Australian Indigenous Languages

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Recommended: Importance of foreign languages in education

In the context of globalisation, there is an increasing call for quality language education for Australian students, so that they are able to deal with the rapid changes of information successfully. Developing in Australian students’ language skills and inter-cultural understanding is considered as a considerable investment in Australian’s capability (Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs [MCEETYA], 2005). This essay will elucidate what role does language teaching plays in Australian schools. It will also explain the necessity for all Australian to learn a second language. In this essay, ‘languages’ will be used to refer to all languages other than English, including Australian Indigenous languages (MCEETYA, 2005). ‘Australian Indigenous Languages’ will be used to involve all the languages of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people of Australia (MCEETYA, 2005).

Language teaching in Australian schools reflect Australia’s response to globalisation (Welch, 2018). There is a rising demand for …show more content…

As an immigrant and multicultural country, Australia has beyond 28 per cent of Australians born overseas and beyond 300 languages different spoken in Australian homes (Australian Bureau of Statistics 2015-16 [ABS], 2017; ABS, 2017). Rather than having the students who are immigrants, asylum seekers or Indigenous to discard the culture from their homeland to fit themselves in to the Anglo cultural norms of majority Australian society, language teaching in Australian schools shows that the schooling system acknowledge and value languages as an important part of the mainstream curriculum (MCEETYA, 2005). For students who have bicultural or multicultural background, learning their home language at schools serve their needs in maintaining cultural relations with the homeland and retaining their languages (Welch,

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