[lg policy] New Zealand: Auckland Council gives regional languages strategy thumbs up

[Harold Schiffman]

Auckland Council gives regional languages strategy thumbs up   LAURA WALTERS
<laura.walters at fairfaxmedia.co.nz?subject=Auckland%20Council%20gives%20regional%20languages%20strategy%20thumbs%20up>
Last updated 19:21 05/03/2015









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   COMET chief executive Susan Warren

A long-overdue regional languages strategy has been given the thumbs up by
Auckland Council.

Auckland Council accepted the Auckland Community Education Trust (COMET)
proposal to develop an Auckland Languages Strategy on Thursday.

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.

"It's about recognising the importance of everybody's language."

Multilingualism gave tourism and trade benefits as well as community
cohesion, Warren said.

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.

Different groups, including government and private organisations, would
help Aucklanders maintain and value their native languages.

However, the learning had to be done in schools, Warren said.

People were best at learning languages in their first 10 years.

At the moment second languages were not compulsory in primary school and
schools did not have the resources to teach multiple languages, Warren
said.

"That's a huge opportunity we're missing."

Auckland also needed more adult language classes to make up for what did
not happen at school, she said.

Warren said New Zealand "urgently" needed a national languages policy.

At the moment there was only funding for a bilingual education in Te Reo
Maori.

The first stages of a national policy were developed more than 20 years ago
but nothing came of it, she said.

"We have hundreds or thousands of kids coming into our education system
bilingual and leaving monolingual."

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.

Chttp://
www.stuff.co.nz/auckland/67004998/Auckland-Council-gives-regional-languages-strategy-thumbs-upouncil
said it would continue to work with COMET on the strategy.

















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