• 17Feb

    National Network for University Languages

    All, Indonesian Comments Off

    The ALTC has awarded funding to a project Leadership for future generations: a national network for university languages. The ALTC Project Information page states that the University of Melbourne will be lead institution. Monash University, RMIT University, The Australian National University and University of Wollongong are also partners and a reference group from all over Australia is listed at the new website of the National Network for University Languages.

    A second meeting of Indonesian language teachers will be held in Brisbane on Saturday 26 Feb 10 am LOTE Library Montague Road, West End and the diehards and new enthusiasts will establish a Queensland Indonesian Language Teachers Association. Please contact Kerry O’Connor if interested: kocon4 at eq.edu.au

    This follows the research project on Indonesian in Australian Universities and National Colloquium on Tertiary Indonesian convened on 9-11 February 2011 by Professor David Hill. His draft discussion paper is available online. Participants included Australian academics, teachers, DFAT and DEEWR representatives, Indonesian Embassy and Consulate officials, one state parliamentarian, business spokespersons, visitors from Germany, Japan and Indonesia, plus inspiring young Australian students of Indonesian working as volunteers at the Colloquium. Many of our long-term worries were aired, strategies considered and the closure of the ALTC lamented. The agreement to work on a National Indonesian Resources Bank was one positive outcome which may dovetail nicely with work of Education Services Australia’s National Digital Learning Resources Network. There are now three Balai Bahasa in WA, ACT and Victoria. A concerted promotion campaign to counter years of negative coverage of Indonesia would be  helpful and discussions centred on reinvigorating the Australian Society of Indonesian Language Educators (ASILE) as an ongoing active  promotional body, not just organiser of biennial conferences.

    Australia Indonesian Business Council (AIBC) vice president Ross Taylor demonstrated the brilliant opportunities for Australians in so many fields of business, if only they will equip themselves with the knowledge to cope with the challenges and if Indonesia continues its recent record in reforming business practice and regulations.

  • 14Sep

    National Tertiary Languages Network

    8. Tertiary, All, Events, Everyone, Networking, Research Comments Off

    The Australian Academy of the Humanities website reports that: The Beyond the Crisis Colloquiumheld at the University of Melbourne (16-18 February 2009) hosted more than 140 delegates, from 30 different institutions, and representing 14 languages. The delegates included teachers, researchers, and planners. The colloquium was comprised of workshops as well as presentations of current research and innovative initiatives. It was agreed that, while different languages face distinctive needs, all languages and the nation will benefit from a more strongly articulated language teaching and learning culture in higher education. Furthermore, the assembly agreed to create a “National Tertiary Languages Network”.

    It is my understanding that Prof. Joe Lo Bianco and others have applied for a NALSSP grant to establish the projected “National Tertiary Languages Network”. News on the current 2010 round of NALSSP grant proposals should follow now that the dust is settling from the recent 2010 federal election. If we want a thoroughly integrated languages education in Australia, with sensible articulation top to bottom, and effective lobbying and promotion, we need to have everyone networking together from AlphaTykes to PhD supervisors. Philip Mahnken, Sunshine Coast Continue reading »

  • 13Sep

    Languages education: stuck on a feedback loop.

    9. All ages, All, Everyone, National, Opinion, Principals, Teachers Comments Off

    Phillip Mahnken, University of the Sunshine Coast

     Andrew Bolt is right (Herald 28 May). Most Australians in general do not want to learn languages. Greg Sheridan points to the same ‘disturbing truth’ (A nation adrift in Asia literacy. The Australian 27 May 2010).

     A “language graveyard” for 222 years, indigenous languages eradicated, migrant languages met with hostility, fear and obstruction, Australia risks intellectual and cultural narrowness, even cerebral inferiority. Yes, learning languages expands your brain capacities, at any age! Seeing Europeans and Asians routinely speak three or four languages, the average Australian traveller feels dumb in his monolingualism.

     Our society, culture and education systems fail languages, even as we acknowledge that we need language skills for aid and trade, security, personal enlightenment and to be credible global citizens.

     There is top-level bipartisan agreement on this (Hamish McDonald, SMH, 29 May). Now we need bipartisan commitment at state and federal levels to a sustained PR campaign for languages, and unstinting pursuit of excellent teaching and quality learning!

     Money alone may produce – in our over-bureaucratised society – more talkfests, policy, planning, budgets and accountability reports. No, money would best be devoted to direct Year 11 and 12 and university languages scholarships, especially for vetted in-country studies. We cannot afford to wait and hope that targets for today’s Grade 4 pupils (in our “ludicrously uncoordinated” languages matrix, as Bolt charges) will result in a new Asia literate generation twelve years hence.

     The predictable calls for ”more resources” (Hamish McDonald, SMH, 29 May) could almost be dispensed with, if only motivation and attitudes …. but attitudes are on a feedback loop.

    School and university students won’t work hard at things their parents, other educators, principals, community leaders and the media obviously do not care about or deride. Young people will apply themselves at years of football or swimming training, even the mental demands of English, maths, chess, music – languages, too – if their parents, older peers, role models and employers visibly and actively endorse them.  Don’t care and your kids won’t try. “Too much effort and too high-risk for too little likely reward”,  McDonald cites Tony Abbott. If students want to drop out, principals and parents blame languages teachers for being ineffective, irrelevant or asking too much. Round and round it loops.

    Millions of ‘blind Freddies’, like Andrew Bolt, do not see the obvious cognitive and “cultural payoff” of language learning: better spelling and grammar because you reflect on where your own language comes from and how it works, better thinking skills, patience and persistence, better communication skills and intercultural understanding. Languages mediate more and deeper insider information about everyone else, whether you are a vigilant realist, soft diplomat or backpacker sans frontieres.

     The only war languages teachers are interested in is the culture war needed to change Australian culture from “fear is good” and gullible consumerism to a healthy, positive, other-interested society with everyone learning other languages. It costs money to counter all that apathy and negativity. It demands willingness and willpower to work on our own children who may prefer (encouraged every dollar of the way by advertisers) to fritter away their mental lifetimes on computer shoot-em-ups, junk TV, the latest pop songs and mags.

     Pardon my Spanish, but does Australia have the cojones to do the right thing by its children?

    Or is this society and education so commodified that school principals, university decision makers and community opinion shapers will not do a damned thing without putting their hand out for “what’s in it for me?” You wanted a market economy. Your children are standing in it.

     

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  • 23Aug

    Apprenticeship Language Learning

    4. Years 1-3, 5. Years 4-6, All, Everyone, National, Networking 2 Comments

    All Aussie kids must be given a chance to be literate and numerate, to make music, play sport, do science… but not all can be guaranteed a second language.

    It can’t be mandated because it can’t be resourced. There are not enough LOTE teachers, especially of the right kinds in the right places – and may never be, to judge by the effect of recruitment campaigns throughout the English-speaking-world.

    So what can be done?

    Continue reading »

  • 28Mar

    A picnic and multilingo animals down on the farm

    9. All ages, All, Events, VIC 1 Comment

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