Language study essential reading

Murdoch language education specialist Lindy Norris has completed a massive study on how languages other than English (LOTE) have been taught in Australia since they became a “key” component of the curriculum a decade ago. Her report card on Australia’s language teaching has just been published and is essential reading for the country’s language teachers and education departments alike.
    Young kids love LOTE but don’t learn much. Students in the middle years of schooling are not having their needs met, and technology is underutilised in LOTE teaching and learning contexts. These are just some thumb-sketch assessments by Murdoch researcher and former language teacher Lindy Norris after two years of investigating how languages are being taught in our primary and secondary schools, senior colleges and tertiary institutions.
    The 270-page report is a comprehensive assessment of how languages are being taught, what students think of LOTE lessons, what problems exist for teachers and how to improve the system. Her over-riding impression is that the “pathway” of language learning - from Year 3 to Year 12 and beyond - provides a “continuous but not a cumulative” education in LOTE and, as such, has been largely unsuccessful as a mechanism for students achieving language proficiency. The study is of enormous significance, given that the majority of school students between the ages of 8 and 16 are, or will be, expected to learn a foreign language in the near future.
    The study was undertaken by a team of researchers under the direction of Ms Norris, from Murdoch’s School of Education, and Gary Martin, who is also from the School and is deputy director of the Centre for Curriculum and Professional Development at Murdoch. It was prompted by the need to assess the impact of increased LOTE uptake on the proficiency outcomes of learners.
    The research was funded by the Commonwealth Department of Education, Training and Youth Affairs through the National Asian Languages and Studies in Australian Schools (NALSAS) Strategy.
    Researchers sought out the “best practice” programmes in language teaching around the country to see if, and why, they were successful. Data collection included interviews with senior jurisdictional officers, principals, program coordinators, teachers and students. The report is sprinkled with some telling cases studies and student comments. Some of the critical findings were:

languages were considered by some principals and teachers as a side line in the primary curriculum,
students’ acquisition of language “stalled” at certain points causing them to become disaffected,
language programs sometimes overlapped and repeated things,
the teaching of “culture” tended to be stereotypical (like folk dancing and origami),
teachers needed to take account of the fact that many students had other languages in their home life
lower secondary teaching was often dominated by reading and writing rather than being verbal and interactive (often as a consequence of the perceived imperative for class discipline)

As a result of the research, Ms Norris and her team have come up with a tool to audit language programs together with a number of general recommendations for improvements. These include:

using new information technology in language teaching
getting other people who speak the language to work with teachers in classrooms
establishing “in-country” programs so that students (at the higher levels) can both fast-track their learning and put it into action.

Further information