Languages taken at school and languages spoken in the community – a comparative perspective

Abstract

This paper compares two sets of data from the same year, 2001 – the numbers of students taking languages other than English at primary and secondary level, and census statistics for the home use of languages other than English. The data draws attention to languages that are taught principally in day schools and those taken mainly in after hours programs, and to variation between States and between education systems. While it is acknowledged that the strong presence of a language in the community is not the only reason for offering it in schools, the paper demonstrates that some important international languages are now among the major community languages and that some of them are marginal in the mainstream education systems in Australia. The presence of large numbers of speakers will facilitate the utilization of community resources in language teaching. Consideration needs to be given especially to Arabic, Vietnamese, Mandarin and Spanish, community languages with increasing numbers, the first two especially among the young.

Multilingualism in Australia

“…This is due, for instance, to the fact that the languages commonly taught at school often do not reflect the demography of Australia (cf. Clyne, Fernandez and Grey, 2004); or to the wide variation in opportunities for learning the various languages in the different states (cf. Liddicoat and Curnow, 2009).…”

Linguistic Landscape: Reports on immigrant language at Asian-Australian community

“…This information is useful from the standpoint of ethnographic representation since it indicates the under-presented and over-presented languages to others. The reason that this is happening is that, for example, the languages commonly studied in public schools often do not represent Australia's or to the great array of opportunities for learning different languages in different states (Clyne et al, 2004a). Although school programs aimed at language maintenance are widely available in Australia, they are often unable to adequately enhance the capacity of children's linguistic skill from immigrant community to public or state school due to organizational issues.…”

Meeting the challenges of heritage language education: lessons from one school community

“…However, a lack of resources and trained teachers, as well as 'much naivete about the level of proficiency that can be achieved in programs of one hour per week' (Cahill, 1984, p. 245) meant that many programmes struggled to build sustainable heritage classes that met these lofty goals (Cahill, 1984;Di Biase & Dyson, 1988;Kalantzis et al, 1989). These issues saw government funding allocation for heritage language teaching wane in Australia during the late 1980 and 1990s, with the focus instead moving to the teaching of languages considered important for business and trade (Clyne, 1997a;Clyne, Fernandez, & Grey, 2004;Rudd, 1994).…”