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/

We have created a comprehensive language teaching system that is exciting and enjoyable for both children and parents. Our curriculum includes activities in all lessons such as singing, music, story-telling, games and art to capture the imagination of every child.

We have a co-ordinated system of story books, flash cards, activity books, CDs and online access. You can actually make it as much fun at home for the kids as it is during the lessons! Your whole family will be exploring another language in no time.

We have 3 centres across Brisbane which teach French, Spanish and Italian to children aged between 18 months – 12 years.

www.alphatykes.com.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

They will be immersing in another language while they play and learn in our playgroups. In turn, they’ll pick up the language effortlessly and spontaneously .

Besides learning a new language, we also aim at building self-esteem and confidence. We encourage and help our children and their families to understand culture diversity and to promote community harmony.

We are the first playgroup centre in Victoria to provide a variety of languages. We have Mandarin, German, Cantonese and Spanish playgroups.

Click here to go to the website

Public schools aren’t helping students compete with foreign counterparts

The Register recently ran a story on HABLA, the Home-based Activities Building Language Acquisition program, which aims to help teach toddlers from low-income, Spanish-speaking families English and Spanish by sending language coaches into their homes.

HABLA is based on the premise that the more children communicate at a young age, the more quickly they develop language skills.

While the program remains controversial because of its bilingual approach, recent studies by the Brookings Institution suggest that improving toddlers’ native linguistic skills helps them more easily learn English.

Regardless of the arguments for or against HABLA, its premise – that children best learn languages when they are young and that frequent communication is necessary for language acquisition – should be considered in constructing foreign-language education in America.

Most public school students do not begin studying foreign languages until high school, and then it is usually to fulfill a graduation requirement. After all, it is difficult to see any reason to study a foreign language since much of the rest of the world is becoming fluent in English. Read more

Reprinted from Languages Education in Australia newsletter 21 August 2008