Utopia colouring books (fwd)

phil cash cash cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU
Mon Nov 15 19:06:28 UTC 2004


Utopia colouring books

Reporter: Ian Jamieson
Presenter: Annie Gastin
Monday, 15 November  2004 
http://www.abc.net.au/nt/stories/s1244071.htm

Everyone likes to colour.

That’s what Gail Woods told me about three new language books launched
in Alice Springs recently. Gail is a lecturer with the Batchelor
Institute of Tertiary Education. She lives in Alice Springs and
conducts her workshops at Utopia, an Aboriginal community to the
north-east of Alice Springs.

The three books reflect the three languages spoken in the area.

“Utopia is Anmatyerra and Alyawarr country and there is a small pocket
of Kaytetye as well”, Gail told me.

She will be using the books with her adult classes although they will be
very useful for children .

“The focus at Utopia is reading and writing those languages because
that’s what the students want to do,” Gail says.

Each page focuses on one word at the top, an illustration depicting the
word which takes up most of the page and a sentence in language with an
English translation.

“We could use that sentence in a lot of different ways for quite a few
different lessons”, Gail explained. The sounds, the sentence structure
and grammar are analysed.

The pictures include all sorts of fun things: kids swimming in
waterholes and hunting for bush tucker, and there are dingoes and
goannas, and kangaroos too.

Jenny Taylor, Lecturer in Art & Craft at Batchelor Institute assisted
with the illustrations.

Gail told me the oral language is very strong at Utopia but when young
children first arrive at school they are taught in English and learning
to read and write in a foreign language is difficult.

There are five schools in the area which means a fair amount of time is
taken up with travelling for lecturers such as Gail.

Maintaining and promoting an indigenous language is very important.
“It is integral for maintaining culture for which it encodes,” she says.
Words relating to ceremonies and kinship for which there are no English
equivalents must be retained for the culture to thrive.

IAD Press, which published the books, hopes they will be popular with
children right around Australia.



Gail Woods talks about the books
( Audio in RealMedia format )



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