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Australia Makes Asian Language Learning a Priority
An anonymous reader writes "The Australian government came a step closer to formalising its plans to make Asian language study compulsory for schools this week. It has released a draft curriculum for public consultation which reveals plans to include Indonesian, Korean and french language in the curriculum. Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard publicly stated in September 2012 that in response to the "staggering growth" in the region, the government would be instigating 25 key measures to strengthen and exploit links with Asia. The plan includes the requirement that one third of civil servants and company directors have a "deep knowledge," thousands of scholarships for Asian students, and the opportunity for every schoolchild to learn one of four "priority" languages- Chinese, Hindi, Japanese or Indonesian."
French is an asian language now?
(And why no capital for the poor old frogs?)
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Sure, French used to be an official language in colonial Indochina, but it hardly seems to make sense to consider on par with the other languages listed.
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Australia should be making English a priority, since it is an English speaking country. The modern world conducts business in English anyway. What really is the point of learning Indonesian or Hindi?? Even India demands English speakers of its own people. Australia should be doing the same, especially since more and more immigrants are coming here.
Learning is surely great in all forms. But I am confused why Hindi is a 'priority language'. Every corporate senior person I've met from India - Director type level - not only speaks several Indian languages, but also has flawless English in terms of grammar and vocabulary mixed with a somewhat local accent depending on where they're from in India, unless, as an in-joke among Indian colleagues goes, they're walked past the US Embassy and are suddenly embroiled with a thick US accent.
Chinese, for dealing with anyone outside the BPO / ITO / major trade companies: government, state owned and specialists yes.
Japanese, things in Japan tend to happen in Japanese despite the speaker's English ability, whatever the industry, so yes.
Indonesian, honestly have no experience.
But Hindi. Seems odd to be a priority.
I currently live in South East Asia (born European), and the economic dynamism is remarkable. It is a good idea to prepare young people to "the century of Asia". I wish that I had started learning Mandarin and Japanese earlier in life.
Language learning is hard. I have enthusiastically studied quite many languages for many years but managed to reach a fluency only in one or two foreign languages. For example, I studied Swedish in school almost daily for 6 1/2 years and can't follow a TV program that is in Swedish.
If you make language learning a priority, understand that you will need 10 years of active study to reach a usable level even when you have the inclination.
(Yes, English is one of those foreign languages.)
Chinese (Mandarin to be precise) is the current language fad. I remember when about a decade ago everyone was into Japanese and before that there was Russian. There are many good reasons to learn foreign languages from an early age but frankly the whole "economic relationships" argument is BS. The truth is that the current world lingua franca for business is English and it's going to stay that way for a while.
Well it is a step in the right direction. If you look at a globe Australia south of Far East Asia.
Sure they can do business with the Yanks and the Brits, but they are missing their closest neighbors.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
The government is trying to eradicate everything English and have everyone just talk French. The optimist in me says Quebec should learn from this, but the realist in me knows they won't. Pretty bad when children can't use any language but French during recess and during their lunch breaks, we have language cops going around offices making sure microwave buttons are in French and that Italian pasta names are in French, can't have people ordering RIGATONI now can we....
Of the 4 priority languages Chinese, Hindi, Japanese and Indonesian only 3 are actual languages.
"Chinese" does not exist as a language. Many languages are spoken within China*, the big two being Mandarin and Cantonese, with a host of smaller languages appearing in different areas. Now I assume they mean mandarin as that is the most common language within china, especially the richer areas, but saying "Chinese" is a priority makes no more sense than saying we should teach our kids "European".
*While there are many spoken languages interestingly the majority share the same written language. It's not uncommon for people from different area's to be able to pass notes to each other but not talk.
Interestingly, throughout Asia English is taught in schools. In Taiwan it's become a mandatory part of the curriculum, and that may also be the case elsewhere. When it's not, many parents go out of their ways to get their kids to learn the language.
In the US, however, a second language seems to be selected based on whatever the prevailing language spoken by the dominant ethnic group in the area. And that's assuming they offer a second language at all. More often than not the language ends up being Spanish, which all too frequently becomes more of a service to ESL students than value to anyone else.
I find that to be a persistent problem with the American educational system, there's no goal and thinking is often too insular. The difference between systems is that overseas they're trying to make people competitive internationally but still expecting their citizens speak the official language. Meanwhile, Americans, instead of stressing the importance of English for success keep making accommodations for non-speakers.
I suppose someday the US might become a Spanish speaking nation, and that's totally fine. But we're far from that reality and currently Asian nations are economically dominant and on the rise. Of course, it's not feasible to keep switching languages every time some new nation rises in influence, which is why we've got English as the standard and why everyone continues to learn that.
Agreed. The language du jour is just that -- a fad.
When I was going through school in Australia (and experiencing it's utterly stupid and incoherent foreign-language system), the fad went from French and German, to Japanese, to Indonesian to Chinese. Education types have just as many dumb, pointless industry fads as IT.
Pick one useful language and stick with it. And try and have the system reformed to support that.
In the US, however, a second language seems to be selected based on whatever the prevailing language spoken by the dominant ethnic group in the area. And that's assuming they offer a second language at all. More often than not the language ends up being Spanish, which all too frequently becomes more of a service to ESL students than value to anyone else.
I've noticed the exact opposite during my education. I live in Georgia, and we have a lot of Spanish speakers in my general area. Of course my middle school offered only French and Spanish (I chose French). My high school offered French, Spanish, Latin, and German (I did one year of French and 3 of Latin). I went to college in rural, middle of nowhere North Carolina, and my university offered French, Spanish, Biblical Greek (it was a baptist university) German (which I took for 2 years) and, my senior year, Arabic (which I also took). Did graduate school back in Atlanta where I took more Arabic, and as it was a large, state university they had all manner of languages one could take. I am of the opinion that most students learn Spanish because it is considered the easier of the languages. But, just like with any other subject, the opportunities to learn something new are out there, you just have to want to learn.
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While many of the Chinese business-people speak English, those in the internal labour market may not (at least not fluently). Eliminating the language barrier won't help too much though unless some of the walls against foreign ownership/participation in the Chinese market are dropped. Currently it's often still quite hard to interact without a middle-man.
Indonesian is apparently the biggest economy on SE-Asia, or at least according to wikipedia, so that may make sense as well. It's also fairly close to Australia.
Japanese. Well they're not the tech poster-child anymore but I wouldn't count them out yet.
Korean. Supplanting Japan in many of the tech areas, with companies such as LG, Samsung, etc.
Hindi seems to be the dominant language in India (again according to WP), so maybe it's a similar case to China where knowing the language may allow one to bypass the middle-man. I'd say in those cases that knowing the culture is probably just as important as the language, however.
I live here and have a bunch of friends who were either taught indonesian or Japanese at least for a couple of classes in school.
It makes sense, as most of our trade is within the Asian region.
I know this may come as a shock to those in the US, but learning a language other than English is pretty common in other English speaking countries, especially in the Eurozone.
Most of the people working in hospitality I dealt with during a 6 week tour of Europe (inc, France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Czech Republic, Hungary, etc.) spoke at least 2-3 languages. One of our swiss tour guides spoke at least 5.
Knowing the native language of those you work with or trade with is useful. You may be very surprised at what may be getting said between others right out in front of you if you don't understand, or the other guys think you don't understand.
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As a parent who desperately wants his children to become fluent in at least two languages I am stuck with horrible choices because I live in America. I have cobbled together language training for my two older sons while they were young enough to learn but it was extremely difficult. Now, to get an immersion Chinese program for him, I am using school of choice to send my youngest to an inner city school where they are so poor that they just fired all of the elementary school art, music, and PE teachers to close a budget gap. When will we make education a priority in this country?
So, I'm semi-fluent in Spanish and I wrote to my federal politician about incentives for learning Portuguese - no response.
Who will teach the people of Timor Leste their own official language? Certainly not interested volunteers from Australia.
And by useful, that means whichever language group has girls you think are the hottest, learn that one.
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I suppose someday the US might become a Spanish speaking nation, and that's totally fine. But we're far from that reality and currently Asian nations are economically dominant and on the rise. Of course, it's not feasible to keep switching languages every time some new nation rises in influence, which is why we've got English as the standard and why everyone continues to learn that.
Much of the U.S. is already bilingual. But learning Spanish isn't just a good idea for use at home, it's useful rather far afield -- more people in the Western Hemisphere speak Spanish than English. Asian languages might be trendier, but if you can't find good international business opportunities somewhere between the Rio Grande and Drake Passage, then the problem isn't with the language you studied.
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"Chinese" is a perfect acceptable English name of the national language of China. It has several other meansing too. In China they call it the Peking Dialect, the Northern Dialect, The National Languge, The Common Speech, and The Middle language among other names, beiyu, guoyu, putonhua, zhongweng, hanyu.
Well it is a step in the right direction.
I agree, but I wish they'd learn proper English first.
neuroscience researchers are increasingly coming to a consensus that bilingualism has many positive consequences for the brain. Several such researchers traveled to this month's annual meeting of the American Assn. for the Advancement of Science in Washington, D.C., to present their findings. Among them: Bilingual children are more effective at multi-tasking. Adults who speak more than one language do a better job prioritizing information in potentially confusing situations. Being bilingual helps ward off early symptoms of Alzheimer's disease in the elderly.
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/feb/26/health/la-he-bilingual-brain-20110227
I have seen research showing that kids in immersion bilingual programs, though they initially lag, have a larger English vocabulary than their peers by 6th grade. There have also been documented advantages in math.
Anecdotally, my 7 year old reads Rick Riordan for pleasure, knows his nth roots, can solve basic algebraic equations, and speaks some Mandarin Chinese. Maybe it's because he didn't fill the limited space in his brain with the names of 10,000 Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh characters ... Oh, wait, he memorized those too.
Pasty Aryans aren't my fancy but whichever corner of the globe one visits there are to be found affluent well educated lonesome frauleins who find English-speakers uncouth.
Pragmatically, learn German? :)
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Oh, I get it intermediately, while there's still a myriad of languages out there, increasing the number of spoken languages seems like a good thing. You'll be more able to communicate. However, from a rational thermodynamic perspective, you're placing more cognitive load on individuals needlessly. Anyone who anticipates needing the linguistic skill should adopt it, anyone who doesn't anticipate the need can learn the language as needed. The way to get everyone on the same wavelength isn't to have everyone learn everyone's language, its to use translators (a "VM" in machine-speak), or teach everyone only one language the world over. It should be one that's compressible and has few glyphs, like (new) Japanese or English. Hell, the Japanese change their glyph direction at will to flow more with the right to left top to bottom styling of the French, English, German, Russian, etc. "western" languages.
Culture blah blah blah. Don't care. Whatever best translates to machine speak is what I'm going with. That's English, or Japanese, and there's lots more folks speaking English than Japanese, thus it's the future. Deal with it. From their disregard of per unit energy consumption I take it these are the same folks who use AV products instead of running hardware supported virtualized OSs? Figures. Someone needs to cull these legislators from the herd fast, they're hindering progress.
Well it is a step in the right direction. If you look at a globe Australia south of Far East Asia. Sure they can do business with the Yanks and the Brits, but they are missing their closest neighbors.
No it's ok - we talk English in New Zealand too.
"The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes" - Winston Churchill
And by useful, that means whichever language group has girls you think are the hottest, learn that one.
Klingon? Dothraki?
"The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes" - Winston Churchill
It's a step in the WRONG direction. Why should a kid be forced to learn an Asian language? Suppose s/he has Italian or other antecendents, and wants to be able to speak to Nonna? Or a a passionate interest in the classics, and wants to learn Latin or Greek.
It's a big mistake to build in more mandatory components to our education system. We should be making it more flexible, not less.
back, way back, like late 70's early 80's back, I remember my father and other teachers talking trying to introduce at least a single year of manditory asian language studies for high schools. At the time only 2 government schools in the entire state were teaching Japanese and maybe 1 or 2 teaching Chinese (Mandarin) and 1 teaching Indonesian. These were only offered in high schools, apart from what would now be called ESL classes for migrant kids there were _no_ language programs in any government primary schools (talk about a pedagogical disaster... yes lets wait for them to hit 13 before we teach them a second language.... effin' brilliant).
.... even though it taught standardised Greek and Italian, not the parochial regional dialects that the usual migrant families spoke at home .... so the reasons for those limits on intake that were?....
Those few state schools that taught asian languages where "gifted" schools, seated in high income areas competing against Anglican Church run elite grammar schools and, unless you got in on a language or music scholarship had very limited intake outside their defined intake suburbs, so... good luck getting in if you were outside their watershed, I was only 4 klm away from the one teaching Japanese and still couldn't get entry. So if you were a state school student you were left with French, but usually due to class size limits the school only only offered it to you if you got straight As and one of the top 20 English students.
Or maybe, if you were in an area with high migrant kids, you could study Greek and Italian... but only if you were of Greek or Italian decent
why? - were you planning on going back to school so you can take them up on that... I'm sure you can afford another trip to Bangkok and save the eduction department the time and effort teaching cocksucking 101 just for your benefit
Indonesian, German and French have been mandatory parts of the Australian languages other than English syllabus since I was in high school 16 years ago.
Shifting the focus to more useful languages (IE those spoken in China) can only be a good thing for our future as a nation.
Proposed mechanism:
The underlying causes are inate intellectual ability and drive. People with these traits are more likely to learn many things, languages included. People with these traits are also more effective at multi-tasking, prioritizing, resisting Alzheimer's disease, using a large vocabulary, and learning math.
Why not? May all your dreams come true.
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French? Multiculturalism is hella whack.
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Islam has it's above average share of nuts but Indonesia being the largest Islamic population in the world has an under average share of these murderous crackpots.
Besides, the all but democratic government and military will assure your and their own peace.
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