A Special Year for Languages - and how all teachers can help!

UNESCO | Culture

The UN has named 2008 the International Year of Languages, naming UNESCO as the lead agency for the event. On their site UNESCO has stated:

“UNESCO therefore invites governments, United Nations organizations, civil society organizations, educational institutions, professional associations and all other stakeholders to increase their own activities to foster respect for, and the promotion and protection of all languages, particularly endangered languages, in all individual and collective contexts.Whether it be through initiatives in the fields of education, cyberspace or the literate environment; be it through projects to safeguard endangered languages or to promote languages as a tool for social integration; or to explore the relationship between languages and the economy, languages and indigenous knowledge or languages and creation, it is important that the idea that “languages matter!” be promoted everywhere.”

There are some resources coming on the UNESCO site and some details about how you can become involved in different projects. UNESCO points out that many activities that promote languages are interdiscipinary and cover topics such as

• educational initiatives
• projects in the field of science
• social and human sciences projects
• culture centred projects as well as
• communication and information initiatives
  

You don’t have to be a language teacher to participate - us LOTE teachers need all teachers on board to get the importance of learning another language message out there. The profile of second-languages as an important subject in schools can only benefit from all teachers supporting the idea. If students see and hear that other teachers don’t think highly of LOTE class, then there is a chance they won’t either.

In The Age on Wednesday I read an article in the Opinion section called Diverse language skills will open the world to Australians.In this article Michael Clyne, professorial fellow of languages and linguistics at Melbourne University, writes that despite the fact that about 400 languages (including indigenous, community and sign languages) are spoken in Australian homes and the fact that we are often cited as a nation that has achieved a unique identity based on cultural diversity, we are simply not encouraging enough of our young people to pursue the study of a second language or maintain and develop their bilingualism. Some major points from the article are:

• half the children in compulsory education in Australia are not being taught a language other than English (LOTE) at school
• existing LOTE programs often have insufficient time allocation
• existing LOTE programs are often taught by teachers without sufficient training or language proficiency
• the retention rate of students continuing a LOTE until year 12 is only 13% nationally

Clyne also states that Australia is out of step with most other countries when it comes to language study. In most of Europe and much of Asia two languages in addition to one’s first are an essential goal of the curriculum and many of these places do not have problems with ‘overcrowding’ of the curriculum.

I was pleased to read that the Government is looking into whether the study of languages should be made compulsory to a Year 10 level. “Compulsoriness” Clyne writes, seems mainly an issue with languages while it is taken for granted in other subjects like Maths, Science and English.Unless languages are made compulsory to Year 10 there is a chance that they will not be seen as an important serious subject to pursue.

The study of languages is of vital importance to Australia’s future. Opportunities may be lost through lack of language knowledge and effort to understand someone else’s language system. We don’t necessarily need to be fluent in several languages each, but we do need to be respectful of multilingualism and not simply assume that it’ll all be ok because we can speak English.

As I mentioned before, LOTE teachers cannot do all the promotion for second language learning on their own. We need to have support of our colleagues. Your help would be more than greatly appreciated.

How ALL teachers can help promote the study of second languages -

• Please don’t take students out of their language classes to complete other tasks that aren’t related to their LOTE studies. Students don’t get much language learning time at school and so they need to be in as many language classes as they can be. Please don’t tell them that it’s ok to miss LOTE class to complete an assignment or because you need them for a special activity. If you really need to take students out of class, perhaps try to find a class where they have several classes a week (at my school student have 10 or more English/Humanities classes a week and only 2 Chinese classes).
• Encourage students to write headings / the date etc on their work using the second language they are learning at your school.
• Learn a few simple phrases - like how to say ‘Good Work’ - and use them with the students. They will be so impressed that you have bothered, and a simple phrase like that should be pretty easy.
• Ask the students to teach you phrases, or simply what a particular focus word is in the LOTE they are studying. Kids LOVE showing off their language knowledge.
• Attend any LOTE functions that your school holds. It’s a great feeling not only for the kids, but for the LOTE teachers in your school to know that you support them.
• Pass on the link to technoLOTE to one language teacher you know. It would be great for the community surrounding this blog to keep growing.
• If you have any other suggestions to add to this list, please leave a comment. I’d love to hear what you have to say.

Remember - LANGUAGES MATTER!

To read my post on what I think language teaching is all about, click here.

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