Language learning

Australia spends up to $50 million a year teaching a LOTE (Language Other Than English) to our children. Unfortunately, despite the best efforts of dedicated teachers, it is not working: almost no one is becoming bilingual as a result of LOTE education in Australian schools.

The Federal Department of Education, Science and Training stated, in 2002, that:

Given the questions and concerns that have been raised in relation to LOTE, it is appropriate to ask whether the current model of provision can ever produce better results in terms of language learning, regardless of the amount of funding injected into it.

Given how long we and other English-speaking countries have been failing, it does make sense to suppose that more of the same is not going to produce different results.

LOTE experience, especially in the early years, is important. It helps students develop empathy, cognition, perspective, literacy, self-confidence and capacity to learn other languages later. However, currently, as many as a third, or even a half, of all students learn no LOTE at all. Most have 45-60 minutes a week. A moderate and realistic goal would be 10-30 minutes each school day for every primary school child.

If actual language acquisition (rather than just language or cultural awareness) is the goal, it matters a great deal which LOTE we teach in this limited time allowance. Children learn languages more slowly than adolescents or adults, and motivated adults need more than 3,000 hours to gain basic competence in Japanese; basic French or German can be achieved in 700 hours; and Esperanto in 100 hours.

As our primary children have between 300-600 hours available to learn, it is clear that we can offer them very different fractions of a language, depending on which language we offer them.

The eventual commitment to a particular language is important to the learner contemplating serious, life-long, cumulative learning as different languages have differing degrees of transferability and difficulty, and offer access to different cultures with different strengths and personal significance. Therefore, secondary students need thorough preparation for choosing and learning a language which will matter to them.

While the students are too young for this decision, the most practical LOTE for Australian primary schools is Esperanto, an uncomplicated but complete and expressive language created specifically for intercultural communication.

Esperanto is the best choice for a general primary school strategy for Australia because:

• To do so models fairness, and equal respect for all cultures.
• It is regular and phonetic which make it accessible, encouraging, empowering and inclusive.
• Educationally disadvantaged students often experience valuable spelling and reading success in Esperanto, even if it has been elusive in English.
• It promotes literacy through transparent grammatical structure, sound/symbol constancy and use of Latin roots.
• It promotes numeracy by the exact match of words and concepts to both the base ten number system and other primary mathematical concepts such as fractions and multiplication.
• Esperanto encourages creativity, analysis and synthesis through regular wordbuilding and a minimum of rote-learning.
• Esperanto gives access to the widest variety of cultures in all dimensions: language, religion, arts, environment, politics, economy, resources, intercultural relationships, and so on. A broad perspective sets the scene for later detailed studies.
• Esperanto has no exceptions to its “rules” so students have time to learn more transferable general LOTE concepts, skills and attitudes which greatly facilitate learning other languages later.
• Esperanto allows quality preparation for generalist teachers in a time frame affordable for education providers.

Primary school graduates, with a good grounding in successful language learning, are both motivated and well-prepared to make a meaningful commitment to the study of a third language and culture in secondary school and beyond.

By concentrating Australia’s language specialists in the secondary schools, the supply problem is alleviated and there is more freedom to match language strengths, interests, school types, timetables, character, experience and other relevant variables.

A general adoption of one language in most primary schools facilitates production and distribution of quality materials, in-service training, assessment support and general networking. And students who transfer from other schools, their teachers and peers find it easier to maintain momentum in language learning if most schools are using the same language and resources.

The status of the teaching profession is enhanced as the majority of language students (primary and secondary) learn their subject to a useable standard, as we expect in most other disciplines.

Where LOTE programs have failed, or have been dropped, it is usually caused by a lack of some combination of: teacher availability, time, commitment, continuity and consideration for the needs of the learner.

Using Esperanto as the primary LOTE, and using existing generalist teachers, addresses all five of these obstacles and, in so doing, provides a basis for unprecedented success in Australian LOTE Education.

Normal primary school practice provides general education through generalist teachers. This is both logistically efficient and developmentally appropriate for young children. However, LOTE (more than any subject except music) is commonly taught by a visiting specialist, if available, resulting in a chronic shortage of teachers which, in turn, has grievous implications for the quality, quantity, timing and equitable provision of languages education. The primary classroom teacher is the most powerful role-model for the children, and the best person to teach a young child a new language.

The commitment of the students, the parents, the teachers, the principals, the wider community and the policy makers are crucial to the success of failure of LOTE programs. To harness their wholehearted energy, a program must show that it is clearly in the interests of every child involved and must engage their participation in a meaningful way.

Challenges to the continuity of primary LOTE programs may be either logistical (due to staff changes, transfers and other unplanned disruptions) and/or ideological, where cumulative language learning is sacrificed for a more balanced intercultural perspective.

One view of the main importance of LOTE, which is gaining currency, is that of “developing understanding of and engagement with a wide variety of societies and cultures”. Esperanto and broad intercultural studies, under the guidance of class teachers during primary education, can serve this purpose better than a focus on any individual national language while developing real cumulative language competence.

General language education for all in primary schools, and the provision of more choices in secondary, also solves the primary-to-secondary continuity problem while increasing free choice and motivation at the time when adolescents need it most.

Primary Esperanto is a strong strategy for the development of empathy, cognition, perspective, literacy, self-confidence and linguistic potential, and provides maximum responsiveness to the needs of individual students by putting the LOTE program into the hands of the classroom teacher who cares for each child and knows them best.

A national decision to facilitate the integration of LOTE into general primary education using Esperanto would enable a renaissance of language choice, effectiveness and enthusiasm through proper staffing of secondary schools and excellent preparation of primary school graduates for further successful language learning.

The Curriculum Corporation is ideally situated to produce the core materials for this curriculum, with input from school teachers, academics and curriculum developers already experienced in teaching Esperanto as LOTE in Australia and overseas.

In-service training will also be needed in both the Esperanto language and in LOTE teaching methodology. Existing university courses, such as that of Sydney University, could be readily adapted for the purpose and provided by universities throughout Australia.

All of Australia’s 100,000 primary school teachers could be given ten hours flexible, on-line, language learning and five hours LOTE methodology learning for a $500 (tax free) bonus. This will provide every Australian primary school child with a guaranteed, uninterrupted, properly qualified, on-site LOTE teacher for the rest of her/his primary career, for the cost of the LOTE budget of 2002.

It sounds small but five hours of LOTE methodology is enough for teachers already doing English in their classroom. Ten hours language learning is enough to gain a basic understanding of the Esperanto language as well as an idea of where the language fits historically, geographically, culturally and pedagogically. This understanding would be consolidated and extended through the use of materials supplied for the class and further on-line learning as desired.

In the first year, every teacher can be provided with very good resources to teach a beginner course suited to the age of the students. In subsequent years, teachers of older children will be provided with more sophisticated material and, ideally, some more language practice opportunities, to suit the experience of the cohort. Even at the very best quality, these resources would cost only a fraction of the present LOTE budget and would find ready and lucrative markets in other English-speaking countries. Schools could be fully stocked within the decade, when costs would drop to a much lower maintenance level and funds could start being diverted to secondary LOTE or other areas of need.

By empowering existing primary school teachers to teach a simple international language first, the Australian Government can provide 100,000 language teachers, enough for every primary child, and a third language in secondary for those who want it.