Second Language Aquisition in Australia By Candy

After talking about second language in Japan and Hong Kong, this time I would love to share my thoughts on second language acquisition in a place where I used to study at, Australia.

Imagine you are at a place like this: You can smell the just-fried spring rolls; people holding bubble milk tea on their hands; you can hear people speaking in different languages, but mostly Chinese; you look around and everything is in Chinese, you are not in any Asian countries, but indeed you are in Australia, the China Town in Australia. In Australia, there are lots of people from overseas especially from Asian countries. Some immigrated to Australia, some come here for study and some is for work. Even though many people have different background in Australia, Australian second language acquisition is not very strong. When you walk on the street, English is usually the language you hear people speak most.

Let me give you some information that you might be surprised at: There are 6900 languages existing throughout our planet[1] and 231 languages are spoken by people in Australia[2]. Globalization increases, but second language learning does not have the same demand. In Australia, the number of people learning a second language is on the downside and there are only 13% of year 12 students studied a second language in 2011[3]. However, when we are looking at the world’s population, there are only 5.6% speak English as a mother tongue but this number doubles when English is a second language[4]. On the other hand, the number of people who are bilingual is much more than monolingual people.

Second language education does not seem very important in Australia. Even though Australian education system offers a wide range of language courses in high school, most of the students do not choose to learn a second language as one of their study subjects. They would think that subjects like Mathematics, Science are much more essential than a second language. Students from year 1 to year 9, they need to choose a second language that offer at their school to learn, mostly French or German. Once they enter year 10, it becomes their own choice to choose to continue to learn or not. 

When I was studying in Australia, I was glad to meet an organization called “LCF Club” (Language Can Be Fun) which aims to promote to parents and children that second language is important in this 21^st century and learning languages can be fun. One of the managers of this club was my English and Japanese teacher therefore I was lucky enough to experience how this club conduct a language course by sitting-in one lesson. By sitting-in one lesson, I realised that there is no certain way to learn a language and it can be so much fun! There is no certain text book but by doing fun activities like singing, cooking, role playing etc, children can easily consolidate what they have learnt. Even though second language acquisition does not seem to be developing very well in Australia nowadays, I believe that by having this kind of organisations can help developing second language learning in Australia.

As to conclude, Australia is an English speaking country but its second language acquisition still need to be developed. Globalisation increases, demand for second language should be the same as well. There was a research done in 1996[5] discovered that in the 21^st century, because of the increasing of globalization, the acquisition of a foreign language will be a critical skill, like mathematics or science. Therefore, second language is important and Australia should develop second language learning better.

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[1] Clyne & Sussex, M & R 2010, '2020 - Languages', The Australian, 1 December, accessed 20 July 2012, <www.theaustralian.com.au/news/arts/languages/story-e6frg8nf-1225961567476 >

[2] We YouMe - Language is the key 2008, motion picture, Government of SA Department of Education and Children Service, South Australia

[3] Clyne & Sussex, M & R 2010, '2020 - Languages', The Australian, 1 December, accessed 20 July 2012, <www.theaustralian.com.au/news/arts/languages/story-e6frg8nf-1225961567476 >

[4] Why learn languages? 2011, World Languages and Culture, accessed 20 July 2012, <http://www.vistawide.com/languages/why_languages.htm>

[5] Peckham, R 11/9/98, Why Study a FL, University of Tennessee at Martin, accessed 22 July 2012, <http://www.utm.edu/staff/bobp/french/flsat.html>.