Language Options for
Australians
William W. Bostock
Current Affairs Bulletin, 69, 5 (October) 1992, pp17-25.
(ISSN 0011-3182)
Key Words: language, policy, Australia
An
earlier version of this paper was presented at the Ninth Biennial National
Languages Conference, Darwin, 1992.
Being an
English-speaking country means that second language learning does not have the
same pressing urgency for Australia that it does for many other countries. Even so, the need for skills in other
languages for export industries, tourism and intellectual and cultural
development has been expressed by official committees of enquiry, industry
leaders and educational authorities, such that Australians' traditional second
language option, none at all, is being viewed with disquiet. There is also evidence that now widely
travelling general public are creating a large demand for language classes: for
example in 1991 one Melbourne College of TAFE was offering 53 language classes
in languages ranging from Arabic to Thai. (Holmeglen College of TAFE, 1991)
The
uniqueness of Australia's situation as predominantly a nation of Europeans
located near to Asia and somewhere between Africa and South America creates a
problem and a challenge (Clyne: 1990) but what are the language options?
This
paper will attempt to clarify this question though ultimately the choice can
only be made by the individual.
Here an attempt will be made to give answers to those questions most
commonly asked by the intending student: which languages are recommended by
government, are all languages and cultures equal or are some more
intellectually and culturally developed than others; which are the most
powerful languages; which are easier or more difficult to learn; which
languages give access to other languages within a language family; what is the
cost involved in travel to an area or country where a language is spoken by a
majority of the population and the possibility of support for such travel;
which languages are needed in export industries, in tourism to Australia, and
in overseas development work; which have official status in one or more
countries and in international organisations; which are the most frequently
spoken languages within Australia; and finally what is the educational
availability of a language for study at school and continuing on to tertiary
levels?.
There are
also many important matters that this paper cannot attempt to answer: for
example the most appropriate of teaching methods, the process of making
decisions about languages by educational providers, and the issue of freedom or
compulsion in language study.
OFFICIAL
POLICY
All
governments recognise the extreme importance of language policy and all nations
have a language policy. Often it
is implicit and sometimes it is secret or covert, designed to reduce or
eliminate a particular language in favour of another. Many of the tragic civil wars of today have their origins,
at least in part, in those kinds of policies as implemented decades or even
centuries ago. Often nations have
an official language policy based on an assumption or intention as to desired
future situations. In the 1980s
Australia developed such a national policy, which explicitly stated the desired
future language development of the nation, after several official enquiries
seeking submissions from all interested persons and groups.
When it
was released in 1987 the National Policy on Languages (also known as the Lo
Bianco Report) was adopted by Parliament as the official language policy of
Australia. In addition to its
statement on the fundamental place of English, the policy recommended that all
Australian students should have the opportunity to study at least one language
other than English, but recommended against compulsion as this would lead to
poor learning. With regard to
language options the report recognised two categories of language: firstly the mother tongue for those
students whose language at home is one other than English, that is a 'community
language', where possible, and secondly, one or more languages from a group of
nine identified 'languages of wider learning' which would balance Australia's
domestic and external needs. Those
languages were Arabic, Chinese (Mandarin), French, German, Greek, Indonesian/
Malaysian*, Italian, Japanese and Spanish. The policy also advised that the teaching of any language
desired by any school would be educationally and culturally warranted and
therefore encouraged, and also that Aboriginal languages were a special case in
need of special assistance.
In 1991
the National Language Policy received some redefinition in a Policy Information
Paper called Australia's Language, the Australian Language and Literacy
Policy. This report noted with
alarm that while in the 1960s about 40% of final year students studied a language
other than English, that figure is today less than 12% many of whom were
moreover native speakers. (Australia's Language, 1991: 15). The report sought to downplay the
importance of community languages, stating that
'The
establishment of priorities is complicated by the wide range of language groups
represented in our community.'
and went
on to state that
'Priority
attention must be given to languages of broader national interest to
Australia'. (Australia's Language,
1991, p.15)
The
Report was critical of the situation where 24% of year 12 students study French
while only 6% study Indonesian/Malaysian*. The report drew attention to the language needs of
exporters, which were identified as Mandarin Chinese, Japanese, Arabic,
Indonesian/Malaysian, Korean, Thai, Spanish, German and French, in that order,
and declared that Asian Studies including Asian languages would be made an
additional priority area for additional higher education places.
The
National Language Policy has thus changed from its earlier position of
neutrality between community languages and languages of wider learning to a
position of a stronger level of support for the export income related languages
(though making an exception for Aboriginal languages) in a final order to be
negotiated with the State and Territory authorities. The languages selected must be from a core of fourteen
priority languages (in alphabetical order):
Aboriginal
languages, Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Indonesian/Malaysian, Italian,
Japanese, Korean, Modern Greek, Russian, Spanish, Thai and Vietnamese
Four of
Australia's largest community languages: Serbo-Croatian, Polish, Dutch and
Macedonian were thus downgraded in status to that of non-priority languages in
the new version of the Language Policy.
Schools could still teach these languages but they would not qualify for
the $300 per capita that the Federal Government would pay for year 12 students
undertaking the study of a priority languages. In discussing this policy shift, Clyne has observed that
'. . .
economic strategies have precedence over social justice.' (Clyne, 1991: 19)
Thus in
official policy there is clear indication that government is aware of the need
for language study and has attempted to prioritise needs with the group of
fourteen especially selected languages.
It is necessary to discuss this policy in the light of some
anthropological and linguistic considerations.
ARE ALL
LANGUAGES AND CULTURES EQUAL?
While it
has been traditional to label some languages and cultures as 'primitive' or
underdeveloped there is no evidence to support this popularly held view. Language is the vehicle of expression
of culture and while cultures can be classified according to material or
technological achievement, in other areas of development such as, for example,
human
*In this
paper this language will be called "Indonesian/Malaysian". "Indonesian is virtually the same
language as Malay" (Katzner, 1977: 233). Since 1969 Malay has been officially named Bahasa Malaysia,
and in 1972 an agreement was signed between the Indonesian and Malaysian
Governments creating a Bahasa Indonesia - Bahasa Malaysia Council, an
international body to oversee the coordination and development of the jointly
controlled language (Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka, 1977).
organisation
there may be no correlation. As an
illustration one could cite the view of the famous anthropologist Lvi-Strauss
'In all
matters touching on the organisation of the family and the achievement of
harmonious relations between the family group and the social group, the
Australian Aborigines, though backward in the economic sphere, are so far ahead
of the rest of mankind that, to understand the careful and deliberate systems
of rules they have elaborated, we have to use the refinements of modern
mathematics'. (Lvi-Strauss in
Kuper, 1975: 14)
Every
culture is thus a potentially rewarding source of study in one or another of
its values and specialisations and is a part of a community which created and
developed it as a means of survival within an environment: economic, political, social and
physical and as such is a reflection of the dignity of its members. In addressing the question of whether
there is a hierarchy of cultures and languages Leiris, another famous
anthropologist, commented that
'The
truth is that all cultures have their successes and failures, their faults and
virtues. Even language, the
instrument and channel of thought, cannot serve as a yardstick to measure their
relative worth; extremely rich grammatical forms are found in the speech of peoples
without a written language and regarded as uncivilised.' (Leiris in Kuper, 1975: 165)
Thus all
languages are equal in the anthropological sense of being a valid and often
exceedingly complex expression of the culture of a human speech community, and
therefore in the intellectual and often spiritual rewards that the study of
that language would bring to its student.
This benefit of language study could be called personal intellectual and
cultural enrichment and is potentially equal for all languages which therefore
makes it impossible to give a definitive answer to the question of the perfect
language option(s) for Australians.
Putting
potential for personal intellectual and cultural enrichment to one side,
obviously languages vary greatly in usefulness and prestige, and it is possible
and in fact necessary to examine hierarchies of languages, though bearing in
mind that positions on hierarchies are not likely to be permanent, and that the
relative position of a language in each hierarchy will probably differ.
LANGUAGE
POWER, ATTRACTION AND PRESSURE
Various
measures of language power have been proposed. Mackey (1973) has introduced three concepts: language power,
language attraction and language pressure, with methods of quantification. The power of a language is seen as a
product of the demography, dispersion, mobility, wealth, ideological (including
religious) commitment and cultural productivity of the speakers of that
language. The attraction of a
language is provided through the status, territorial proximity and interlingual
proximity of its speakers, while language pressure is the shift in language
use, diglossia, (several forms of the same language), linguistic borrowing and
bilingual interference that results from a situation of imbalance between two
language communities. While the third
of these concepts is highly relevant to the study of community language groups
in Australia, it is the first two, language power and language attraction that
are relevant to a clear formulation of the language options confronting
Australians and it is useful to use a modified version of the Mackey
scheme. Measures of both of these
criteria will be necessary as absolute world language power may well be
exceeded by the attraction of closer proximity of lesser languages in the world
ranking. In addition, high ranking
on several of these criteria can never be the final deciding factor because of
the presence of the intellectual and cultural enrichment factor which can be
given any subjective value by the 'investor' in a language. In other words the language of one's
parents, no matter how few the speakers that language may have, could have
greater value to oneself than one of the powerful world languages.
Taking
the languages identified officially as priority languages for Australia plus
the three major non-priority community languages of Serbo-Croatian, Polish and
Dutch and other non-priority but major world languages of Hindi-Urdu and
Portuguese the following information can be presented, though it must be
emphasised that the estimates are at best speculative.
Number of
Speakers Worldwide
Million
speakers 1984
Chinese
Mandarin 755
English 490
(1)
Hindi-Urdu 352
(2)
Spanish 275
Russian 267
Arabic 166
Portuguese 157
Indonesian/Malaysian 122
Japanese 121
German 118
French 110
Punjabi 69 (1)
Korean 63
Italian 62
Vietnamese 48
Polish 39
Serbo-Croatian 20 (2)
Dutch 20
Greek 11
(1)
Introduced for comparative purposes
(2)
Language with more than one writing system
Note
(i) In
view of the uniqueness of their situation, Aboriginal languages will only be
introduced to those criteria where
considered relevant.
(ii) This
table does not make a distinction between speakers of a language as mother
tongue (L1) or second or third language (L2 or L3)
Source: Quid, 1986: 90
Number of
Countries where Language has Official Status
English 45(1)
French 30
Spanish 21
Arabic 21
Portuguese 6
German 4
Indonesian/Malaysian 4
Chinese
Mandarin 3
Dutch 3
Italian 3
Korean 2
Greek 2
Russian 1 (currently under
revision)
Vietnamese 1
Thai 1
Polish
1
Serbo-Croatian 1 (currently
under
revision)
(1)
Introduced for comparative purposes
This
table makes no distinctions concerning size, spread of literacy, or percentage
of the population speaking the language with official status.
Source:
Crystal, 1987: 357
EASE OF
LEARNING
The
obvious and justifiable question posed by every prospective language student
'how easy is it to learn?' is not easily answered. All natural languages have complex grammar and simplicity in
one respect (e.g. no word-endings) may be compensated for in another such as
word order. In addition, all
languages have exceptions to their grammar rules. This has led one expert to conclude that
". .
.there is no evidence to suggest that some languages are in the long term
'easier for children to learn' than others - though in the short term some
linguistic features may be learned at different rates by the children of
speakers of different languages."
(Crystal, 1987: 6)
For young
people with English as their mother tongue, Chinese and Japanese would be more
difficult than a European language.
McCormack (1988: 40) cites an estimate that the time and effort required
to learn a character-based Asian language is about eight times required to
learn a European language. Another
estimate of comparative learning ease by a US Government agency is cited by
Ingleson. This recommends an
average of 840 hours for European languages, 1140 hours for
Indonesian/Malaysian and Hindi, 1800 hours for Thai and Vietnamese and 2400
hours for Arabic, Chinese, Japanese and Korean, to achieve basic proficiency
(Ingleson, 1989: 113).
It is
beyond the scope of this paper to attempt to assess the various estimates of
comparative learning ease and so therefore a very simple classification can be
proposed in terms of the criterion of writing system, such that those languages
with a Roman alpahabet are seen as one division, those with an alphabet other
than Roman or a modified form of Roman alphabet a middle division, and those
that are entirely ideographic as a last division.
Ease of
Learning as a Second Language
Division
I (Roman Alphabet) Croatian,
Dutch, French, German
Indonesian/Malaysian,
Italian,
Portuguese,
Spanish
Division
II (Non-Roman: Arabic,
Korean, Greek, Russian
or modified
Roman alphabet) Serbian,
Thai, Vietnamese
Division
III (Ideographic): Chinese,
Japanese
Note:
Serbian and Croatian are generally considered one language known as
Serbo-Croatian. Serbians call
their language Serbian and write it in a modified Cyrillic alphabet, while
Croatians call their language Croatian and use the Roman alphabet. (Katzner,
1977: 95-96)
LANGUAGE
FAMILIES
Many
languages have a strong family relationship to other languages while others are
isolated, having developed more or less independently. For example, some
Aboriginal languages are closely related to others, or Italian which is related
to Catalan, French, Provencal, Romanian and Spanish. Family relationship or
interlingual distance is difficult to measure as there are in the view of
Mackey (1973: 22) as yet no indices of linguistic differences. However a three division scheme can be
proposed
Language
Family Relationship
Division
I High Family Relationship: Aboriginal
languages, Arabic, Chinese
Mandarin, Dutch, French, German,
Indonesian/Malaysian, Italian,
Polish, Portuguese, Russian,
Serbo-Croatian, Spanish, Thai
Division
II Limited Family Greek,
Vietnamese
Relationship:
Division
III Independent Japanese,
Korean
Source:
Katzner, 1977 (for individual languages).
Katzner (1977: 219) takes the view than no definite link has been
established between Japanese and any other language, living or dead, although
Chinese ideographic characters were adopted in the 3rd century AD and there is
some slight resemblance in grammatical structure to Korean.
EASE OF
TRAVEL
Sooner or
later a language student will want to visit a major concentration of
speakers. Although Australia is
among the world's most highly multilingual countries, many of these speakers of
community languages are shy about using their language with strangers for
various reasons such as lack of formal education, use of a non-standard
variety, or desire to become assimilated.
It has moreover been recommended that students should be required to
spend time in a country where the language they are studying is spoken as part
of their courses. (Ingleson,1989)
Travel
Cost from Australia to Area of Major Mass of Speakers
Category
I (lowest) : Indonesian/Malaysian,
Thai
Category
II (medium) : Chinese
Mandarin, Japanese, Korean
Vietnamese,
Dutch, French, German, Greek,
Italian, Polish, Russian
Category
III (high): Arabic,
Polish, Portuguese*, Russian, Serbo-Croatian,
Spanish*
*Latin
American countries: European countries would be Category III.
Note:
these figures are based on current air travel costs and are therefore subject
to fluctuation in fares and availability of services.
Another
relevant factor in the choice of language options is the generous support to
students given by some governments (including the Australian Government)
through scholarships and language assistants' positions, which for obvious
reasons cannot be matched by all.
Availability
of Support for Overseas Language Study, in ranked order
Category
I (high): Japanese, German, French, Italian
Category
II (medium): Chinese,
Greek, Thai, Vietnamese, Spanish,
Indonesian/Malaysian
Category
III (low or none): all other languages
Source:
personal communication, a senior education administrator.
LANGUAGES
OPTIONS: THE ECONOMIC DIMENSION
Great
emphasis has been justifiably given to the need for language skills to assist
in Australia's export industries.
Countries
Australia Exported to: 1989-90 as a percentage of total exports
Japan 26.07
USA 10.88
Korea 5.45
New
Zealand 5.29
Singapore 3.98
Taiwan 3.73
UK 3.53
Hong
Kong 2.69
Germany
(Federal Rep) 2.49
People's
Republic of China 2.43
Netherlands 2.15
Italy 2.12
Source: Department of Foreign Affairs and
Trade, quoted in Australia's Language, 1991: 24.
The
significance of this table for language learning is that only about 20 percent
of Australia's exports are sold to English-speaking markets. It does not show the potential that
could be developed in many markets, which must be serviced through other
languages. The large volume of
exports to Japan is mainly in unprocessed commodities such as coal, iron ore,
wool and natural gas and therefore not requiring a large amount of language
help after the signing of the initial contracts, however a number of surveys of
the language needs of exporters have been taken. In her research among Australian exporters, Valverde
reported that the main languages that will be needed in the future are, in order
of importance: Japanese, Chinese, French, Korean, Spanish, Indonesian/Malaysian
and German. (Valverde, 1991: 30)
Another
survey found that the languages most in demand in a trading environment were,
in order of priority: Chinese Mandarin, Japanese, Arabic, Indonesian/Malaysian,
Korean, Thai, Spanish, German and French.
(AACLAME, quoted in Australia's Language, 1991: 16)
International
tourist visits to Australia are another very important source of foreign
currency earnings.
Country
of Residence of Overseas Visitors Intending to Stay Between 1 week and 1 month
in Australia 1988
New
Zealand 331,000
USA 193,300
Japan 175,400
UK 87,700
Singapore 35,700
Canada 32,200
Hong
Kong 29,200
Malaysia 24,600
Germany 20,700
Papua
New Guinea 15,800
Indonesia 14,000
New
Caledonia 11,300
Italy 9,600
France 8,200
Switzerland 7,300
Netherlands 7,000
Thailand 6,800
Philippines 5,300
Fiji 4,600
Source: Year Book Australia, 1990: 381.
This
information again points to the significance of languages other than English:
about a third of Australia's international tourists come from countries where
English is not an official language, Japan being by far the most
important. It should be noted also
that controversy has arisen over the efficacy of current Japanese teaching in
Australia and a proposal to bring 2000 Japanese tour guides to Australia. (Matchett, 1991: 17)
LANGUAGE
USE IN INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS
Many
prospective language students seek careers in international affairs through
diplomacy or an official agency, while some current students are already placed
by their careers in situations involving the need for such language expertise.
A
reliable indicator of the position of a language in international affairs is
its status as an official language of international organisations. Taking the priority languages of
Australia (except Aboriginal languages) and the largest non-priority community
languages and Portuguese, in alphabetic order, it is possible to note some
official statuses in some important selected organisations.
Official
Language Status in Selected International Organisations
Arabic: General
Assembly, Security Council, Economic and Social Council of UN, (since 1977)
Food
and Agriculture Organisation
Arab
League
Organisation
of African Unity
League
of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies
Chinese
Mandarin: United
Nations
French: United
Nations
European
Community
Council
of Europe
Food
and Agriculture Organisation
Agency
of Cultural and Technical Cooperation (Francophonie)
Organisation
of the African and Mauritian Community
Organisation
of African Unity
Organisation
of Afro-Asian and Latin American Solidarity
Latin
Union
Italo-Latin
American Institute
International
Court of Justice
League
of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies
German: European
Community
Council
of Europe (working language)
Greek: European Community
Indonesian/ Bahasa Indonesia
- Bahasa Malaysia Council
Malaysian:
Italian: European Community
Council
of Europe
Latin
Union
Italo-Latin
American Institute
Japanese: .
. .
Korean: .
. .
Polish: . . .
Portuguese: European Community
Latin
Union
Italo-Latin
American Institute
Russian: United
Nations
Council
for Mutual Economic Assistance
Danube
Commission
Serbo-Croatian: .
. .
Spanish: United
Nations
European
Community
Food
and Agriculture Organisation
Organisation
of Central American States
Organisation
of Afro-Asian and Latin American Solidarity
Organisation
of American States
Latin
Union
Office
of Ibero-American Education
League
of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies
Thai: . . .
Vietnamese: . . .
Sources:
Osmanczyk, 1985; Quid, 1986; Yearbook of International Organizations, 1986.
LANGUAGE
USE IN DEVELOPMENT ASSISTANCE
A major
motivation for language learning for some students is the desire to work in a
developing country. Which
languages would be of greatest relevance?
Relevance
of Languages in Development Assistance Work: Taking Infant Mortality as an
Index of Development Assistance Need
Language Selected
Country Infant
Mortality *
French Burkina Faso 137.6
Madagascar 120.0
Haiti 117.0
France 7.8
Portuguese Angola 137.0
Portugal 14.2
Spanish Peru 122.3
Bolivia 110.0
Mexico 47.0
Cuba 13.3
Spain 8.5 (1985)
Arabic Yemen 115.7
Morocco 82.1
Egypt 45.1
Indonesian/Malaysian Indonesia 84.0
Malaysia 24.1
Vietnamese Vietnam 64.3
Aboriginal
Languages Australian Aborigines
60.0„
Australia 8.7
Thai Thailand 39.9
Chinese
languages China 32.4
Dutch Suriname 30.5
Netherlands 7.6
Russian (former)
USSR 25.4
Serbo-Croatian (former)
Yugoslavia 25.1
Korean Korea
- Republic of 24.8
Korea
- Democratic Rep of 24.5
Polish Poland 17.5
Greek Greece 12.6
Italian Italy 9.3
German Austria 9.8
(former)
German Dem Rep 8.3
(former)
German Fed Rep 8.3
Japanese Japan 5.0#
Note:
*Infant Mortality is number of deaths of infants under 1 year per 1,000 live
births and excluding foetal deaths, for 1987.
„Estimate
from various sources, official and non-official where no separate statistics
are kept (Osborne, 1982: 21-23).
#In
fact the world's lowest. The next lowest is Finland with 5.9, followed by
Sweden with 6.1
Source:
United Nations Demographic Yearbook, 1991: 342-346.
LANGUAGE
LEARNING AVAILABILITY
The
overriding constraint upon students' language options is availability at the
time of enrolment and the possibility of continuity. The fact that there are often major problems in these areas
has been acknowledged by both Government and Opposition, but short of direct
political action in the form of letters to politicians, mass meetings,
demonstrations, etc. which are common over language policy issues in many
countries but not in Australia, there is little prospective student can do, and
is thus beyond the scope of this paper.
What are the current offerings at Year 12 and at tertiary level?
Languages
Studies at Year 12, 1990
Number
of Students
French 5,025
German 2,925
Japanese 2,536
Italian 2,415
Chinese
Mandarin 2,078
Modern
Greek 1,758
Indonesian/Malaysian 1,235
Vietnamese 676
Spanish 552
Latin 318
Arabic
248
Hebrew 235
Croatian 193
Turkish 183
Macedonian 140
Polish 138
Russian 90
Serbian-Croatian 63
Khmer 34
Hungarian 32
Dutch 24
Ukrainian 24
Ancient
Greek 15
Latvian 15
Lithuanian 11
Czech 11
Slovenian 9
Swedish 2
Estonian 1
Maltese 1
Source:
Department of Employment, Education and Training, in Australia's Language,
Companion Volume, 1991: 69.
Languages
in Award Courses in Higher Education 1990
Number
of Students (EFTSU)
Japanese 1,998
French 1,295
Italian 885
German 764
Chinese
Mandarin 587
Spanish 428
Indonesian/Malaysian
408
Greek
(Modern) 392
Russian 168
Vietnamese 70
Arabic 58
Hebrew 55
Korean 48
Thai 19
Croatian 16
Polish 14
Ukrainian 13
Turkish 11
Swedish 10
Hindi 9
Macedonian 8
Serbian 8
Dutch 7
Bengali
and Hindi-Urdu 6
Portuguese 3
Slovenian 3
Czech 1
Lao 1
Lithuanian 1
Serbo-Croatian 1
Urdu 1
Source:
Leal, Bettoni and Malcolm (1991), "Widening Our Horizons" quoted in
Australia's Language, Companion Volume, 1991, p.70.
Another
factor which prospective students should take account of particularly those
seeking to qualify in the severe competition for university entrance, is
whether a language is one in use in the community. If the student has a family background in that language, its
study may well be an advantage, whereas if the student is coming from outside
that particular community he or she may well be at a serious disadvantage in
relation to a major body of native-speakers who are also presenting themselves
as candidates for the same examination. (Ingleson, 1989:116), (Louie, Edwards
and Freidlein, 1991)
Major
Languages other than English spoken with Australia in 1986
Italian 415,765
Greek 277,472
Serbo-Croatian,
Croatian, Serbian
or
Yugoslav* 140,575
Chinese 139,100
Arabic 119,187
German 111,276
Spanish 73,961
Polish
68,638
Vietnamese 65,856
Dutch
62,181
Maltese 59,506
French
52,790
Macedonian 45,610
Aboriginal
languages 40,790
* It is
not clear whether this includes Slovenian.
Source:
ABS quoted in Australia's Language, 1991: 17.
Note: The
Policy Statement Australia's Language eschews the use of the terms 'community
language' and 'economic language' on the grounds that the two categories are
not mutually exclusive.
(Australia's Language, Companion Volume, 1991: 10).
CONCLUSION
Having
examined a number of different criteria of language suitability for various
purposes, it is now time to list the 18 languages considered in this
article: the 14 officially
selected priority languages, the 3 major non-priority community languages and
one other major international language not officially selected as a priority
language.
Combined
Table
In the
light of the above information it is possible to make the following table of
comparison based on admittedly highly imprecise evaluations recorded simply as
high (H), medium (M) or low (L).
The presence of an unquantifiable factor of intellectual and cultural
enrichment, recorded as unquantifiable (X), makes any calculation of the best
language or best combination of language options impossible.
Language
Policy and Practice: an Overall View
"Language
policy-making and language-in-education planning in Australia have, undoubtedly
been far ahead of most of the rest of the English-speaking world." (Ingram, 1992, p.20)
While
policy has in most respects been extremely enlightened, practice has been less
than satisfactory: of a total of Australia's tertiary education population of
over 500,000*, only about 10,000 are undertaking language study, in other words
one in every 40 students. Even
allowing for the supremacy and near-universality of English as a language of
wider communication, this is inadequate for the needs of economic and commerce
as has been forcefully argued by Ingram (1992). It is also inadequate for the needs of intellectual and
cultural enrichment as Lo Bianco (1987) has argued. Although compulsion in language studies has been recommended
by Wilson, for example, (1991: 46), this is unlikely to receive official
approval and implementation.
The
unsatisfactory nature of language education practice is reflected in the
enormous interest by adults in learning languages through extension classes,
TAFE, adult education, 'third age' universities and private initiatives.
In
seeking to clarify the range of language options confronting Australians, it
has become obvious that the final choice can only be made by the individual in
terms of his or her own interpretation of a wide range of information about
languages, such as that given above, and personal values.
*Higher
Education, excluding TAFE.
REFERENCES:
Australia,
Year Book Australia,
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