While advantages of literacy in the home language have been widely documented, the Australian education system has not been proactive in providing institutional support for its development. This paper investigates the impact of (il)literacy in the home language on the academic, affective, and social development of bilingual/multilingual children and proposes principles that home-language-literacy programs should meet to be effective. It discusses programs that, although designed to develop literacy or second-language proficiency mainly in classroom contexts, could be easily adapted to address the needs of the linguistically and culturally diverse Australian context. We argue that the cost of not investing in successful homelanguage-literacy programs will be higher in the long run than their implementation costs and recommend that Australia should consider supporting grassroots home-language-literacy programs in a push to improve overall literacy outcomes for Australian home-language speakers.

Home language literacy education in Australia has been pursued predominantly through Community Language Schools. At present, some 1,000 of these, attended by over 100,000 school-age children, cater for 69 of the over 300 languages spoken in Australia. Despite good intentions, these schools face a number of challenges. For instance, children may lack motivation and perceive after-hours schooling as an unnecessary burden. Trained teachers and suitable teaching materials are often not available. Moreover, not every language can be offered in each city or region. Hence, home language speakers' needs are often not met. This situation has detrimental effects for children, families and communities, and entails a loss of opportunities for the country. Reporting on an alternative approach, this paper presents a pilot study conducted in Australia with English-German bilinguals. We sought to investigate whether primary school-aged children can self-direct their home language literacy acquisition through playing online educational games, in the privacy of their homes and with little adult input. Results indicate that the games can be effective in promoting emergent literacy development. Thus, such a grassroots approach could become a viable option for multilingual societies, addressing some of the practical challenges faced by, for instance, Community Language Schools.

Australia is a country of high linguistic diversity, with more than 300 languages spoken. Today 19 percent of the population aged over five years speak a language other than English at home. Against this background, we examine government policies and prominent initiatives developed at national level in the past 30 years to address the challenge of offering 'Literacy for all', in particular focusing on minority language speaking children. Across the examined policies and initiatives, a distinct negative correlation can be observed: the more multilingual Australia has become, the more assimilationist the policies, and the more monolingual the orientation of the society that governments have sought to establish through policy. We argue that to enhance literacy outcomes more generally, this orientation needs to be reversed. We explain why policy understanding and approach need to instead promote the maintenance of home languages and support literacy acquisition in these languages.

The aim of this study is to examine the strategies majority language-speaking parents use to support the development of the minority language in families who follow the pattern of exposure known as one-parent-one-language (OPOL). In this particular pattern of raising a child bilingually, each parent speaks only their own native language to their children. Previous studies concerned with language development in children raised under the OPOL pattern primarily focused on how input from the minority language-speaking parent affects minority language development, leaving the role of the majority language-speaking parent largely unexplored. To address this gap, a case study was carried out on three families in Brisbane, Australia, who reported following the OPOL pattern. Video and audio recordings were taken, along with interviews using an elicited recall task based on the recordings to gather data on the families' language practices and motivations. The results of the qualitative analysis suggest that, in these families, the majority language-speaking parent plays an important role that extends beyond the provision of input in the majority language and may contribute to fostering minority language development and maintenance.

Migrant and refugee parents considering raising their children in their non-mainstream home language often fear that this decision may impact negatively on their children's English language ability and thus affect their academic prospects. The lack of institutional support for home languages in the Australian school system, and the well-intentioned but misguided advice parents may receive to switch to the mainstream language in family interactions, reinforce parents' doubts. To assuage parents' concerns and assist them in making an informed decision most appropriate for their family circumstances, we developed and delivered free workshops on bilingual upbringing. We also trained bilingual facilitators who adapted the workshops culturally and linguistically and conducted these in their own communities. This paper discusses these workshops, the feedback received, our observations, and lessons learned.