<div dir="ltr"><h1>Auckland Council gives regional languages strategy thumbs up
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<a href="mailto:laura.walters@fairfaxmedia.co.nz?subject=Auckland%20Council%20gives%20regional%20languages%20strategy%20thumbs%20up">LAURA WALTERS</a>
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<div class="">Last updated 19:21 05/03/2015</div>
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<div class="">COMET chief executive Susan Warren</div>
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A long-overdue regional languages strategy has been given the thumbs up by Auckland Council.
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Auckland Council accepted the Auckland Community Education Trust
(COMET) proposal to develop an Auckland Languages Strategy on Thursday.
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COMET chief executive Susan Warren said it was crucial to have a
common goal and cohesion when it came to maintaining, valuing and
teaching languages in Auckland.
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"It's about recognising the importance of everybody's language."
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Multilingualism gave tourism and trade benefits as well as community cohesion, Warren said.
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In Auckland, a region with more than 160 spoken languages, a
languages strategy would support the maintenance of languages brought
into the region and help people from different ethnic backgrounds
communicate, she said.
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Different groups, including government and private organisations,
would help Aucklanders maintain and value their native languages.
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However, the learning had to be done in schools, Warren said.
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People were best at learning languages in their first 10 years.
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At the moment second languages were not compulsory in primary school
and schools did not have the resources to teach multiple languages,
Warren said.
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"That's a huge opportunity we're missing."
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Auckland also needed more adult language classes to make up for what did not happen at school, she said.
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Warren said New Zealand "urgently" needed a national languages policy.
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At the moment there was only funding for a bilingual education in Te Reo Maori.
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The first stages of a national policy were developed more than 20 years ago but nothing came of it, she said.
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"We have hundreds or thousands of kids coming into our education system bilingual and leaving monolingual."
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COMET would work further with community and government to develop
the strategy during the next couple of months and would launch the
Auckland Languages Strategy mid-year.
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Chttp://<a href="http://www.stuff.co.nz/auckland/67004998/Auckland-Council-gives-regional-languages-strategy-thumbs-upouncil">www.stuff.co.nz/auckland/67004998/Auckland-Council-gives-regional-languages-strategy-thumbs-upouncil</a> said it would continue to work with COMET on the strategy.
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