

We have addressed this deficit approach to international students before. Recent research by Ingrid Piller and I on university admission requirements found that English language proficiency requirements maintain exclusionary practices of international students by setting up the binary categories of tested and ‘inherent’ English language proficiency (read more about it here).

But how do universities reconcile these two opposing forces of, on the one hand, needing to attract international students for commercial reasons, and on the other, setting up linguistic requirements as a gatekeeping mechanism?

An idealized lifestyle

To answer this question, in my recently published paper at Higher Education Research & Development, I turned to university websites. I wanted to explore what role language plays in the admission process caught between these two opposing forces. And how does it affect the communication of English language proficiency requirements to prospective international applicants. The analysis went beyond looking at content and text and included the multimodal features of the websites: naming and positioning of webpages, the visuals accompanying the texts and, of course, the language use of the English language proficiency requirement webpages.

Image from a university website

I found that the language use, which ranged from highly formal to conversational, references the authority of the law, thus adds objectivity and authority to the requirements. The paper provides an analysis of how the generic features of legal language use are applied to the educational context and interact with marketing discourses.

The visuals on these webpages create a different effect, though.

They serve to depict an idealized student lifestyle to which English language proficiency is a vehicle. The pictures and videos on the websites analysed depict students engaging in various social situations and leisure activities such as shopping, eating out or engaging in activities at the beach. The participants in these activities are depicted in engaging in intercultural situations (indexed by looks of various ethnicities) and enjoying each other’s company, communicating with ease.

In reality, these are activities international students report to struggle with because of social isolation or the difficulty to use English in everyday situations. These visuals of ‘success’ legitimize the English language proficiency requirements, where participants become role models or protagonists in a video footage.

What effect does this representation have on the concept of English language proficiency used as an admission requirement?

A simplified English language proficiency and an accessible student experience

Firstly, English language proficiency gets simplified through the objectivity of simple numerical scores and the authority of legal discourse. After all, if the university policy states that an IELTS Band 6 is  adequate to study in English and the students have this level, they should have no problem with their studies or socialization – a view commonly held.

At the same time, the website visuals communicate a desirable student experience. This is both a misrepresentation of the language proficiency needed for further studies, which in fact all students need to develop, not just internationals, and the realities of the international student experience.

As much as we would appreciate “year-round sunshine”, we need to acknowledge that the weather in Australia is more nuanced than that.

Likewise, university admission requirement communication should indicate that English language proficiency is not a fixed ‘product’ described by the applicant’s IELTS score but rather a process, and acknowledge that discipline-specific language proficiency may need to be developed by all students during their studies.

References

Bodis, A. (2023). Gatekeeping v. marketing: English language proficiency as a university admission requirement in Australia. Higher Education Research & Development. https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2023.2174082
Bodis, A. (2021). The discursive (mis) representation of English language proficiency: International students in the Australian media. Australian Review of Applied Linguistics, 44(1), 37-64.
Bodis, A. (2021). ‘Double deficit’ and exclusion: Mediated language ideologies and international students’ multilingualism. Multilingua, 40(3), 367-392. doi:doi:10.1515/multi-2019-0106
Piller, I., & Bodis, A. (2022). Marking and unmarking the (non)native speaker through English language proficiency requirements for university admission. Language in Society. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0047404522000689

(Image credit: Mana Akbarzadegan via Unsplash)

When Muhammad* applied for admission to a postgraduate degree at an Australian university, he was asked to show evidence of his English language proficiency. Acceptable evidence included achieving a specific score on a commercial language test such as IELTS or TOEFL. Muhammad was upset to discover that none of the following counted as acceptable evidence of his English language proficiency: that all his prior education had been through the medium of English, that he was employed as university lecturer in the English department of a university in Bangladesh, and that he had published fictional and non-fictional writing in English.

Marlene* from Germany also applied to a postgraduate degree at an Australian university. She hardly noticed that English language proficiency constituted an admission criterion. The fact that she had studied English as a Foreign Language at higher level for her high school certificate meant that proof of her English language requirement was waived. English had never been the medium of education in her prior education. Outside her English language classroom, she has no experience with public speaking in English, nor with academic writing in English.

By most counts, Muhammad would be considered a more proficient speaker of English than Marlene. Yet the English language proficiency requirements of the university they applied to constructed Muhammad’s English as problematic and Marlene’s English as above board.

How are such decisions made? Why do some applicants need to take a test while others do not?

How do universities decide whose English needs to be tested for admission?

In new research just published in Language in Society, Agnes Bodis and I examine the English language proficiency requirements of Australian universities to answer these questions.

Language testing is often assumed to be only relevant for language learners. But who is a learner and who is not? The stories of Muhammad and Marlene show that this is not a trivial question. What made Muhammad a learner and Marlene a speaker according to university regulations?

Everyone agrees that the old concepts of “native” and “non-native” speakers are no longer valid. Yet, implicitly, a distinction that is very similar to this binary is made every time someone is required to sit a language test.

(Image credit: Nguyen Dang Hoang Nhu via Unsplash)

The language of those who are required to sit a test is subjected to scrutiny. Those who have the requirement waived get a free pass.

Inherent English versus tested English

English language requirements for university admission create a language binary between “inherent English” and “tested English.”

Inherent English is the language of those who are exempt from testing.

Australian universities grant exemptions based on a mélange of criteria related to citizenship, education, and heritage. For example, to be recognized as having an “English-speaking background” and hence not having to sit a test, one policy requires two pieces of evidence from two different sets: one needs to be a citizenship document (“birth certificate, passport, arrival documents to establish residency”) and the other a portfolio of documents providing evidence of schooling, work, and residency. Curiously, the latter may include utility bills, tax notices, and medical records, as well as a letter of reference from “a person with standing in the community.” Examples of such persons include “a school principal or teacher, doctor or pharmacist, a local manager, community leader, social worker or sporting coach who know the person’s family.” (quoted from Piller&Bodis, 2022)

How does any of this establish evidence of English language proficiency you might ask? Well, it doesn’t; but it shows that language proficiency assessments are never about language alone. Language assessments are always also about identity.

The deficient English of those who are required to have their English tested

Inherent English is about having the right citizenship, the right education, or the right heritage. Anyone who falls short on these criteria, is required to sit an English language test.

Whether English language proficiency will need to be evidenced by a score on a language test is determined through a process of elimination. Those who do not meet the specific citizenship, education, and heritage criteria are relegated to the left-over basket of those who need to be tested. This engulfs them in a deficit perspective, expressed in “not”-rules: “if you are not […], then “you will be required to demonstrate English language proficiency in the form of an English test.”

Tested English is completely different from inherent English: it is reduced to the pseudo-objectivity of a numerical score, and even comes with an expiry date.

My TOEFL test scores expired. I can no longer speak, write, or understand English.

— Hamza (@hamza_azhar) July 31, 2020

Binary Englishes map onto binary identities

These two types of English – inherent English and tested English – map onto two different speaker groups.

Inherent English is accorded to most domestic applicants, applicants with passports from some Anglophone countries, applicants with certain educational credentials (mostly IB graduates, but also some specific high school certificates, as in Marlene’s case), and a medley of heritage criteria.

Inherent English maps most closely on the identity of the white native-speaker citizen construct. But not quite: it becomes blurred by the inclusion of citizens from Black majority states in the Caribbean (who, in actual fact, rarely apply to study at Australian universities) or those with certain educational credentials from outside the Anglosphere.

While the identity of those who are deemed to inherently speak English becomes blurred, its Other is cast into clear relief: the Asian non-native speaker non-citizen.

Objective language proficiency without identity?

Language proficiency constructs are always both about language and identity. The field of language assessment has been striving for objectivity by rejecting the identity component and focusing solely on language.

Whose English should be tested before admission? (Image credit: Dom Fou via Unsplash)

University admission requirements share this pretense to objectivity. The objectification of tested language is achieved through a convoluted set of regulations that can be expected to stand up to any legal challenges as long as they are applied consistently. However, this objectification of language proficiency has not made the identity component disappear. On the contrary, identity remains baked into universities’ constructs of English language proficiency through citizenship, education, and heritage criteria.

Implications for inclusion

Universities regularly deplore individuals’ lived experiences of exclusion and divisions within their student body. A major division in Australian universities is between domestic and international students. Yet our research suggests that admission requirements contribute to maintaining the ways of seeing that undergird these exclusions. Universities could contribute to dismantling these binaries, first, by uncoupling citizenship and heritage criteria from the language proficiency construct, and, second, by conceptualizing academic language and communication as a gradient which requires ongoing development for all students.

To succeed after admission both Muhammad and Marlene, as all their peers, will need ongoing support to develop their academic literacies.

*These names are pseudonyms.

Reference

Piller, I., & Bodis, A. (2022). Marking and unmarking the (non)native speaker through English language proficiency requirements for university admission. Language in Society, 1-23. doi:10.1017/S0047404522000689 [open access]

Also relevant

Bodis, A. (2017). International students and language: opportunity or threat? Language on the Move. Retrieved from https://languageonthemove.com/international-students-and-language-opportunity-or-threat/
Bodis, A. (2021). The discursive (mis) representation of English language proficiency: International students in the Australian media. Australian Review of Applied Linguistics, 44(1), 37-64.
Bodis, A. (2021). ‘Double deficit’ and exclusion: Mediated language ideologies and international students’ multilingualism. Multilingua, 40(3), 367-392. doi:doi:10.1515/multi-2019-0106
Piller, I. (2001). Who, if anyone, is a native speaker? Anglistik: Mitteilungen des Verbandes Deutscher Anglisten, 12(2), 109-121.
Piller, I. (2002). Passing for a native speaker: identity and success in second language learning. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 6(2), 179-206. [full access] ]]> https://languageonthemove.com/how-do-universities-decide-whose-english-needs-to-be-tested-for-admission/feed/ 46 24633 https://languageonthemove.com/partner-language-requirements-and-new-borders-for-family-life/ https://languageonthemove.com/partner-language-requirements-and-new-borders-for-family-life/#comments Tue, 16 Feb 2021 22:07:55 +0000 https://www.languageonthemove.com/?p=23346

Australia Day Parade Melboure (Image credit: Mitchell Luo on Unsplash)

In October 2020, the Australian government outlined budgetary plans to create language requirements for migrant partners seeking to remain in the country permanently. They would now need a ‘functional’ level of English and make a ‘reasonable’ effort to learn English. A ‘reasonable’ effort would mean undertaking over 500 hours of (free) English classes over five years or pass an English test.

In this post, I outline the issues arising from this proposal informed by my previous relevant research in the UK.

The social dimension of language testing

Language testing and assessment, especially in relation to immigration and settlement, cannot be extricated from their social foundations and the prevailing political debates that contribute to their introduction.

In Australia language tests have long been used to distinguish between desirable and undesirable immigrants and citizens. The notorious Dictation Test implemented under the Immigration Restriction Act 1901 as part of the White Australia Policy, for instance, was administered to undesired arrivals and, in the form of a dictation test in a random European language, was almost impossible to pass.

I argue that the current migrant partner measures provide new iterations of this legacy under the guise of  “integration.”

The British experience with an English language test for partner visas

Perhaps the British context, where similar measures have been in place since 2012, may provide clues as to what the social consequences of the proposed policy might be. My comparison here is based on research I conducted between 2014 and 2016 as part of a research team for an ESRC (Economic and Social Research Council) funded project at the University of Leicester on the British citizenship test process.

In the UK, those seeking to re-unite with a non-EU partner must first demonstrate that they can earn a minimum salary of 18,000GBP per year. The partner must also pass an English test prior to arrival in the UK. This requirement obviously predominantly affects non-white families, as EU migrants and those from an English-dominant country such as Australia or the US are exempt from the requirement.

The English language test is highly onerous

Language testing prior to arrival in the UK is expensive and time-consuming. The testing process alone delays family reunification because gaining access to test centres can be arduous. In many countries, simply taking the test involves traveling to towns and cities far away from home. This generates costs on top of the exam fee and involves losses that accrue through time off work, as I show in Khan (2020).

Migrant language testing and assessment create borders

Whether through language testing or classes, injunctions are placed on migrants backed by legal and linguistic authority to regulate their access to rights and resources based on their language proficiency. These borders can extend the jurisdiction outside territories, as is the case in the UK, or enforced within them as is the case with the newly proposed measures in Australia. It also means that testers, institutions and teachers are on the front line of ‘border-work’ in implementing the measures.

Whether through territorially externalised borders or internalised bordering, the new Australian language requirements also create borders for families within families. The new proposals provide linguistic borders which replace existing recourse to rights and resources with conditionality. This is a key element of bordering practices and means the ‘assessed’ must fulfil the conditions to be ‘believed’ by the state and should they fail, they remain outside the border vulnerable to the harms caused by further exclusion.

Language tests for migration purposes discriminate against women

In our research on citizenship tests with over 150 participants we found consistently that those most negatively affected were women, usually mothers, from non-European countries. These women struggle to pass the test because they lack the means to improve their English while often dealing with childcare and domestic duties. This therefore demonstrates the intersectional nature in which language testing for migration purposes can exacerbate inequalities among those who are supposed to most benefit.

Language tests for family reunification are discriminatory

The new proposals are discriminatory in several intersecting ways. Firstly, the introduction of English language requirements immediately makes it more onerous for those from non-English dominant countries and becomes a racist proxy. Secondly, the time and expenses required, particularly in not being able to access the job market in the meantime, affects migrants in terms of socioeconomic means and class. Thirdly, women who are juggling several forms of care roles struggle the most. This is all before taking into consideration the role of literacy and level of education. All in all, the new language requirements are likely to exacerbate existing inequalities rather than eradicate them.

Everything that's wrong with the new #English #language requirement for a partner visa to #Australia

Explainer in short thread https://t.co/KN6WBENxTP

— Language on the Move (@Lg_on_the_Move) October 7, 2020

Reference

Khan, Kamran. (2020). Raciolinguistic border-making and the elasticity of assessment and believeability in the UK citizenship process. Ethnicities, 1468796820971441. doi:10.1177/1468796820971441

Related content

Faine, Miriam (2020). English language proficiency and national cohesion. Language on the Move.

The conference was funded by the Research Office of UNNC and the “Multilingualism: Empowering Individuals, Transforming Societies” (MEITS) project. MEITS is an enviably enormous research project funded by the UK’s Arts and Humanities Council drawing together researchers from the universities of Cambridge, Edinburgh, Nottingham and the Queen’s University, led by Prof Wendy Ayres-Bennett. It seeks to establish the value of multilingualism and language learning, as part of government efforts to stimulate language learning within the British education system. One of the project’s six strands focuses on language standardization, led by Prof McLelland (cf. her earlier co-edited volume Standardization: Studies from the Germanic Languages, 2002). This conference offered MEITS researchers a window into experiences of language standardization across many multilingual contexts in Asia. It also offered researchers from different disciplines a rare chance to come together and talk about overlapping research questions, methods and findings. The conference consisted of four keynotes and nineteen presentations (abstracts here). The scheduling allowed all participants to hear all the presentations, leading to a high degree of engagement and building good foundations for future collaborations.

One key theme was the multiplication of standards of a language, as opposed to standardization resulting in just one monolithic standard. Our first keynote, by Prof Anvita Abbi, described Standard Hindi as “not a point but a range”; there are many regional Hindis which are treated by speakers as the standard. She explained how this fits within a society where multilingualism is both normal and valued. Another keynote, by Chinese language policy expert Prof Minglang Zhou, explained how Standard Mandarin (i.e. Putonghua), like Hindi, has developed into clear regional varieties, and asked how the standardization process, which is aimed at reducing linguistic diversity, can in fact reduplicate it. Prof Feng’s speech also dealt with regional variation in Putonghua; he framed this diversity within 《大华语》(The Big Sinitic Language Group) a concept which accepts the existence of local Putonghua varieties, as well as other Mandarin topolects, within a hierarchical linguistic order topped by the national standard.

Prof Abbi’s keynote introduced a second key theme: the problem of “excessive standardization”, where attempts to disassociate the standard from any particular dialect may lead to an official variety that nobody can understand, and which is therefore rarely used. Through various presenters we heard illustrative examples, including in my own presentation, which showed how standardization marginalizes the Zhuang minority language in China, especially under conditions of marketization. Prof Feng’s presentation put this kind of standardization policy in context, explaining that minority language standardization itself follows a standard (and not necessarily responsive) procedure in China. It is a three-step process of standardising literacy/script, vocabulary, and then digital rendering (i.e. creating a type-able Unicode).

How it is that top-down policies can reach this extreme, where standardization becomes the end in itself, rather than a means to create a useful lingua franca (or other goals), can be explained by recalling how ideological language standardization is, as Prof Imtiaz Hasnain reminded us in another keynote. He presented South Asia as a place where language is just one way by which social information is conveyed, and where both societal and individual multilingualism are not chaotic socio-cultural accidents but intended and desired. He contrasted this to the monolingual and colonial mindset of top-down measures to define and promote one standard language.

Developing a standard language is often intertwined with developing language examination regimes, and the fourth keynote speaker, Dr Luo Lian, gave a insight into these dual processes in China. She compared the two official streams for testing Putonghua, the 民族汉语考试 (Ethnic Groups Han Language Exam: “MHK”) by which the Putonghua of first-language speakers of China’s official minority languages is assessed, and the 汉语水平考试 (Han Language Level Exam: “HSK”), by which the Putonghua of foreign learners is assessed. She found not only that the standard of literacy expected of minorities was much higher than that expected of foreigners, but also that using non-standard albeit popular expressions in these exams could be treated as evidence of language proficiency rather than as mistakes, especially by HSK markers. Kerim Friedman discussed the last decade’s elaborate testing regime for indigenous language proficiency in Taiwan – there are now 168 tests – and the mismatch between “teaching to the test” and teaching useful, living Pangcah, one of the most widely spoken of these languages. We were reminded that standard-setting, and testing against official standards, are key means by which states are able to “see” language diversity (following Scott 1998).

Another key theme across the conference was standardising orthography and script. Prof Abbi explained how many Indian language groups have considered the development of a standard written form of their as language empowering and crucial for schooling, which is in turn crucial for language maintenance. Another senior researcher, Prof Premsrirat, explained her group’s efforts to facilitate communities across Thailand developing their own standard orthographies and scripts, and the enormous pride and expressive facility that can result from such efforts. However, we did not shy away from discussing potentially deleterious impacts of standardization, including orthographic standardization erasing language variety, the politicization of orthography and script choices and how prioritising written standards can exhaust funding at the expense of supporting spoken language. Nor did we shy from discussing the factors that can restrict the enduring impact of standardization policies, such as creating a written standard but not creating avenues for it to be learnt.

In this vein, the theme of standardization as a process that minoritizes languages was explored. For example, Hiroyuki Suzuki and Gerald Roche each talked us through the top-down and grassroots processes of creating a Standard Tibetan. Their research shows these processes are leading to discursive invisibility for many languages in the Tibetic group, as well as many non-Tibetic languages with long histories of being spoken across the Tibetan Plateau, as well as contributing to actual language shift for many of these languages. These and other presentations – including Nick Palfreyman on sign language varieties in Indonesia and Ying Ding on Shibe in North-West China – noted the dynamics amongst speakers themselves, where participation in formal processes of standardization can empower certain speakers, certain varieties and certain imagined communities over others.

Finally, we also considered that various identities may not be readily performed in a standard language, instead utilising features associated with other language varieties and registers. Hui Zhao and Xiaomei Wang explored China’s Beijing and Tianjin dialects, respectively, from identity construction perspectives, Hideko Abe explained the deliberate, context-sensitive use of features associated with Japanese language’s gendered registers in transgender speakers’ identity constructions, and Patrick Heinrich introduced us to “dialect cosplay” by young Japanese who use features mined from previously stigmatized dialects to stylize their “boring” standard speech.

In sum, this was a stimulating conference program and those embarking on any standardization policies have a feast of food for thought! I encourage you to read the conference abstracts, as not all presenters are mentioned by name above, and share your thoughts in the comments section below. Stay tuned in 2018 for details of an edited publication based on this conference.

References:

Linn, A. R. and McLelland, N. (2002) Standardization: Studies from the Germanic Languages. Amsterdam; Philadelphia, PA, Benjamins.

Scott, J. C. (1998). Authoritarian High Modernism. Seeing like a state: how certain schemes to improve the human condition have failed (pp. 87-102). New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Miriam’s mother arrived as a refugee in New Zealand in 1939. She still remembers the kindness her family was shown.

Like many other Western countries, Australia is currently grappling with the global wave of refugees, together with the threat of terrorism. Although the Australian government has managed a very successful immigration and settlement program since the 1940s, the current conservative government and their supporters in the media, and especially the Minister for Immigration, Peter Dutton, have linked the risk of terrorism with new immigrant and refugee communities. A recent government policy change outlined in a document called ‘Strengthening the Test for Australian Citizenship’ proposes tough new barriers to achieving Australian citizenship, including an English level of IELTS Band 6.

Mr Dutton claims that “The Australian public wants to see an increase in the English language requirement, they want to see people meet Australian laws and Australian values”. However, there has been widespread opposition across the community to the changes in the English language requirement and the opposition Australian Labour Party has decided to oppose them, too.

There is no evidence that introducing more rigorous language testing and raising the bar for citizenship will support the successful integration or English language learning of immigrants or refugees; rather it may achieve the contrary. The language hurdles to citizenship proposed by Mr Dutton are unrealistic and overcoming them will be unachievable for many adults who arrive in Australia under different visa classes.  This policy will inevitably lead to two classes of permanent Australian residents, one of them an underclass without access to the privileges of citizenship.  Is this what the Australian government wants?

It is beyond question that English is the national language of Australia but we also need to recognize that Australia is characterized by high levels of linguistic diversity: Many current Australian citizens (including some indigenous ones) are not proficient or even competent in the national language.

In spite of this, successful contemporary democracies including Australia have flourished because of the contribution of diverse immigrants and, of course, the contributions of their children.

The evidence of Australia’s successful 70-year-old immigration program shows that such a new English language test is not necessary.  Many Australian citizens originating from non-Anglophone countries would never have passed the proposed test and may still not have ‘proficient’ English after many years in Australia. Yet their hard work – and their brain power – have built modern Australia, and this has not been impeded by their less than perfect grasp of English.

They and their children will remember that this government, by imputation, has discounted that contribution.

People with limited English have successfully participated and still do participate in workplaces and communities.  We should not conflate formal education with life skills, as the independent Senator Jacqui Lambie has argued in the Australian parliament. The millions of migrants and refugees who built post-war Australia learnt their English through immersion in communities and workplaces that afforded opportunities for participation and inclusion; as they used to say out at the Ford motor car factory in Broadmeadows in Melbourne: ‘we didn’t learn English but we learnt to speak Ford’.

Rather than making full inclusion in the Australian community provisional on first knowing English, the sociolinguistic evidence shows it is the other way round: newcomers learn English through participation in the Australian workforce and community when and were they are welcomed, appreciated and involved. And Australia does have a proud record in this regard.

Lack of education and the challenges of adult language learning are reasons why many current Australian citizens are not fluent in English after many years living and working here, including those who have attended English language classes.  In spite of this, their dedication to Australia is, or should be, beyond question. Learning a language formally as an adult is a difficult process, as many of us have experienced.  It is particularly difficult if a learner has limited education in his or her own countries, because of poverty, or war, or displacement.

When Prime Minister Turnbull claims that imposing the test is ‘doing people a favour’ he has not understood that when migrants and refugees fail to acquire English, it is not for want of trying. Most are eager to learn English and willingly attend ESL classes. But adult second language learning does not progress at a steady pace from zero to proficient, even when learners have high levels of motivation and convenient tuition available.  Rather, individual learners ‘stabilise’ at different points along the continuum, very often before reaching the kind of ‘proficiency’ measured by level 6 of the proposed test (International English Language Testing System or IELTS).

IELTS Band 6 requires English skills far beyond those required for everyday participation in the wider community; essay writing for example. IELTS (including the ‘general’ IELTS) was designed to test formal ‘school’ English skills, and therefore discriminates against migrants with limited education, such as refugees and humanitarian arrivals. It also discriminates against women who have missed out on basic schooling due to gender discrimination or poverty in their country of origin.

It seems highly likely that many applicants for citizenship would fail the proposed test.  In fact, many Australians  – including citizens by birth – would not succeed in reaching this level yet have sufficient language skills for social engagement and employment. Its validity in the context of citizenship testing is therefore highly questionable.

In effect, the government is proposing that immigrants and refugees from non-English speaking countries demonstrate mastery of English far beyond that required in everyday life and intends to link such a level of English to the assessment of who is a desirable citizen. The implications of the proposed change for our understanding of what is means to be Australian and what kind of country Australia is are highly disturbing.  Multiculturalism, a policy that has served Australia well for two generations, is now apparently no longer an Australian value.

Australia: The White Man’s Land (Source: NLA)

Australia has a proud national narrative of migration and multiculturalism. It also has an equally prevalent history of exclusionary and discriminatory migration policy. Perhaps the most famous is its “White Australia Policy”, which sought to restrict the migration of “non-European” people. While the Australian government still uses language tests for a variety of visas, the Immigration Restriction Act 1901 implemented a race- and colour-based approach through what is perhaps Australia’s most infamous language policy. Section 3 (a) of the Act prohibited the immigration of:

Any person who when asked to do so by an officer fails to write out at dictation and sign in the presence of an officer a passage of fifty words in length in an European language directed by the officer.

This law was used, up until 1958, to restrict the migration of “undesirable” people, including anyone who was visibly non-white. This was achieved by the immigration official choosing a language which they expected would be unknown to the would-be migrant.

What is particularly striking when looking at the law is that there is no explicit mention of the discriminatory way in which it would be implemented. This is even clearer when compared with the laws that proceeded it, such as the Coloured Races Restriction Bills (passed in various parts of Australia) and the Chinese Act 1881 (Victoria). Debates in Parliament in the lead-up to the Act’s creation indicate that the test would not apply to “qualified European immigrants” and that officers were to intentionally choose a language that the unwanted immigrants would not know (Crock & Berg 2011). Yet, there was clearly a desire to present the legislation itself in a much more neutral form than previous statute, balancing the need for diplomacy with Asia against ongoing white-centrism (Mason 2014).

Shohamy (2006) introduces the idea of hidden or “de facto” language policies that accompany official policy. In the case of the Immigration Restriction Act, it is clear that while the official policy (as presented in the law) seems to be aimed solely at the need for immigrants to speak a European language in this new “European” country, the way the Act was implemented indicated that covert policy hinged less on issues of language and much more on race. Thus the language test here is used politically, as a “two-edged sword” made to include some, at the exclusion of others (McNamara 2012).

In some cases, the White Australia Policy separated the Asian spouses and children of Australian citizens, sometimes leading to public outcry and successful lobbying by their local communities. For example, in the 1940s, the Jacobs, an Indonesian family, fled Australia after the arrival of the Japanese military in their home region. After Samuel Jacob died in an accident, Annie, his wife, and children were left stranded. When the war ended and the Australian government sought to expel Asian evacuees, Annie and her children were desperate to stay and fought their repatriation. An Australian citizen, Jack O’Keefe took the family in and married Annie. The Immigration Department denied that this gave the family any rights to reside in Australia, and insisted that they must be repatriated. It was only thanks to significant lobbying from the local community, and with the assistance of media support, that the O’Keefes successfully challenged the application of the White Australia policy in the High Court.

Directions for applying the dictation test (Source: NAA)

In other cases the policy was used against persons who were deemed unworthy of citizenship on apparently moral grounds, as was the case for Mabel Freer. Born in India, Freer was a white, English-speaking British subject, who was coming to Australia to marry her Australian lover, who intended to divorce his first wife. Her lover’s family were unhappy about the impending divorce and must have been well-connected within the government, because Freer was made to do the dictation test in Italian to prevent her from remaining in Australia.

However, the case that caught the public’s attention more than any other involved the application of the dictation test on an educated, white European, for clearly political reasons. In 1934, Egon Kisch, a communist writer and activist, came to Australia to speak at a series of anti-Fascism rallies. Following instructions from the British secret service, the Australian government sought to deport him by using the dictation test. Although Kisch was literate in several European languages, including English, he was made to do the dictation test in Scottish Gaelic, so that he would fail. In this highly publicized case, Kisch and his supporters challenged the use of the test in the High Court. Kisch was ultimately successful, but only because the Court ruled that Scottish Gaelic was not a European language for the purposes of the Act (Mason 2014).

Over time, the language of the Parliament changed. By the 1950s, the public seemed to have less of a taste for policy that was explicitly racist in its aims and language. Yet, once again, the way law was implemented maintained its race-based focus, simply operating in an increasingly covert manner. Previously classified (confidential) government communications, stored in the Australian National Archives, show that while the official language of migration policy becomes more progressive over time, the covert policy may take some time to catch up. The language of private Immigration Department communications in the 1950s remained very much the same as it had been in the past.

One particularly interesting case is that of would-be migrants, the Ioannou family from Greece.  In a de-classified 1955 memorandum to the Minister, the Acting Secretary, A. L. Nutt sets out the “behind-the-scenes” policy in clearly race-based terms. The Ioannou family’s application had been rejected “because the husband was dark skinned” and there was some concern that this could cause controversy, if it meant that the policy was publicly viewed at restricting Europeans on the grounds of colour.

Nutt responded:

In years gone by it used to be the practice to refer quite openly…to the “coloured” races and the preference for “white” people. Since the war, with growing awareness both here and in Asia, we have, of course, dropped such terms from our official vocabulary and we speak of “non-Europeans” or, where suitable, “Asians”.

This change in terms was not, however…accompanied by any corresponding change in policy which has continued to be that a person who, whether by cast of feature or by the colour of his skin or by mode of living, is not readily “assimilable” here, should not be admitted for permanent residence. The implicit assumption is that Australians would regard a very dark-skinned person as being “non-European” just as much as they would a person who has the cast of features of a negro or Chinese.

Egon Erwin Kisch in Australia (Source: Wikipedia)

Nutt also draws support from contemporary media discourse, which had criticised the arrival of ships “carrying very dark Cypriots, Lebanese and Greeks”. He then goes on to argue that suitable European-ness is connected closely to whiteness, explaining that the policy is that “anyone who in appearance shows any marked departure from the ‘white’ European type, should be refused entry… even though they and their families may have lived in Europe for generations”. He notes that since applicants are not generally provided with reasons for rejection, there was no need to mention the colour bar, “whatever suspicion our individual decisions may arouse”.

This communication raises two important issues. Firstly, the giving of reasons may provide some ground upon which to challenge migration decisions. Having said that, the earlier lesson of the dictation test shows that legal mechanisms can be used for ulterior reasons. Further, while reasons are more commonly given now, applicants for a number of visas even today have no right to reasons (for example, family-sponsored humanitarian visas). Secondly, this is a clear example of how publicly available law and policy may depart significantly from the confidential instructions given to officials. Decisions may appear to align closely with official policy, however there may be other guidance or influence at play which external investigators can only guess at.

While noting the general advances in official migration law and policy over time, we should ask what the “hidden policy” is today. And just as Nutt suggests back in 1955, in many cases we can only rely on “whatever suspicion individual decisions may arouse”, especially given the concerted lack of transparency in parts of the current regime. It is possible that much will remain guess work, until such time when some future researchers will have access to the de-classified files from 2015 and have their turn to – perhaps – experience shock at the covert policies behind our current migration regime.

References

Crock, M. & Berg, L. (2011). Immigration, Refugees and Forced Migration: Law, policy and practice in Australia, Annandale: The Federation Press.

Mason, K. (2014). The saga of Egon Kisch and the White Australia Policy. Bar News: The Journal of the New South Wales Bar Association, (Summer), 64-67.

McNamara, T. (2012). Language Assessments as Shibboleths: A Poststructuralist Perspective Applied Linguistics, 33 (5), 564-581 DOI: 10.1093/applin/ams052

Shohamy, E. (2006). Language Policy: Hidden agendas and new approaches, London & New York: Routledge.

Trial by fire depicted in a medieval manuscript (Source: Wikipedia)

In the Middle Ages those suspected of witchcraft were often subjected to a ‘trial by fire’ to prove their innocence or guilt. The idea was that fire was a divine manifestation and hence the ordeal of being burnt would result in harm only for those consorting with the devil while sparing the innocent (Russell 1972). Today, we know that the only way to escape the ordeal of being burnt unscathed is not to be subjected to it in the first place.

Trial by fire gradually disappeared and was banned by the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215. Many theologians, priests and lawyers of the time came to regard trial by fire as superstitious, and began to prefer ‘more rational’ linguistic methods such as confessions and cross-examinations. The New England Puritans even found a way to have their cake and eat it, too: a linguistic ordeal.

This linguistic ordeal was basically a test of public speaking: a person accused of witchcraft was asked to recite the Lord’s Prayer in the courtroom. The assumption was that a witch was so beholden to the devil that they would not be able to say the Lord’s Prayer correctly and that, if they tried to, god would confuse their tongue.

What could go wrong you may think? At a time when Christianity was practically universal and people learnt to say the Lord’s Prayer before they learnt to speak properly, surely reciting the Lord’s Prayer was not a big deal. At first glance, it does sound like a better way for a suspect to prove their innocence of witchcraft than being burnt and suffering no harm.

However, this is not what the court records tell us. Suspects asked to recite the Lord’s Prayer failed just as often as those subjected to burning, and the conviction rate was hundred percent. The Salem witchcraft trials, for instance, report many cases of accused witches who could not recite the Lord’s Prayer; but not a single case of an accused who could recite it.

What went wrong?

To begin with, it was entirely up to the court to decide what constituted a correct recital. For instance, one suspect failed the test because he was heard to say ‘hollowed be thy name’ instead of ‘hallowed be thy name’ (Young 1989, p. 258).

Circa 1692, The trial of George Jacobs for witchcraft at the Essex Institute in Salem, Massachusetts. (Photo by MPI/Getty Images)

Second, circumstances in the court often were chaotic with the supposed victims of witchcraft present and presenting with fits and convulsions. As a 20^th century analyst put it: ‘anyone might make a mistake reciting the Lord’s Prayer, particularly if the floor was covered with screaming, convulsive girls’ (Erikson; quoted in Young 1989, p. 250). This was obviously not an ideal context for a performance in public speaking: the suspects were often poorly educated peasant and servant people, with no experience in public speaking whatsoever. Even if they were not afraid to speak up in public, knowing how much was at stake was surely enough to induce a bad case of nerves.

A man named John Willard, who was executed in New England for witchcraft on August 19, 1692, for instance, tried to say the Lord’s Prayer again and again but simply could not, as the trial records report (the transcript is from the Salem Witchcraft Papers at the University of Virginia website; I’ve edited the text to make it more readable):

Willard: I am as innocent as the child that is now to be born.

Juror: Can you pray the Lord’s Prayer?

Willard: Yes.

Juror: Let us hear you.

(He stumbled at the threshold and said ‘Maker of Heaven and Earth.’ He began again and missed.)

Willard: It is a strange thing, I can say it at another time. I think I am bewitched as well as they. (And laughed) [‘they’ is a reference to the women and children, the supposed victims of witchcraft, who were convulsing on the floor]

(Again he missed. Again he missed and cried well this is a strange thing I cannot say it. Again he tried and missed.)

Willard: Well it is these wicked ones that do so overcome me. [‘these wicked ones’ is a reference to the women and children, the supposed victims of witchcraft, convulsing on the floor.]

Juror: Well say what you will confess.

Willard: I am as innocent as the child unborn.

Juror: Do you not see God will not suffer you to pray to him? Are not you sensible of it?

John Willard was the former constable of Salem and court proceedings were not an unfamiliar context to him. For most of the accused this was different. In addition to failing nerves, some suspects failed the test because they did not speak English. This was the case with Ann Goody Glover, who was executed for witchcraft in Boston on November 16, 1688.

Cotton Mather (Source: Wikipedia)

Ann Glover was an Irish native, who was swept up in Cromwell’s invasion of Ireland in 1649-50 and was one of ca. 50,000 Irish men and women who were sold into slavery in Barbados (O’Callaghan 2000). From Barbados she somehow made her way to Boston, where she found herself in the 1680s as a domestic servant. When the children in the family for who she worked fell sick, she was accused of witchcraft and was examined by the famous Cotton Mather himself; the man who is often seen as the architect of the Salem Witch Trials.

In his treatise Memorable providences, relating to witchcraft and possessions Mather notes that she ‘refused’ to speak English:

The Court could receive Answers from her in none but the Irish, which was her Native Language; although she understood the English very well, and had accustomed her whole Family to none but that Language in her former Conversation. [Here and elsewhere: spelling and punctuation adapted]

It is, of course, impossible to know what Ann Glover’s proficiency in English was; while she may have understood it ‘very well,’ as Mather claims, the circumstances of her life make it unlikely that she would have had much productive proficiency in English. She certainly was unable to recite the Lord’s Prayer in English:

An Experiment was made, whether she could recite the Lord’s Prayer; and it was found, that though clause after clause was most carefully repeated unto her, yet when she said it after them that prompted her, she could not possibly avoid making Nonsense of it, with some ridiculous Depravations. (Mather)

At any rate, ‘two honest and faithful men that were interpreters’ were engaged for her. After cross-examination through these interpreters, of which Mather only relates that it was ‘long,’ Ann Glover finally confessed to witchcraft and pleaded guilty.

Despite her confession, doubts seem to have remained, particularly in regards to her intellectual and mental fitness to stand trial. Mather relates the examination that ensued as follows:

To make all clear, the Court appointed five or six Physicians one evening to examine her very strictly, whether she were not crazed in her Intellectuals, and had not procured to herself by Folly and Madness the Reputation of a Witch. Diverse hours did they spend with her; and in all that while no Discourse came from her, but what was pertinent and agreeable: particularly, when they asked her, “What she thought would become of her soul?” she replied “You ask me a very solemn Question, and I cannot well tell what to say to it.” She owned herself a Roman Catholic; and could recite her Pater Noster [=Lord’s Prayer] in Latin very readily; but there was one Clause or two always too hard for her, whereof she said, “She could not repeat it, if she might have all the world.” In the up-shot, the Doctors returned her Compos Mentis; and Sentence of Death was passed upon her.

Memorial plaque for Ann Glover

That Ann Glover would have been able to speak Latin may seem out of character until one remembers that the language of the Catholic Church and Catholic prayer was Latin until well into the second half of the 20^th century. It would not have been at all unusual for an illiterate Irish peasant to have memorized the central prayer of her faith in the Latin language. It is also likely that she had learnt the Lord’s Prayer in one single chunk, and it is unlikely that being able to recite the Lord’s Prayer meant that she could segment it. The latter becomes clear from the fact that – despite her proficient recital, as Mather notes – ‘there was one Clause or two always too hard for her.’

The Catholic and Protestant versions of the Lord’s Prayer differ by precisely ‘one Clause or two.’ The closing doxology ‘For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever and ever’ (Latin: ‘Quia tuum est regnum, et potestas, et Gloria, in saecula.’) is part of the Lord’s Prayer in most Protestant versions but is absent from the Catholic version. Repeating a random sentence in a foreign language is incredibly difficult, and so it is not surprising that Ann Glover could not do it in English nor Latin.

The Reverend George Burroughs on trial for witchcraft

In sum, the prayer test was little different from trial by fire: there was always a catch; and, just as with the fire ordeal, the only way to ‘pass’ the prayer test was not to be subjected to it. The only possible outcome was failure.

In fact, not everyone who came under suspicion of witchcraft was subjected to the prayer test; and it may well be that those who could have been expected to pass it, were not subjected to it. The latter conclusion could be drawn on the basis of the case of George Burroughs, the only minister to be executed for witchcraft in Salem. George Burroughs was not subject to the prayer test. However, he delivered the prayer ‘perfectly’ before he was hanged; it did nothing to save his life.

Mr. Burroughs was carried, through the streets of Salem to Execution; when he was upon the Ladder, he made a Speech for the clearing of his Innocency, with such Solemn and Serious Expressions, as were to the Admiration of all present; his Prayer (which he concluded by repeating the Lord’s Prayer) was so well worded, and uttered with such composedness, and such (at least seeming) fervency of Spirit, as was very affecting, and drew Tears from many (so that is seemed to some that the Spectators would hinder the Execution). (Robert Calef’s More Wonders of the Invisible World; quoted from Salem Witch Trials)

References

O’Callaghan, S. (2000). To Hell or Barbados: The Ethnic Cleansing of Ireland. Dublin: The O’Brien Press.

Russell, J. B. (1972). Witchcraft in the Middle Ages. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Young, M. M. (1989). Comment: The Salem Witch Trials 300 Years Later: How Far Has the American Legal System Come? How Much Further Does It Need to Go? Tulane Law Review, 64, 234-258

Nanai/Hezhe children (Source: Wikipedia)

We have often examined here on Language on the Move how ‘English for all’ educational policies entrench inequality rather than alleviate disadvantage (e.g., here or here). But how does this play out in the real-life experiences of real people? Today I would like to introduce Wei Ru to you, a young woman from China. Wei Ru is the pseudonym of a research participant in Jenny Zhang’s PhD research.

In 2004, Wei Ru was in her final year of senior high school in a rural area of Heilongjiang province in northern China and preparing for the gaokao (高考; ‘big test,’ China’s national university entrance exam). Wei Ru is a member of an ethnic group called Nanai or Hezhe. These are an indigenous people of Siberia and have traditionally lived along the middle reaches of the Amur River Valley, an area where, today, the Amur River constitutes the border between China and Russia. Consequently, the Nanai, as they are known in Russia, and the Hezhe, as they are known in China, have been divided between these two countries and today constitute a very small minority in both countries: in 2000, there were about 12,000 Nanai in Russia and 4,500 in China. Of these, only around 5,000 speakers of the Nanai/Hezhe language remained in Russia in the first decade of the 21^st century, and only twenty in China. All twenty were elderly, and Wei Ru was not one of them.

Wei Ru has spoken Chinese all her life and has been educated through the medium of Chinese. Additionally, Wei Ru has spent many years learning Russian both formally and informally. Throughout her childhood and youth there were many Russian language learning opportunities available in Wei Ru’s home town: there is a brisk cross-border trade and Russian visitors to the town are a regular occurrence, as are visits to the Russian side of the border. In school, Russian was an important part of the curriculum. Russian teachers were highly qualified and the students enjoyed learning Russian because it was well-taught and was of obvious relevance to their lives. Furthermore, for Wei Ru, who is passionate about her Hezhe heritage, Russian carried additional significance as the language that allowed her to connect with the Nanai on the other side of the border. To her, it is almost as if Russian had become the ethnic language of the Nanai/Hezhe.

Throughout her schooling, Wei Ru had been an outstanding student: she scored on top of her class in most subjects and expected to gain university admission in a prestigious university and in her preferred major. However, when China became a member of the World Trade Organization in 2001 and won its bid to host the 2008 Beijing Olympics the same year, university admission regulations in China changed dramatically. The English language component of the gaokao, became much more important than it had previously been and the value of test scores in other languages, including Russian, decreased dramatically. Furthermore, English became an entry requirement for the most desirable majors, such as those in business, law, science and technology.

The 2004 cohort of high school graduates in Wei Ru’s area was hit particularly hard: they had invested many years into studying Russian but English language instruction had not even been available to them. As Wei Ru said wistfully:

现在［学俄语］就成劣势了。现在完全是劣势了。本来我们高考可以打130／140分嘛，120多分其实［在我们那］完全就是中等水平了。然后结果如果是英语的话也就50多分吧，就那样。

It [learning Russian] has become such a disadvantage. An absolute disadvantage! We could have scored 130 or 140 [out of the full mark of 150] on the Russian test in the gaokao. Actually, 120 was only an average score for us. But in English we would only be able to get a score of 50. That is the fact. (Quoted from Zhang, 2011, p. 198f.)

Given these odds, many of Wei Ru’s classmates decided to repeat the final year of high school in order to catch up on English. Wei Ru and her family felt that repeating a year just to learn English was not worth it, particularly as the quality of English language teaching in Wei Ru’s hometown was low: when the high school curriculum changed from Russian to English, the only way to meet staffing levels was to deploy Russian teachers as English teachers. In the process, highly qualified Russian teachers in a well-resourced Russian language program were turned into poorly-qualified English language teachers in a poorly-resourced English language program.

As an outstanding student and given a bonus rating for ethnic minority students, Wei Ru still managed to secure admission to a minzu (民族; ‘nation’) university, i.e. a university specifically dedicated to the educational advancement of ethnic minority students. However, majors for which English proficiency had become an entry requirement were not available to her, and she enrolled in an anthropology degree.

When she spoke to Jenny Zhang in 2008 about her experiences of learning and using English in China, Wei Ru was still bitter about the way her lack of English proficiency had shaped her educational trajectory. Furthermore, as she pondered her future, English continued to loom large: English was an important part of her studies as many textbooks were in English and some of her classes were taught in English by foreign teachers. So, doing well in her studies depended on improving her English, an effort she considered an arbitrary imposition and consequently resented. Despite her best efforts it was almost impossible to catch up to the English level of her class mates, who had studied English throughout junior and senior high school.

After graduation, Wei Ru was hoping to return to her hometown and enter the public service. It is obvious that proficiency in Russian would be highly useful to a public servant in the Russian-Chinese border area but in order to achieve her ambition Wei Ru would have to sit yet another English test, as English – in contrast to Russian – is also a test subject on the public service entrance exam.

Chinese educational authorities have announced that, from 2017 onwards, the English component of compulsory testing will be reduced or even removed. Wei Ru’s case shows why this is a good thing.

Reference

Zhang, Jie. (2011). Language Policy and Planning for the 2008 Beijing Olympics: An Investigation of the Discursive Construction of an Olympic City and a Global Population. PhD, Macquarie University, Sydney.

Diversity in early childhood education: valued or silenced? (Source: easternct.edu)

Bilingual education presents a major conundrum in contemporary diverse societies: on the one hand, bilingualism and diversity more generally are applauded in many educational discourses and widely seen as a good thing; on the other hand, schooling is all about mainstreaming, and bilingual children are more likely to lose their home language at school than extend it.

This schizophrenic state is produced by the discrepancy between the desire to support diversity and the trend towards an ever-increasing focus on standardized assessment, year-group performance targets and league tables. Contemporary educational policies often celebrate diversity and may well support bilingual learning. However, standardized assessment, year-group performance targets and league tables undermine diversity and bilingual learning and can be highly damaging to the academic achievement of minority students.

The British Statutory Framework for learning in the early years offers a case in point. The Statutory Framework is mandatory for all British education providers catering to children up to the age of five. In its Introduction, the Statutory Framework espouses four foundational principles, three of which highlight the diversity of children: ‘every child is a unique child;’ ‘children learn and develop well in enabling environments, in which their experiences respond to their individual needs;’ and ‘children develop and learn in different ways and at different rates.’

Before you read on, take a moment to reflect what ‘the individual needs’ of ‘the unique child’ might be in a linguistically diverse society. Are you thinking that all children should get the opportunity to experience different languages in early education? Are you thinking that children with a home language other than English should get the opportunity to develop both English and the home language? Are you thinking that a childcare provider should have measures in place that value all languages and promote linguistic diversity?

The Statutory Framework suggests that ‘providers must take reasonable steps to provide opportunities for children to develop and use their home language in play and learning, supporting their language development at home’ (p. 9) but offers no guidance what such ‘reasonable steps’ might be. However, even this limited vision of linguistic diversity in the early years is undermined in the assessment requirements. In fact, there is a fundamental contradiction between the recognition of children’s diversity and the requirement for the continuous assessment of child performance against learning targets. This contradiction is particularly explicit in the ‘communication and language’ area, a designated prime learning area. It is only English that is recognized as adequate performance in this area:

When assessing communication, language and literacy skills, practitioners must assess children’s skills in English. If a child does not have a strong grasp of English language, practitioners must explore the child’s skills in the home language with parents and/or carers, to establish whether there is cause for concern about language delay. (p. 9)

This assessment requirement equates ‘communication and language’ with English, and with English only. The assessment requirement effectively devalues all other languages, associating them with language delay and a deficit view.

What do these assessment requirements mean in practice in actual childcare centers? Education researchers Leena H. Robertson, Rose Drury and Carrie Cable, unsurprisingly, discovered that these assessment requirements undermine any form of bi- or multilingual provision in early childhood education. They found British childcare centers – including those that have multilingual teachers and staff – to be monolingual spaces where languages other than English are silenced.

Many childcare centers, in fact, employ bilingual teaching aides. However, the role of these teaching aides is so constrained both by the assessment requirements and their marginalized position vis-à-vis ‘regular’ early childhood educators that all they can hope to achieve is support children’s transition from home language to English. As one Urdu bilingual teaching aide interviewed by Robertson and her colleagues explained:

They’re losing everything. So if you had a little input of their first language, I think that would be a benefit for everybody; parents, families, schools and children because the more languages they have the better. […] Now all the children who’ve been through my time at let’s say [this school], not many of them are reading or writing their first language at all. (Robertson et al. 2014, p. 619)

For children who have a home language other than English this means that – rather than their individual needs being recognized and supported as those of ‘the unique child’– they are streamlined into monolingual children. For all children, irrespective of their home language, the silencing of languages other than English in this first institutional space they are likely to encounter in their lives is a lost opportunity.

The overall result is that the Statutory Framework creates the illusion that linguistic diversity is valued in early childhood education while simultaneously rendering languages other than English illegitimate and worthless forms of ‘communication and language’ for young children.

Robertson, L., Drury, R., & Cable, C. (2014). Silencing bilingualism: a day in a life of a bilingual practitioner International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 17 (5), 610-623 DOI: 10.1080/13670050.2013.864252

2014 NAPLAN Year 3 Numeracy test results by language status

In Australia the results of last year’s round of student and school performance on national standardized testing have just been published. As is the case each year since standardized testing was first introduced in 2008, the results of the National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy, or NAPLAN for short, throw up a strange anomaly with regard to language. As an example of this anomaly, let me quote from the summary of the national Year 3 results:

Across Australia, and in all jurisdictions except the Northern Territory, there is very little difference between these two groups [Language Background Other Than English vs. English Language Background] in the percentage of students who achieved below the national minimum standard in any achievement domain. In the Northern Territory, the proportion of students from a language background other than English who achieve below the national minimum standard across the five domains is generally three to five times as high as for students from an English language background. (p. 63)

How strange is that!? Language status makes no difference to literacy and numeracy performance in Australia overall but it makes a significant difference in the Northern Territory? How can this be?

Let’s start with the meaning of ‘Language Background Other Than English.’ Abbreviated as ‘LBOTE,’ it is part of the personal data collected about test takers and each test paper has a bubble to be shaded if ‘either the student or a parent/guardian speaks a language other than English at home.’

You do not have to be a social scientist or a linguist to see that this is a pointless category to have: a test taker who is considered ‘LBOTE’ could be someone who is a monolingual speaker of Standard English (with a parent who speaks another language), a bi- or multilingual speaker whose repertoire includes Standard English or some other form of English, and, finally, a monolingual speaker of a language other than English who has no proficiency in English whatsoever. In short, having ‘LBOTE’ status does not say anything about the proficiency of the test taker in Standard Australian English, the language in which the test is administered.

Because ‘LBOTE’ is a meaningless category, it is not surprising that it results in weird correlations: across Australia, there is little difference in the test results of ‘LBOTE’ and ‘non-LBOTE’ groups although ‘LBOTE’ students actually slight outperform ‘non-LBOTE’ students, particularly by Year 9 and particularly in mathematics. This situation is different only in the Northern Territory where ‘LBOTE’ students perform significantly lower than ‘non-LBOTE,’ as we have seen.

The obvious explanation is that most ‘LBOTE’ students across Australia are fluent bilinguals but that the situation is different in the Northern Territory, where most ‘LBOTE’ students are not proficient in English. We have discussed previously how NAPLAN testing discriminates against creole speakers in the Northern Territory.

Why do we accept a meaningless category such as ‘LBOTE’ to be used in national reporting and why do we put up with being presented with nonsensical correlations between ‘LBOTE’ status and academic performance year after year?

ANU linguists Sally Dixon and Denise Angelo found that NAPLAN is not alone but that data held by schools about the language status of their students are generally ‘dodgy,’ nonsensical and illogical. In a survey of 86 schools in Queensland they discovered that only two out of these 86 schools felt reasonably confident that the language data they held about their students were accurate. In addition to the ‘LBOTE’ status of NAPLAN test takers, schools also recorded a ‘main language other than English’ on enrollment in forms that were variously filled in by parents or administrators as they saw fit. If ‘main language other than English’ was left blank on the enrollment form, ‘English’ was sometimes entered on transfer into the database instead of a null response. Some students also received ‘English as an additional language or dialect’ status. This category was variously assessed by teachers if and when students seemed to have problems and funding for additional English language support was available.

These three categories were internally incoherent and did not match across categories in 84 out of 86 surveyed schools. This shocking finding is due to the fact that language-related categories are poorly defined, as we saw in the example of ‘LBOTE.’ It is also related to a general language blindness in schools, further evidence of the monolingual mindset of Australia’s multilingual schools. Furthermore, schools were particularly ‘language-blind’ when it came to indigenous children: creoles and contact varieties were not necessarily recognized as anything other than ‘English,’ even if judged to be ‘bad English.’ By the same token, some students with clear ethnic affiliations were categorized as speakers of the ethnic language irrespective of their proficiency in that language.

The overall consequence of all these ‘dodgy data’ floating around in relation to language is that educators come to see language as meaningless because it does not really distinguish between one group and another. Overall, ‘LBOTEs’ and ‘non-LBOTEs’ seem to perform more or less the same, and the same seems to be true of ‘MLOTEs’ (‘main language other than English,’ in case you have lost track) and ‘non-MLOTEs,’ and ‘EAL/Ds’ (‘English as an additional language or dialect’) and ‘non-EAL/Ds.’ However, it is not language that is meaningless as a factor in student performance. It is dodgy data that create this illusion. The very fact of proliferating data categories more or less referring to the same status will inevitably leave people confused and unwilling or unable to take ‘language’ seriously.

Language-related issues then become displaced onto race or socio-economic disadvantage. Educators and the general public fail to see a child needing English language support in order to achieve academically. Instead they see an aboriginal child achieving poorly. We then collectively throw up our hands in despair and decide that indigenous education is a problem that is too big and intractable to fix. Because there is nothing we can do, we might just as well ignore the problem for another year.

However, this is adding insult to injury. The misdiagnoses of the language-side of the academic failure of indigenous children are a significant part of the problem. A first step to address that problem would be to get our data in order. This entails compulsory language-related training or qualification requirements for Australia’s teachers, test designers and policy makers.

Reference

Dixon, Sally, & Angelo, Denise. (2014). Dodgy Data, Language Invisibility and the Implications for Social Inclusion: A Critical Analysis of Indigenous Student Language Data in Queensland Schools. Australian Review of Applied Linguistics, 37(3), 213-233. [open access available] ]]> https://languageonthemove.com/dodgy-data-and-language-misdiagnosis/feed/ 4 18691 https://languageonthemove.com/inventing-languages/ https://languageonthemove.com/inventing-languages/#comments Thu, 13 Feb 2014 03:28:11 +0000 http://www.languageonthemove.com/?p=17238

Excerpt from “The Haunted Lotus” by Australian-Hazara artist Khadim Ali (Source: Milani Gallery)

An objection that is commonly raised against Esperanto and other auxiliary languages is that they are “invented.” Somehow, being “invented” is assumed to give Esperanto a shady character: it’s just not natural. The problem with this view is that – in being invented – Esperanto is not unique. And I don’t just mean that there is also Klingon and Volapük. In fact, each and every language with a name is an invention. We may not always be able to identify the inventors – in fact the trick of the inventors of English, Chinese, German, Spanish and all the others – has been not to let themselves be identified as language inventors. Instead, they pose as teachers, priests, bureaucrats, academics, poets or scientists. The invention of major national languages such as these gets obscured by time (although Standard German with its origins in the 19^th century is not much older than Esperanto), and it is a rare opportunity to see a language invented before our own eyes.

Such an opportunity currently unfolds in Australia with the invention of the Hazaragi language. Late last year I was invited to attend the 2013 NSW Fair Trading Think Smart Multicultural Conference. Among the many important things I learnt at that conference was the discovery of a multilingual resource for renters in New South Wales. The video “Renting a home: a tenant’s guide to rights and responsibilities” is an excellent educational resource and it is available not only in English but, additionally, in 17 other community languages. What struck me was that three of these 17 languages were the same, as far as I am concerned: there is “Dari,” “Farsi” and “Hazaragi.” Isn’t it all Persian, I thought? I was aware that “Farsi” is often used for “Iranian Persian” and “Dari” for “Afghan Persian” but I had never encountered “Hazaragi” listed as a separate language before; it is usually treated as the Persian dialect spoken by the Hazara of Afghanistan. The Hazara are Shia Muslims of Mongol ancestry whose traditional homeland are the high mountains of central Afghanistan (Farr 2007).

So, I did some research and discovered that Hazaragi is a language that is currently being invented in Australia and linguists from around the world might wish to pay close attention how this process unfolds.

To begin with, it’s imperative to identify speaker numbers because you can’t have a “natural” language without a community of speakers – and remember I’m talking about concealed invention; not something as straightforward as Ludwik Zamenhof saying “an international auxiliary language is a great idea and I’m going to create one.” In order to achieve speaker numbers, the categories of the Australian national census had to be adapted a bit over the years, as a comparison of the category for “Persian” over five consecutive censuses shows: the 1991 Census had no category for Persian nor related varieties and they were all subsumed under “Asian Languages, not elsewhere included.” Reflecting growing immigration from Iran, by the next census in 1996, “Persian” had its own category, which remained unchanged in 2001. The 2006 Census saw a significant change to the category when the language label was changed to “Iranic languages” with three distinct subcategories: “Persian (excluding Dari),” “Dari” and “Other.” “Other” was defined to comprise “Iranic, not further defined,” “Kurdish,” “Pashto,” “Balochi” and “Iranic, not elsewhere classified.” (There is no need to write in and ask what the difference between “Iranic, not further defined” and “Iranic, not elsewhere classified” might be. I don’t know.) It was not until the 2011 Census that “Hazaragi” made its debut, when it was included in the “Iranic Languages, Other” category for the first time. The table visualizes the changes in category.

Another important aspect of instituting Hazaragi as a language in Australia is through the credentialing of interpreters. NAATI, the National Accreditation Authority for Translators and Interpreters, credentials Hazaragi paraprofessional interpreters through testing. On inquiry, I have learnt that NAATI decisions about recognizing a variety as a language are based on Australian Bureau of Statistics data (see above) and “voices from the community about the designations that they use for themselves.” In fact, it seems quite impossible to find out how the decision to accord language status to Hazaragi was made. Even so, NAATI has clear guidelines as to what is correct and incorrect Hazaragi in a testing situation:

NAATI acknowledges that there are regional variations/dialects of the Hazaragi language. However, due to strong cultural and identity connections there is a high level of mutual understandability between these regional dialects.

For the purposes of NAATI testing, a candidate will not be penalised for the dialect spoken as long as what is being said would be understood by an average Hazara person living in Hazaristan.

Candidates need to be aware that the Hazaragi language spoken by Hazaras in some locations, including the major cities in Afghanistan, has been heavily influenced by other languages of those cities and areas. Any use of ‘none’ [sic] Hazargai’ [sic] words when interpreting would be penalised. (NAATI Information Booklet)

This statement is a crucial step in the invention of the Hazaragi language. After the language has been given a name, it is being codified. Again, the process of invention is dissimulated: the language spoken in the mythical place of origin, Hazaristan (incidentally, there is also a little identity war going on over whether that region should be called “Hazarajat” or “Hazaristan,” the latter supposedly being “more modern”) is normalised whereas language use that shows traces of the influence by other locations, particularly cities, is penalized, presumably because someone got it into their head that such influence is “incorrect.”

This particular invention – Hazaragi as the language of rural Hazaristan – is rather baffling: from an Australian perspective, the language spoken by “an average Hazara person living in Hazaristan” is entirely irrelevant because even if such persons were to exist in Afghanistan, they do not in Australia. The past three decades or more have been an unmitigated disaster for Afghanistan and have produced the world’s largest refugee population. Contemporary Hazara society is characterised by constant migration:

Like most Afghan groups, the Hazāras fled in large numbers after the coup of April 1978 and the Soviet intervention in 1979. Most of them went to one of the neighboring countries of Afghanistan. Migrants and refugees have thus come to overlap and can hardly be distinguished from each other. Their movements follow various patterns: thousands of farmers from the Hazārajāt migrate every winter to work in coal mines near Quetta for a few months, while young men migrate for longer periods to Iran to take on menial jobs. During the last two decades, the Hazāras have formed very efficient migratory and economic networks, based on the dispersion of relatives in Iran, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. (Encyclopaedia Iranica)

Hazaragi has always been a contact variety – its main claim to distinction from Persian is the relatively higher number of Mongol loan words – and, in all likelihood, will continue to be a contact variety for a long time to come. It’s hard to see how inventing boundaries and a standard for this variety will do any good to anyone. Peter Mühlhäusler (2000) has an apt term for this kind of linguistics: segregational linguistics.

Farr, Grant. (2007). The Hazaras of Central Afghanistan. In B. Brower & B. R. Johnston (Eds.), Disappearing Peoples?: Indigenous Groups and Ethnic Minorities in South and Central Asia (pp. 153-168). Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press.
Mühlhäusler, Peter (2000). Language Planning and Language Ecology Current issues in language planning, 1 (3), 306-362 DOI: 10.1080/14664200008668011

Speak English, people! says British politician Ed Miliband (Source: msn.com)

Every ten years the UK government conducts a census, which every British resident is obliged by law to take part in. The last one happened in 2011, and the results are now in the process of being released by the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

The 2011 census contained a section on language. Respondents were asked to name their main language, and those who named a language other than English or Welsh were also asked to indicate how well they spoke English—very well, well, not well, or not at all. This question about English proficiency had not been asked before, and its inclusion was a sign of the political times. In the last few years, politicians have become obsessed with promoting the English language as a symbol of ‘Britishness’. All the mainstream political parties now deploy a kind of rhetoric in which speaking English is a patriotic duty, while not speaking it is a threat to national unity and ‘social cohesion’.

In many countries this sort of rhetoric has a long history, but in Britain, for various reasons, it does not. For one thing, the modern UK is a union of four historic nations: there is no single British national identity, and no single language that all Britons have always spoken. English only became the majority language of some parts of the UK in the 20^th century, and it has never been given ‘official’ status in law. Nor, until recently, has its status featured prominently on the mainstream political agenda. The only politicians who consistently raised the subject were representatives of the Celtic nationalist parties, whose concern was not the status of English but the rights of Britain’s Welsh and Gaelic-speaking minorities. Elsewhere in British politics, the feeling was quite strong that what languages people spoke was not the business of the state.

But around the turn of the millennium this began to change. Two main developments prompted the shift: on one hand, increasing popular concern about rising numbers of immigrants, and on the other, increasing anxiety about the threat of radical Islam. This was seen not only as an external threat, but also as an internal one, especially after the ‘7/7’ bombings that killed more than 50 people in London in July 2005. Unlike the 9/11 attackers in the US, the 7/7 bombers were native rather than foreign: most were of Pakistani ancestry, but they were born and bred in Britain. Attention began to focus on the problem of the ‘home grown terrorist’, prototypically imagined as a young male Muslim who had been radicalized because he wasn’t properly integrated into British society.

In 2006, in response to these concerns, the Labour administration created a new department for ‘communities and local government’, whose remit included responsibility for promoting better integration or ‘social cohesion’. It soon became clear that what this actually meant was attacking the ideology of multiculturalism, and removing whatever structures had supported it in practice. And multilingualism, the linguistic correlate of multiculturalism, was one of the easiest and most obvious targets.

In 2008, after a security report announced that multiculturalism was making Britain ‘a soft touch for terrorists’, the minister in charge of the department for communities made a speech castigating local councils for translating material into community languages. This, she suggested, was ghettoizing minorities, giving them no incentive to bother learning English, and so preventing them from integrating with the majority. We all knew where that would lead: ultimately, it was implied, it would lead to more suicide bombings on London underground trains. (Though inconveniently for this theory, the 7/7 bombers did speak English like the natives they were; they even left martyrdom videos in Yorkshire-accented English.)

Since 2008, a steady stream of this kind of rhetoric from politicians and in the media has created a new ‘folk devil’: the immigrant, or member of an established minority ethnic group, who doesn’t speak English and can’t be bothered to learn it. This figure is blamed for all kinds of things: for sending non-English-speaking children to school where they will hold the natives’ children back; for demanding translation and interpreting services that cost the taxpayer millions; for putting up signs in shops that make the natives feel excluded; for fragmenting our communities and threatening our security. Our main political parties have vied with each other to whip up anxiety and resentment which they can then address by taking punitive action against linguistic shirkers and freeloaders.

Labour’s main contribution when they were in power was to ‘reform’ the immigration laws to reflect the new importance accorded to speaking English. First they brought in a citizenship test that has to be taken in ‘a recognized British language’ (aka English—in theory you could do it in Welsh or Gaelic, but Home Office statistics suggest that no one ever does), and then they tightened the English language requirements for those needing work or family visas. The Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government which came to power in 2010 continued the demonizing process. In 2011, the Tory communities minister Eric Pickles declared it unacceptable for anyone to leave a British school unable to ‘speak English like a native’: young people who fell short of that ideal were making themselves, he said, ‘an unemployable subclass’. Which was rich, considering that unemployment among 16-22 year-olds was running at about 20%–large numbers of young people couldn’t get jobs whatever languages they did or didn’t speak, because there were no jobs.

The Labour Party, now in opposition, has evidently decided that their best strategy is to be even tougher on this issue than the Tories. In December 2012 the party leader Ed Miliband made a speech outlining Labour’s future policy on ‘social integration’. ‘We should start’, he said, ‘with language’. He went on to announce that a future Labour government will cut back further on resources for translation and interpreting, make immigrant parents sign ‘home-school agreements’ underlining their responsibility for ensuring their children speak English, and bring in English proficiency tests for any public sector worker whose job involves talking to members of the public.

Banging on about the importance of English, and the menace of the immigrant who can’t/won’t speak it, is now such a political commonplace, a week scarcely passes without some politician or other making a speech or a comment on the subject. And so far, no one (apart from academics like myself, whose opinions may safely be dismissed as ivory tower nonsense) has challenged the basic presuppositions of this discourse. But the census, whose findings on language were released a couple of weeks ago, has provided what I’m hoping will be some usable ammunition.

If you read about these findings in the media you will probably wonder what I’m talking about, since the reporting was mostly framed by the very presuppositions I’ve just been criticizing. The press and the national TV channels all went with the same story: ‘Polish now Britain’s second language’. In the right wing press, another popular story was ‘22% of households in London contain no one who has English as their main language’. But if you go to the ONS website and take a look at their facts and figures, you may well conclude that the most significant finding is not how many British residents speak Polish, it’s how few of them don’t speak any English.

According to the census data, English in 2011 was the declared main language of 92% of British residents over the age of 3 (around 50 million people). Of the 8% who named another main language, 80% (3.3 million) reported speaking English well or very well. 726,000 said they did speak English but not well, and 138,000 said they spoke no English. The ONS has done the maths: those with limited or no proficiency in English are 1.6% of the British population; those with no proficiency are less than 0.5% of the population. (And that figure must include pre-school children and people who had only just arrived in Britain at the time of the census.)

So, the UK government’s attempt to ascertain the scale of the problem they’ve been talking about incessantly for the past five years has revealed that they’ve been making a mountain out of a molehill—or to put it another way, manufacturing a moral panic. It’s ugly, it’s shameful, and it’s time for it to stop.

Gunbalanya School in West Arnhem Land (Source: abc.net.au)

Last week, the results of the 2012 National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) were published. As has been the case since NAPLAN was first introduced in Australia in 2008, the Northern Territory (NT) has, once again, underperformed dramatically. More than 30% of Year 3 students in the Territory perform below the national minimum standard in Reading, Writing, Spelling and Numeracy. For Grammar and Punctuation the number of NT students performing below the national minimum standard is close to 40%. Across Australia as a whole, these numbers are between 5-7%.

Around 40% of students enrolled in NT schools are indigenous. Across Australia as a whole, that number is 4%.

Putting two and two together, it won’t be long before we’ll see yet another highly politicised debate about aboriginal education. Conservatives will blame ‘underperforming schools’ and progressives will blame ‘systemic socio-economic disadvantage.’ As usual, both sides will be right and wrong in their own ways and after a while the failure of aboriginal education in this country will be shelved as too intractable for yet another year.

Meanwhile, few will stop to consider that NAPLAN doesn’t actually tell us anything about literacy and numeracy achievements in remote NT schools because NAPLAN is a test designed and standardized for first language speakers of English while English is a second language (ESL) across remote NT locations.

Those who do recognize the fact that aboriginal children are being tested in an additional language on a test designed for first language speakers usually dismiss that problem as minor, as, for instance, Indigenous Education 2012 does. The authors of that report argue that language is not an issue because it is not an issue for migrant children for whom English also constitutes an additional language. Indeed, the difference between migrant ESL test takers and first language test takers seems to be only 1 or 2 percentage points on average, with many ESL students outperforming their mother tongue peers.

A recent article in the Australian Review of Applied Linguistics explores the fallacies of the argument that language does not matter in low literacy and numeracy achievements in the NT. The authors, Gillian Wigglesworth, Jane Simpson and Deborah Loakes, argue that there are a number of linguistic challenges faced by aboriginal students in remote locations when it comes to literacy and numeracy assessment in English.

First, most ESL kids in cities grow up in suburbs where English is the language of wider communication. School is thus rarely the only domain where they are exposed to English. This is different in remote communities: English is often exclusive to the school.

Second, most migrants come from literate backgrounds where education is highly valued. This is usually not the case in remote indigenous communities.

Third, the problems inherent in speaking two clearly distinct languages are much easier to recognize and to address than the problems inherent in speaking a different language that is not recognized as such. While aboriginal languages have become relatively rare, most indigenous people in remote locations now speak Kriol. Creoles spoken in Australia differ widely but most have English as the lexifier language and are structurally based in an indigenous language. Australian creoles thus often sound like English but may, for example, not have subject-verb agreement nor distinguish singular and plural. When examining Year 3 NAPLAN sample tests, the researchers identified many linguistic problems that would have made the test misleading to a Kriol speaker.

As an example they examine the spelling test item: “We jumpt on the trampoline.” Test takers have to correct the underlined item. Leaving aside the fact that presenting an incorrect item to a learner is highly problematic in itself, test takers would need to identify that “jumpt” is in the past tense and that the final [t] sound is therefore graphically represented as <ed>. However, past tense in Australian creoles would usually be realized as bin jamp. This spelling item is thus testing grammatical knowledge that Kriol speakers are unlikely to have.

The problem is compounded by the fact that ear infections are extremely high in remote indigenous communities and about 70% of all children there are affected by some form of hearing loss. Final stops such as [t] are extremely difficult to hear with high frequency hearing loss.

The problem is also compounded by the fact that the reading passages in the test are littered with cultural concepts quite alien to the experience of children in remote Australia. The sample tests examined by Wigglesworth, Simpson and Loakes are populated by cinemas, paperboys, picket fences, letter boxes and parking meters – none of which exist in remote communities.

In sum, the researchers demonstrate that the NAPLAN test is linguistically and culturally problematic for creole-speaking children in remote communities. A standardized test designed for first-language speakers of English will always fail second-language speakers who are not even recognized as such.

In contrast to all the big problems bedevilling aboriginal education in this country, the language problem is actually relatively easy to fix: bilingual education with the use of the mother tongue in the early years of schooling and simultaneous systematic instruction in English as an additional language work well in minority contexts elsewhere. And, of course, tests designed for the actual population of test takers rather than an imaginary monolingual mother tongue speaker of Standard English.

Gillian Wigglesworth, Jane Simpson, & Deborah Loakes (2011). NAPLAN LANGUAGE ASSESSMENTS FOR INDIGENOUS CHILDREN IN REMOTE COMMUNITIES: ISSUES AND PROBLEMS Australian Review of Applied Linguistics, 34 (3), 320-343.
Available for open access here.

Australian flag flying on Sydney Harbour Bridge

Inside Story has a must-read article about language testing for citizenship in Australia today

Citizenship for beginners
The Howard government made it harder for some nationalities to become citizens, and Labor has made it worse, writes Kerry Ryan

16 April 2012

THE 27th of January each year is a no-brainer for a newspaper editor with a little space to fill. Much like the proud snap of a loving mother with her newborn baby, captured a tick or so into the New Year, the late-January photo of a flag-waving new citizen outside a town hall somewhere on Australia Day is part of every Australian summer.

This year, the Age went with a Sudanese family: Dad, Mum and four kids. The accompanying article told a story of more than two decades spent on the run from appalling violence, first in wars and then in refugee camps. Now, after Abraham Biar Koul Biar collected his Australian citizenship certificate with a bullet still in his arm, everyone in the family can proudly and happily call themselves Australian. All except his wife Achol, that is. She had failed the citizenship test. “I don’t know computers well,” she told the Age. Continue reading on Inside Story