Bi-lingual schools push Asian languages
Updated
Australia has a reputation as a multicultural country.
But it is one of the most monolingual countires in the world. Its estimated that only 25 per cent of Australians can speak another language fluently. In this week's New South Wales State Budget, Education minister Verity Firth announced funding to set up the state's first public billingual schools. The schools will specialise in Asian languages and the new initiative follows one which is already up and running in the state of Victoria
Presenter: Madeleine Genner
Speakers: Peter Lord, Principal, Richmond West Primary School; Michael Wesley, Executive Director, Lowy Institute; Paul Molyneux
Graduate School of Education, Melbourne University
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GENNER: For a long time teachers have known that young children pick up languages faster than adults, and New South Wales Education Minister Verity Firth says parents should have the option of letting their kids learn another language from the age of five.
FIRTH: The key languages that we will be using will be Mandarin, Korean, Japanese and Indonesian and the reason why it's exciting is that research shows that the best way to learn a second language and to master fluency is to start early. Also what the research shows is if you do learn a second language in those early years, as early as kindergarten, year one, year two, you're actually able to learn a third, a fourth language a lot easier than you otherwise would have done.
GENNER: That's Verity Firth speaking to ABC News earlier this week. In the months ahead all New South Wales schools will be able to apply for the new funding, but at this stage only four bilingual schools will be created. From kindergarten students will devote 90 minutes each day to language lessons and the theory is that as they progress more and more of their classes will be conducted in the other language.
A similar program is already running in Victoria where there are currently 12 bilingual public primary schools. Peter Lord is the principal of Richmond West Primary School, which runs both Mandarin and Vietnamese bilingual classes.
LORD: When the students arrive on a Monday morning they go into an English stream so from Monday, Tuesday and then Wednesday morning they learn English and do all their other subjects in English, maths etc. Come Wednesday lunchtime they change to the other language, then again they learn that language and do their maths and other subjects in that other language.
GENNER: Richmond West initially started the programs because they have lots of students who came from immigrant backgrounds. If children were speaking Mandarin or Vietnamese at home speaking those languages at school helped them learn and gave them a greater understanding of the English language as well. But over the last couple of years parents from a range of different backgrounds have started enrolling their children at Richmond West.
Peter Lord says that lots of parents want their kids to learn Mandarin and the school is witnessing something of a Kevin Rudd effect.
LORD: There's a greater awareness now of bilingualism and the Prime Minister's certainly been a part of that growing awareness. Also as the word spreads around bilingual programs from parent to parent particularly, you know we find we have more interest from parents coming to have a look at our school to see whether they want their child to be in a bilingual stream. And many of our English background families are now coming into the school specifically to sample and stay with the bilingual program.
GENNER: But while some schools may be embracing bilingual education a recent reports suggests that Australia risks being left behind unless there's a significant improvement in our Asian language skills.
Professor Michael Wesley is the new Executive Director of the Lowy Institute. Last week he published a report for Griffith University which argued that Australia needs to quadruple the number of students learning Asian languages in order to compete with other nations. Michael Wesley says the current financial crisis is changing the global economy and Australia needs to be prepared.
WESLEY: I think there's going to be two key changes; the first one is that the global economy will be much more a knowledge economy based on knowledge inputs into all sorts of things from IT to entertainment to manufacturing processes and so on. The second thing is that it will be much more an Asia-centred global economy, and so knowledge economies centred on Asia means that increasingly to be competitive in the economy of the future and in the world of the future Australia needs to be able to converse and think in the languages of the Asian region which after all is our region.
GENNER: Your report suggests that over the next 30 years half of the Australian population should be able to speak an Asian language. We're a long way from that figure right now, do you think it's possible?
WESLEY: I think it is possible, I mean look at all of the countries that we compare ourselves to, particularly the countries of continental Europe. It's very rare to find people who live in the countries of continental Europe who don't speak at least one language other than that that is their native tongue. They have taken to heart the need for bilingualism or multilingualism and they've made it a reality.
GENNER: Along with the state government plans the federal government has also pledged 62 million dollars over the next four years to expand Asian language education in schools. But Michael Wesley says 11 billion dollars is required to prevent a serious skill shortage in the years ahead. And back in Melbourne there are clear indications that a bilingual education is also helping the students themselves.
Paul Molyneux from the Graduate School of Education at the University of Melbourne has been examining the academic achievements of students from a number of bilingual schools.
MOLYNEUX: Despite their very young age students were able to tell me things about how the different languages worked in terms of writing systems, in terms of the sounds and tones of different languages, and certain aspects of grammar. Now obviously this was still at a very primary type level but being exposed in very, very strong meaningful ways to both of those languages in terms of bilingual instruction, they were able to reflect on many, many aspects of the language system that those of us brought up mono-lingually like myself didn't perhaps understand until we were much older.
