ELT World » Australasia

The big Australasia TEFL news roundup

david — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 12:17:28 +0000

Here are some recent TEFL headlines from around the region.

South Korea: Language education ’starts in the womb’

Bilingual education starts from womb, a research team led by Krista Byers-Heinlein and Janet Werker from the University of British Columbia claims to have found. The researchers compared the reactions of newborn babies whose mothers are monolingual in English with those of mothers who are bilingual in English and Tagalog.

Read the full story here.

India: English radio lessons… Exit UNICEF, enter government

After the UNICEF decided to discontinue the implementation of “Interactive Learning Through Radio” programme in Uttar Pradesh from next academic year, the state government has decided to implement the unique scheme on its own.

Read more here.

Nepal: Unique school aims to be the ticket to equality

Beginning with 850 students in the 2001 and teaching up to Grade 3, the first Satama (“equality”) school now has over 3,500 students. The founder, Uttam Sanjel, said “I had no idea that it would be so popular.” The medium of instruction is English – considered a passport to success – because parents and guardians in Nepal prefer private English- medium schools over Nepali or other vernacular language schools. Satama schools have entrance fees that are much less than other private schools, allowing Nepalis–however poor they are–to send their children to private school.

Read on.

India: The road to English to begin with mother tongue

What is common between ‘pencil’, ‘railway station’, ‘programme’ and ‘machine’? These are English words used in Hindi, Punjabi and other languages. And a professor has found a novel way to use these words in teaching of the English language. Professor Anil Sarwal, linguistics expert and faculty member at DAV College, Sector 10, has identified 12,000 such words. The aim behind compiling these words, according to Professor Sarwal, was to use one’s mother tongue to teach the English language. “If encouraged to learn English by beginning with words that are known to them, the ice between learners and the English language will start thawing,” Professor Sarwal says.

Read the full story here.

India: Lend an ear, mind your languages

A recent report by the NGO Pratham shows that less that 50 per cent of children in Class I could even identify capital letters in English. Parents, especially from rural and semi-urban families, see English as a gateway to better opportunities for their children. They send their children to English-medium schools. In most of these schools, children learn Maths, Sciences and other subjects in English, without knowing English. This situation has led to an increasing number of educators advocating that schooling should be in the mother tongue only.

Read more here.

Vietnam and United Kingdom: British Council helps improve English teaching in Vietnam

The British Council and the Ministry of Education and Training of Vietnam (MoET) will inaugurate a bilingual website (www.teachingenglish.edu.vn) in early February. The website is part of the Access English project, which has been launched by the British Council in across South East Asia to support changes in English language teaching.

Read the story here…

Australia: 8 English schools won’t reopen

Voluntary administrators in eight English language schools say that the schools will not reopen because of the financial situation. They say they are working with the federal department of education and state government departments to find arrangements for the 2300 international students.

Read on…

Cambodia: Cambodia’s minority languages facing a bleak future

More than 20 languages are spoken in Cambodia, lathough most are minority languages and face extinction in the coming decades. For Jean-Michel Filippi, recording the language is one way to preserve a cultural view of the world.

Read more now.

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Australia: A report blasts bilingual policy changes

david — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 07:24:01 +0000

Under the Territory Government’s controversial changes to bilingual education, all students will learn in English only for the first four hours of the day from next year, notes ABC. A report released in Canberra by the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies states there is no evidence to suggest the policy will work. It says research shows children will achieve better results learning in their mother tongue in the early years of education.

“If children are speaking another language when they come to school, they really need to be taught in that language so that they can get up to the level where they can absorb English and other lessons in English,” the author of the report, Patrick McConvell, said.

Read the full story…

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Australian Voices of Dissent

david — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 12:27:02 +0000

Australia: In 2003, at the Kalkaringi Community Education Centre, a bush school on what was once known as Wave Hill station, teachers George and Robyn Hewitson put the first remote area indigenous students – 3 of them in total – through year 12. They put another three through in 2005.The six received only basic certificate passes but this was big news. In 2007, the Hewitsons were asked to take on the NT’s biggest remote area school, the bilingual, government-run Shepherdson College at Elcho Island’s Galiwinku community in Arnhem Land.

According to theaustralian.news.com.au, the Hewitsons have now paid the price, they claim, for challenging local Aborigines, the NT Department of Education and Training, and the bilingual system, which treats English as a second language. “I guess they think English is evil,” George Hewitson says. “The notion is promoted that if you learn English, you lose your culture.”

Read the full story…

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Samoan classes bridge gap in NZ

david — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 17:59:50 +0000

New Zealand: The Kingsland school now offers bilingual Samoan classes to pupils from bilingual primary schools such as Richmond Road School in Ponsonby, and Rosebank Primary in Avondale. John McCaffery, senior lecturer at Auckland University’s faculty of education, is among the team conducting the research, and says, “It helps deliver quality English, quality Samoan and quality curriculum knowledge.”

Read the full story…

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A call to ‘nurture’ the English language empire

david — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 10:00:51 +0000

Australia: Britain’s colonial empire may be long gone, but the language that helped run and often unite it has helped build an empire of a different kind. This English language empire needs to be nurtured and protected by universities in English-speaking countries such as Australia, Britain and the US if it is to survive and prosper, according to the University of Melbourne’s vice-chancellor Glyn Davis.

Read on…

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Parents protest at bilingual decision delay in NZ

david — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 06:50:17 +0000

New Zealand: The parents of five Christchurch primary school children say they have nowhere to go next year after plans for an intermediate-level bilingual class were put on hold, according to Radio NZ.

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Marion Scrymgour backs down on bilingual education plan

david — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 06:14:55 +0000

Australia: Northern Territory Education Minister Marion Scrymgour has buckled to a backlash from the bush in her bid to force teachers in remote Aboriginal schools to teach predominantly in English, notes TheAustralian.com. Ms Scrymgour said yesterday that a requirement to teach the first four hours in English would be negotiated with each of the Territory’s nine bilingual schools on a case-by-case basis.

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Australia: Teachers will mind language

david — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 08:58:01 +0000

Australia: The Territory Government says from next year all schools will teach in English for the first four hours of each day. It is facing a revolt from remote teachers who vow to continue teaching in Aboriginal languages, despite the order to teach in English. Award-winning teacher Yalmay Yunupingu said yesterday she would refuse Departmental orders not to teach in her own language of Yolngu Matha.

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Australia: Department’s reports undermine Minister

david — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 17:24:40 +0000

Australia: Minister Marion Scrymgour has repeatedly said there is no evidence to show that bilingual schools accelerate English literacy. But two reports by her own department have surfaced. Both say schools that teach young indigenous children in their own language in initial years, and gradually introduce English, ultimately achieve better English literacy outcomes.

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Australia: Commissioner labels bilingual education ‘a success story’

david — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 09:26:16 +0000

Australia’s Race Discrimination Commissioner says bilingual teaching is one of few success stories in the recent history of Northern Territory education.

Tom Calma says the Northern Territory Government is ill-advised to implement restrictions on traditional language teaching in bilingual schools. The new policy starts at the beginning of the 2009 school year (as noted in this article: ‘Classrooms limit indigenous languages to 1 hour a day‘) and states the first four hours of the school day must be taught in English.

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