[lg policy] Australia: Minding your language a virtual reality

[Harold Schiffman]

Minding your language a virtual reality

Date
    October 7, 2012

Farrah Tomazin


More schools might have to use videoconferencing, where students from
different classes tune in to a real-time lesson being conducted by a
teacher at another school.


THE state government will resort to using ''virtual classrooms'' -
where multiple schools share the same teacher over the internet - as
it may not have enough qualified staff to fulfil its promise to teach
every child a second language.

Before the last state election, Ted Baillieu promised a languages
revival in which every Victorian student up to year 10 would be
required to take on a language by 2025, starting with prep in 2015.
But with department figures showing almost 60 per cent of secondary
school students do not study a language - and almost a third of
primary schools don't offer them - the government concedes it will
have to get creative to deliver its goal.

Education Minister Martin Dixon said he was confident the language
policy would be achieved, especially since $6 million was being spent
to recruit language teachers over the next three years. However, he
admitted that ''in every case, it might not necessarily be one teacher
for every classroom''.

Instead, more schools might have to use videoconferencing, where
students from different classes tune in to a real-time lesson being
conducted by a teacher at another school.
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Some classes have already adopted this method - Dimboola Memorial
Secondary College provides German to about eight primary schools;
Mount Clear Secondary College provides Chinese to about seven primary
schools - but the program will be vastly expanded over the next few
years as the government moves to arrest the decline of languages in
Victoria.

''We've got to set the scene in terms of convincing the community
about the importance of learning another language. At the moment it's
patchy - some schools understand it; others have a fair way to go,''
Mr Dixon said.

The minister's comments come as education union research suggests
about 41 per cent of state schools are teaching languages without a
properly qualified teacher.

It also comes only weeks after Mr Baillieu's trade mission to China,
where he announced an even more aggressive push to make young people
more proficient in Mandarin.

Under the latest plan, 1500 year 9 students will be sent to Jiangsu
province over the next five years as part of an immersion program to
improve their grasp of the language.

A new VCE Mandarin subject will also be created, aimed at students of
non-Chinese backgrounds wishing to pursue a language in their senior
years.

Education Department data shows that last year 5782 students were
studying the language in year 7, but only 1299 had continued in year
12.

Language teacher Antoinette Masiero said the reason many high school
students were not studying a second language was because too many
primary schools, including her own (which she did not want named) had
abandoned the subject.

''So the kids get to high school and it's torturous to learn. If we
can get them in those early years - between the ages of four and eight
- then their whole brains are going to be wired in a way that is
automatic,'' she said.

VCE student Thomas Monaghan, meanwhile, is exactly the kind of person
the government needs in order to fulfil its election promise. The year
12 student from St Patrick's College in Ballarat has studied Japanese
since year 8 - and wants to be a language teacher after university.

Asked why many of his peers didn't take on a language subject, he
replied: ''I feel as though it's really, really underpromoted …
There's always certificates for PE, maths, or English - and you can
get scholarships for those sorts of subjects, whereas there isn't a
lot of that opportunity in languages to keep kids interested.''

Parents Victoria spokeswoman Gail McHardy said the most challenging
part about the government's language policy was convincing people
about the benefits of learning another language. Australian Education
Union branch president Mary Bluett said it was a worthwhile goal, but
''there's no way they'll meet that objective''.

http://www.theage.com.au/technology/technology-news/minding-your-language-a-virtual-reality-20121006-27681.html

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