Australia's present and future is multilingual.
Every child in Australia should grow up at least bilingual.
Languages education starts before school life and should continue throughout.
The Melbourne Language Picnic - 2010
The Melbourne Language Picnic is on again!
Date: Sunday, 21st March, National Harmony Day 2010, from 9 am to 5 pm.
Venue: Collingwood Children’s Farm, St. Heliers Street, Abbotsford.
Bring your family and friends, your lingo and share in some multilingual fun and games.
For further information, follow this link:
http://www.melbournelanguagepicnic.wordpress.com/
One of the presentations at last year’s seminar on raising bilingual children at Melbourne University discussed Languages Activism and the different ways in which parents can contribute to enhancing language learning in the wider community. Kimmba Bilingual Learning Playgroups are an outstanding example of such an initiative, and here is the story of the person behind its success.
Marisha Theeboom is an experienced, trained Mandarin teacher and volunteer community worker since 1987. She has worked with a variety of ages, cultures and in different continents whilst involved with a large charitable organisation that spans Taiwan, America and South Africa. She holds a Bachelor of Arts Honours Degree from University of Cape Town, R.S.A.,1996.
She married an Australian Pilot in 2000, migrated to Melbourne and has three daughters. As a migrant herself, she is aware of the difficulties involved in settling within the local community. Thus she has turned her love of teaching and community work into establishing Kimmba Bilingual Learning Playgroup Inc. Kimmba has been established for migrants and local residents to be able to gather together and understand each other through a fun and loving playgroup environment. In doing so, she hopes the establishment of Kimmba Bilingual Learning Playgroup enables more migrants from differing cultures to benefit by retaining their self-identity and at the same time develop proficiency in English language skills.
Marisha has developed her own bilingual education program for young children, called Jo Jo Bilingual Education Program and started the first Mandarin bilingual learning playgroup at Taiwanese School of Melbourne in July 2006. She has further studied and obtained a Certificate in the Professional Development Program in Second Language Teaching Methodology for Teachers in Ethnic Schools (Chinese Phase I) from RMIT University November, 2006.
This year Marisha is expanding Kimmba so that more children and families can be exposed to wide range of languages and cultures. She is opening a new Center in Prahran that will be available for students ranging from 0-6 years old to come from 1 hour- 15 hours a week to learn either Mandarin, German or Spanish. The Prahran center is set up as an early learning center with two fully qualified and trained teachers in every room. This center is hopefully the first of many to come as Marisha is passionate about exposing children and families to different languages and cultures to help build positive relationships with everyone in the community.
To find out more , please visit http://www.kimmba.com.au/
The Australian Indonesian-Language Schools Association (AILSA) Inc is pleased to announce to all parents who see the benefit of a bilingual environment for pre-schoolers’ development that a bilingual (Indonesian/English) transition program for children aged 3-5 years will start in Term 1 2010.
The program will operate at the pre-school premises of Queanbeyan South Public School from 9 am to 3 pm on Monday of each week during term. The daily fee will be $30 per child.
For more details and to put your child on the waiting list, email admin@ailsa.org.au with the following information: Child’s name, date of birth, parent’s name and address.
Tags: AILSA, Bilingual Pre-school, Indonesian
Languages during the Multicultural Festival, Sunday 7 February 11-5pm
The ACT Ethnic Schools Association and members of the ACT Bilingual Education Alliance are again joining forces to organise a stall at Contact Canberra, the community expo held as part of the Multicultural Festival.
Come along and see us on Sunday 7 February from 11am to 5pm at stall number 61, City Walk, right next to the children’s Merry-go-Round in Civic.
You are also welcome to publicise your language programs and resources at the stall. Last year there were a great number of enquiries, especially about classes for adults and very young children so it is a great way to promote your activities.
Please contact Marina.Houston@Canberra.edu.au or call 6201 2483 if you have leaflets or posters you would like to display or would like to help staff the stall during the day.
For those not able to attend the recent RUMACCC (University of Melbourne) seminar on raising bilingual children, the link below will take you to the handouts for the sessions on what parents can do to encourage language learning beyond the home, for their children and community alike.
Source: Mandy Scott
The turnout was similar to last year’s picnic – about 25 – and keen and useful links were made between a range of languages: Mandarin, Cantonese, Italian, Russian, Indonesian and Welsh.
Most of the children who attended were too young for the ‘how many languages can you find’ game. However, those who had a go (and their mum!!) got something out of it. For anyone wishing to follow up on the above language connections, please contact Mandy.Scott@anu.edu.au
This very informative article is published by Learning Links, an “Australian charity and non-profit organisation formed to help children who have learning disabilities, difficulties and developmental delays, and their families”.
The link below leads to references on the role of maintaining a learner’s first language in relation to the acquisition of English.
http://www.tesol.org.au/Issues/Place-of-First-Language
“The Australian and international TESOL fields argue that the maintenance and ongoing development of a student’s first language (L1) provides learners with a solid base from which to acquire an additional language.
Awareness of the positive influences associated with supporting L1 development is particularly important for young learners. Older learners actively draw on knowledge of their first language and its structure, conceptual and content knowledge held in this language and their L1 literacy skills when learning a subsequent language. However younger learners do not yet have this depth of knowledge to draw on and without appropriate support they are at risk of failing to acquire full proficiency in either their first language or the main language of school instruction.”
Thank you, Mandy Scott, for this information.
Tags: Place of first language
