<div dir="ltr"><h1 class="" id="page-title">Foreign-language teachers push for new strategy</h1>
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SBS World News Radio: Teachers of foreign languages are calling for
a national strategy to improve language-learning rates in Australia.
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<span class="" style="font-weight:bold">By</span>
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Greg Dyett</div> <br>
<div class="" title="UPDATED 15 Aug 2016 - 6:30 AM"><span class="">14 Aug 2016 - 8:00 PM</span> UPDATED YESTERDAY 6:30 AM</div></div>
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</div><div class=""><a class="" href="https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2016/08/14/foreign-language-teachers-push-new-strategy#comments"><span class=""><span class="">0</span></span></a></div></div></div></div> <div class="">
<p>For decades, policymakers have talked up the importance of
foreign languages, but successive governments have a record of starting
and then dropping programs.</p>
<p>The president of the Modern Language Teachers Association of Victoria
says Australia's failure to have a national languages policy is holding
the country back.</p>
<p>Andrew Ferguson says it is a very real shortcoming.</p>
<p>"I think that's a crying shame when we don't have a languages policy.
By default, it's the Australian curriculum, and that makes some very
strong statements about what languages education should look like and
what the benefits of it are. But at the moment, well, we haven't had a
federal government for decades, really, that's pumped a lot of money
into initiatives."</p>
<p>The University of Melbourne's Dr Yvette Slaughter is the co-author of Challenging the Monolingual Mindset.</p>
<p>She, too, says Australia is suffering because it lacks a federal language policy.</p>
<p>In Victoria, for instance, it is compulsory for primary schools to
teach foreign languages, but Dr Slaughter says that is not the case in
other parts of the country.</p>
<p>"The state policies that each state have, the requirements, where, in
a lot of states, it's not required at the primary level. In New South
Wales, it's required for a hundred hours only at the secondary level. So
there's a very big lack of policy to really support implementation of
language programs, and there's certainly a lack of a federal language
policy. We haven't had one for a long time."</p>
<p>Their criticisms follow the release of literacy and numeracy test
results showing no significant improvement in Australia since 2015.</p>
<p>In March, Andreas Schleicher, education head at the OECD, the
Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, criticised the
Australian education system for falling behind.</p>
<p>His critique came after the release of the results of the Program for
International Student Assessment, a test of 15 year-old students
conducted every three years.</p>
<p>Australia's ranking had declined significantly, with 20 per cent of students not able to demonstrate basic skills.</p>
<p>Andrew Ferguson from the Modern Language Teachers Association of
Victoria says those results should prompt a rethink of Australia's
language-learning policy.</p>
<p>"We've had Naplan flatlining in a number of areas, and we've had
decades of concentration, in particular, in primary on literacy and
numeracy. Perhaps we need to rethink those strategies. The countries
that are doing really well on OECD rankings are ones that have a
plethora of subjects, and, in particular, multilingualism and
appreciation of other cultures is built into the system. It's simply a
given. Nobody questions it."</p><p><a href="https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2016/08/14/foreign-language-teachers-push-new-strategy">https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2016/08/14/foreign-language-teachers-push-new-strategy</a><br></p></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><br>-- <br><div class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature">**************************************<br>N.b.: Listing on the lgpolicy-list is merely intended as a service to its members<br>and implies neither approval, confirmation nor agreement by the owner or sponsor of the list as to the veracity of a message's contents. Members who disagree with a message are encouraged to post a rebuttal, and to write directly to the original sender of any offensive message. A copy of this may be forwarded to this list as well. (H. Schiffman, Moderator)<br><br>For more information about the lgpolicy-list, go to <a href="https://groups.sas.upenn.edu/mailman/" target="_blank">https://groups.sas.upenn.edu/mailman/</a><br>listinfo/lgpolicy-list<br>*******************************************</div>
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