Editorial
EDITOR
Anne-Marie Morgan University of South Australia
PRODUCTION ACER Press
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ISSN 0005 3503 © AFMLTA AND INDIVIDUAL AUTHORS 2012
Since my last editorial, we have seen the release of Ken Henry’ s much anticipated White Paper, Australia in the Asian Century. The White Paper addresses the need for Australians to engage more deeply with our Asian neighbours, across all spheres of life and activity. The message that Australians need to be educated in the languages and cultures of Asia, as well as English, was front and centre in the paper. The paper noted that every Australian student needed significant exposure to studies of Asia across the curriculum, to have continuous access to learning an Asian language throughout their years of schooling, and to have the opportunity to learn an Asian language as part of every university program. Chinese, Hindi, Indonesian and Japanese were nominated as‘ priority’ languages, Hindi being the new kid on the block. As Hindi is currently taught in only a few schools in Australia, this addition will require concerted efforts – and funds – to enable programs to be developed and for teachers to be educated to teach it. Significant increases in teacher numbers will also be needed for the other priority languages, if the aim for every child to have continuous access to quality programs is to be realised. The slippage of Korean from the priority list is a concern, as recent gains in improved program quality, numbers and available teachers offer significant benefits to Australian learners and Australia’ s future that should not be lost.
While Australia does need to engage with Asia and Asian languages to the degree outlined in the White Paper, what must also not be forgotten is the continuing need for engagement with languages of other regions and cultures, alternative markets and centres of human endeavour and decisionmaking; as well as with the languages with which the diverse population of Australia identifies, including first( mother tongue) languages, heritage and home languages, at-risk and thriving Indigenous languages, and the languages of Europe, the Americas and Africa. Language, and culture learning and identification cannot be simplified to a formula to suit current political, economic or geographically focused trends, but must rather connect to the lives, histories and futures of the people who embody these languages and cultures and who contribute to and enact national objectives through their individual and collective participation in society.
You can read more about the AFMLTA’ s response to the White Paper on our website – at www. afmlta. asn. au – where you can also find position statements on learning languages in Australia and on the Australian Curriculum: Languages shape paper.
In this issue, the papers cover a broad range of languages education topics, from bilingual education and its additional benefits to first language and literacy outcomes in a Macedonian case study( de Courcy and Smilevska); interpreting the so-called‘ conversation’ element of Victorian senior secondary French exams( de Saint Léger and Storch); what happened when a Japanese university program underwent a reduction of teaching hours( Ascione and Bramley); and an analysis of a project aimed at bridging the gap between school languages teachers and university languages researchers in relation to research literature, in Canada, with the involvement of the Canadian equivalent of the AFMLTA( Mady). All make for fascinating reading.
Finally, I draw your attention to the 19th AFMLTA biennial conference, to be held in Canberra in July. Registration for the conference before 15 March will also allow you to attend at the earlybird rate. See conference2013. afmlta. asn. au for more details.
Anne-Marie Morgan
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