Is how we teach languages in Australia fundamentally wrong?

[Joseph41]

Interested in opinions here.

My experience:
- Seven years of Italian in primary school, which got me precisely nowhere
- Several years of French and Japanese in early high school; I dropped both (because I'm a fucking idiot, but I didn't enjoy either of them at the time)

And that's it.

I've thought about this a lot. I think there should be a much greater emphasis on bilingualism in primary and high school education.

Bilingualism has huge benefits both linguistically and otherwise. I don't think it's up for debate that we should emphasise this more than we do (but, happy to hear counter-opinions!).

A very quick Google search revealed some introductory articles on the topic. All thoughts appreciated.

How to make Australia more bilingual
"Bilingualism has been associated with a range of benefits for young learners, from higher test scores to more creative thought processes and greater mental flexibility. Being bilingual has even been claimed to mitigate the impacts of socioeconomic status on students. However, the numbers of students undertaking language study in Australia is low, so is learning an additional language just too much hard work?"

"In NSW, as of 2013, less than 10% of HSC students undertook a second language."

"Challenging what Professor Michael Clyne once termed the “monolingual mindset” is difficult not only for Australia, but for other English-speaking countries like the United Kingdom and the United States."

"It takes up to seven years of continuous use to achieve academic proficiency in an additional language."

"It is not easy to find schools that offer comprehensive (and continuous) language programs, particularly in the state sector where strict school zoning restricts enrolment."

"The importance of language learning is often overlooked due to the competing demands of a crowded curriculum."

Should learning a second language be compulsory in Australian schools?
"Under the $9.8 million trial, children will be taught one of five languages – Mandarin, Japanese, Indonesian, Arabic or French – using games and interactive apps.

The trial is part of a wider push by the government to promote languages in schools, after it was found that the number of Year 12 students studying a second language had dropped from 40 per cent in the 1960s to only 12 per cent today."

"Victoria is the only state committed to compulsory language education, with a goal of having compulsory languages learning for all students in government schools, prep to Year 10, by 2025."

"There are six languages predominantly taught in Australian schools, with Japanese the most popular, followed by Italian, Indonesian, French, German and Mandarin."

"Kathleen Kirby argues the benefits of language studies go beyond being able to speak another language.

"Young people who have the opportunity to learn languages will not only be able to communicate better with people across the world, they have deeper inter cultural understanding and cultural intelligence," she said."

""Young people's brains are absolutely wired for language learning and it’s a real advantage and an optimum time to start children learning a second language as young as preschool age," Kathleen Kirby says."

[K888]

100%, it's fundamentally wrong. Apologies for the upcoming word vomit haha.

I did AUSLAN in primary school, actually, which was cool. And I would have liked to have learnt it even more, but essentially all I could do by the end was sign the alphabet, sign the national anthem, and sign "Shine" by Shannon Noll (I still remember a fair amount of this actually, lol). So I could communicate only very basically with a deaf person, or if we were wanting to communicate via Shannon Noll's lyrics, maybe I'd be ok.

I did French for six years, all through high school, though I'd say I only started properly learning it in year 10 (7-9 was a bit of a bludge), and even then, only became a confident speaker in year 12. I fucking loathed class, and the only reasons I kept doing French was because a) I was good at it, and b) my desire to be able to speak another language and not throw away skills I had, slightly outweighed the never-ending misery that was learning a language at school lol.

The way we were taught seemed so counter-intuitive to actually learning the language. To me, I was only going to learn the language by immersion, not by my teacher giving out verb conjugation sheets and having my teacher do a dictation on Sandrine's day at school.
We had French exchange students come to my school each year, and it was interesting to see - they were all 16 (some 15), and fluent in English, but had only been learning it since starting collége (high school). The only people who could properly hold a conversation with them in French were the year 12s - even in year 11 (which is the year you do exchange), we couldn't hold a proper conversation with them, despite the fact we'd actually been learning French longer than they'd been learning English. Definitely says something about the way languages are taught differently in different countries. These kids were also learning a second language other than English (commonly German, Spanish, etc.) and they were pretty fluent in those as well.

We definitely have an entrenched monolingual mindset, it's so easy to think that you'll never need to use a language other than English. A large majority of people in my year level dropped their LOTE after year 9, when it stopped being compulsory, and I can quite confidently say that they learnt and retained probably next to nothing in those 3 years. A lot of people dropped it because they thought it would never be useful to them (and they had this mindset from the first day of class), and the classes were seriously un-engaging.

I really don't know how to teach languages properly - but for sure, the way languages are taught need to change. We need to improve engagement and actually make people excited to learn a different language.

[spectroscopy]

i definitely think ineffective pedagogy from language teachers is a huge factor as well. i did chinese for years in school.. primary school through to year 10 and then more in uni, and I learnt more in 1 semester of uni with a good teacher than literally everything else combined (even including my second semester at uni with a crap teacher). One big problem i found was problems with teaching, not necessarily effort or resources. either the curriculum would be way too dense, or you are being taught by an archaic technique that doesnt work when you only have class for 2 hours a week, or something. When I got to university though the lecturer had actually studied education and had a very thoughtful curriculum, that started from scratch but taught things at a great pace with a lot of room for people to learn things based on how they learn. we started off with like 5 new words a week, increasing to about 10, then maxing out at around 15 for the last few weeks. it was a very manageable pace and almost all of the vocab has stuck especially since we would have to mix around between the lessons. as soon as I hit chinese 2, classes stopped being as interactive as chinese 1 and class basically involved answering worksheets by referring to the textbook again and again, and we were tested on something like 20+ words a week with most of them having 2-4 completely different characters. it got to the point where it was just way too much to absorb given the amount of effort i could dedicate to the subject and i ended up not remembering shit. there was a similiar thing in high school where our teacher wanted us to memorise like 50 multi-character words a week in year 10 and then remember them for the rest of the semester. there is no way on earth this in the realm of feasibility for year 10 students with no significant knowledge foundation, and only have 2 hours a week of class. so i attest the failure of years of chinese to stick with me and my peers to be basically due to way too much information and high expectations. I studied the language at 3 schools and at each school the end of semester exam would just have sooo many kids fail they had to scale a 20% up to a 60%. if we were given reasonable expectations and a more do-able workload then we would've learnt heaps. literally with 12 weeks of university in an introductory chinese course I have been able to hold conversations with uber drivers who do not speak english at all. and i entered the course literally only knowing how to count and say/spell 1 word in the language.
if high school didnt have boring stuff like reading out of dictionaries and just answering worksheets in dead silence for entire periods and it was more like "ok we gonna learn 5 words this week and do conversations in class and shit" then by the end of the year a person might reasonably know 100 words and be able to retain at least some of it into the next year

pls note the exact numbers i gave for vocab requirements imposed on us in classes might sound unremarkable or even easy for other languages, but chinese has no alphabet so any new word you learn is just a huge pain in the ass because you have to learn the characters separately to the actual way to say a word

[LifeisaConstantStruggle]

I guess the blame shouldn't be put primarily on school/educators themselves, while it is true that Australian LOTE education generally focuses on academics and scores more than anything else (which cuts off a lot of vital input required for language learning), our general failure in teaching languages is also due to the fact that Australia is a monolingual society itself, and the use of different languages isn't really an integral part of our culture (yet). We don't really have access to a lot of input in other languages (all of our subjects are taught in English, except LOTE, Australian media is for the most part monolingual, and people speak English in school).
This isn't the case for a lot of countries within Asia and Europe, for example, Switzerland and Malaysia, because a lot of the people who live there are used to using multiple languages in their daily lives.
At this point I wouldn't be sure if Australia could be more successful in teaching languages to their kids but this country is becoming more and more diverse, it will improve, hopefully.

[katie,rinos]

Yeah, I think that it is.
I learnt Italian in years 7 & 8 because it was compulsory at my school. Most of the kids hated it and it wasn't the most interesting subject (could have bee the way it was taught as well). I went well in it but nobody else really bothered to study for the topic tests. It was offered as an elective in year 9, and only around 3 people actually choose it so the class didn't run. I didn't really learn a lot of important phrases-tbh I learnt how to introduce myself and some key words (colours, numbers, animals, that kind of thing). If you asked now I could say my name, and the numbers up to 20 and that is all.
When I was learning Italian, it was more to get a good grade and I don't think I was trying to fully learn and understand the language.

[fantasticbeasts3]

yes, yes, and yes.

i learnt chinese for about 10 years, then stopped, because it became a whole lot of rote learning, and i absolutely hated it. it wasn't interesting, and the fact that it was forced on me for so long (i did it on the weekend) didn't fare well. the teaching was terrible, and there were no skills to try and help someone communicate - it was more towards reading and writing. right now, i can only read, write, and understand a few words. i don't think i'd go back and try to relearn chinese, because i have a lot of bad memories from it, and i don't think learning it myself would be good because i find it hard to motivate myself.

the trend running through my uac preferences is international studies, and another degree, in media. international studies requires students to learn one language, but i'm so unsure of doing it because i don't know how i would get taught the language, based on my personal experience of learning. i don't want to go through so many years of trying to learn a language, but only get a few words out of it. i so badly want to be bilingual (i am, but it's not a language commonly used, and i only use it to speak to my family), but the way language is taught here really isn't that great.

[Joseph41]

Interesting responses!

If the system's broken, how should we fix it? Immersion?

[Henry Kocatekin]

I went on exchange to France 2 years ago and they (and most European countries) know how to do it.

1. TEACH THE FRIGGEN LANGUAGE IN THE TARGETED LANGUAGE!
2. Teach languages from an earlier age.

Wow it has frustrated me! hahaha