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.
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
Following on from the successful Multilingual Picnic in Canberra in December last year, the first ever Melbourne Language Picnic attracted families associated with the following languages: Arabic, Chollo, Croatian, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Japanese, Hungarian, Italian, Russian, Swedish and Vietnamese.
While not everyone was able to come on the day, there was plenty of feedback and interest in supporting this kind of event in the future.
The presence of a Japanese exchange student provided an opportunity for the children with Japanese LOTEs to try out their skills, and prompted a similar exchange for those with Italian LOTE. A highlight of the day was some basic formalized language activity, and it was a joy to observe the enthusiasm with which all the children joined in.
Alessandro, one of the video stars below, gave us this spontaneous vote of approval: ‘The language picnic is cool!’
Some linguistic potential who could be persuaded to pose for a photo
Video clips:
Language bites in
If anyone would like to offer ideas, suggestions or become involved in organizing language-focused social events in their locality, please contact Angela or Brigitte.
