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.

 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.

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

Sunday 28 September 2008, 10am-5pm

Explore the many languages of the Canberra region

Enjoy music, dance and food from many cultures

Join a free workshop! Try your hand at Arabic, Greek, Korean, Indonesian, Mandarin, Spanish, or an indigenous language; explore the Cyrillic script or Japanese writing; make a podcast in another language, hear how languages can be a career asset …

Roam around the stalls and discover the world’s languages!

Find out how and where they are taught in the Canberra region

Click here to download the event poster in PDF format

Click here to download the event poster in Word format

Receive a ‘global passport’ and get it stamped for each language you know or learn about on the day.

Raising a child in more than one language?

Share your experiences with other parents, hear some success stories, and discover more about the benefits of bilingualism (11.30am−12.30pm)

Have an opinion about language education in the ACT?

Talk to the politicians and leaders who make the policies (2pm−3pm)

Free admission

Fun for all ages

WHERE? University of Canberra: Main Concourse, Building 1 and Building 2

For more details, contact Faiz on 6201 2333 or email mandy.scott@canberra.edu.au

Click here to download the event poster in PDF format

Click here to download the event poster in Word format

In the LOTE@HOME pack, there’s a set of 50+ laminated cards for rooms in the home. Families attach the cards to the thing they refer to – the stove, the door, the dishwasher, the cupboard, the bath, the tap and so on. There are cards for the bedroom, the bathroom, the kitchen.

Family members use the words on the cards, mixed in with their usual language, to make sentences. So for example, a parent could say to a child “… please close ‘la porta’ when you come in …” Gradually, everyone will absorb the Italian word for ‘door’. And so it goes with all the other cards.

Click here to go to the website

In another set of cards in the pack, it’s all about learning the names of body parts. With this set, you can play a game, like ‘Snap’ or ‘Go Fish’ but use the foreign words to do it. The pronunciation is explained too.

By using the cards, and reinforcing words around the house, kids will learn a new language in exactly the same way they learned English – by immersion and absorption.

LOTE@HOME packs are not intended to replace formal LOTE lessons, however they are intended to build an “in country environment” in the home that will support the formal learning of a second language.

Click here to go to the website