Speaking the language

Here’s a tip that’ll send the Labor party and the teacher unions into conniptions: we need to hire more foreign language teachers.

Australia’s skill shortage extends into an area of teaching for which there is an unprecedented level of demand - that of foreign languages. Despite recent federal government efforts to entrench our dubious status as one of the world’s most monolingual nations, well over half a million Australian children are now enrolled in foreign language subjects at school.

While Australia is hardly unique in having a high demand for language teaching; it has taken a distinctly different approach towards meeting this need than have most other countries.

This article focuses in particular on comparing our approach to that of Japan. The two are very suitable candidates for comparison, for the most widely-taught foreign language in each nation is the respective other’s native language.

Despite both nations having very high levels of demand for the teaching of foreign languages, they have adopted dramatically different approaches towards meeting that need.

Australia’s approach is based on large-scale re-skilling of local teachers under a national strategy, with limited informal scope for independent recruitment, and very high English-language proficiency criteria; whereas Japan’s approach is characterised by large-scale recruitment of foreign teachers in a generally decentralised framework, with relatively low Japanese-language proficiency criteria.

It is important to clarify at the outset that it is neither necessary nor sufficient that a foreign language be taught by someone who is themselves a native speaker of the target language.

Around Australia, thousands of teachers effectively teach languages that are foreign to them. Indeed, many such teachers can better identify with their students’ struggles with unfamiliar writing systems, the nervousness with speaking and the frustration at being reduced to a child-like communicative level, having themselves been through that same learning experience. Thus, this article makes no express or implied criticism of language teachers in Australia today; quite the contrary, Australia’s current language teachers make an impressive contribution to the educational profile of our nation.

That said, there are also clear advantages for students to learn from a teacher whose understanding of the target language and culture is naturally-acquired, and thus more intuitive.

So the argument for bringing in foreign language teachers is not driven so much by methodological or pedagogical concerns, but rather the simple fact of numbers: Australian students are demanding to learn foreign languages in greater numbers than ever before, and there simply aren’t enough local teachers to meet the need.

In Australia, this need has been urgent and apparent since the mid-1980s. Australia’s growing post-war cultural and diplomatic ties with Japan culminated in an explosion in demand for Japanese language teaching, labelled the tsunami, which saw the number of Japanese language learners increase 113 per cent in a single year from 1987-1988.

In response to the strain placed on teaching resources, an Australian Labor government in 1994 adopted a 10-year strategy for National Asian Languages and Studies in Australian Schools (NALSAS), launched by a young fresh-faced, plummy-sounding, Mandarin-speaking Labor up-and-comer named Kevin Rudd, now the shadow minister for foreign affairs.

The NALSAS strategy was based on re-skilling local language teachers within each state education department. For example, many French and German teachers were funded to learn the basic elements of Japanese for primary or secondary classes. Although several studies during the 1990s had recommended the recruitment of foreign-background teachers to solve the need, however these recommendations were not progressed by successive government strategies, most probably due to opposition from the teachers’ unions.

During the period of 1984-1998, spanning the pre-tsunami period and the implementation of NALSAS, the number of Japanese learners in Australia increased from 19,789 to 307,760; and was estimated by a Department of Education, Science and Training report to be over 400,000 by 2002.

So, based on a class size of 20, the number of classes that required Japanese language teachers in Australia leapt from approximately 1,000 to 20,000 in less than a generation.

In an amusing digression, and despite recent politically-based changes to the program’s name and appearance, Asian and Japanese language studies in Australia continue to enjoy bipartisan political support. Although the NALSAS strategy was axed by the Liberal Government in 2002-3 (fig.1); it was only to be replaced in 2006 by another strategy under the rubric of the “Asia Education Foundation”, which is very similar in appearance, and with substantially the same aims (fig.2).

Spot the difference: “They all look the same to me”

Figure 1. The former (Labor) National Asian Languages and Studies in Australian Schools Strategy (1994-2002).

Figure 2. The current (Liberal) Asia Education strategy (2006 - ? )

Despite this clear political support for foreign language teaching, Australia’s education system remains among the most difficult in the world for a foreign teacher to access, saving perhaps France. The governments of nearly all other countries actively recruit from overseas.

For example, Japan has its world-famous JET program, which distributes thousands of English-language teachers, many of whom have little or no Japanese, throughout their high schools. China, Korea, Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia all have a voracious demand for English teachers. Most Australian teachers can easily wander into a job in the UK, New Zealand, much of South America and Africa, and practically anywhere in Europe east of Switzerland.

Nor is this to say that foreign-speaking teachers have absolutely no means of entry to Australia’s schools. Non-citizens and non-residents can apply through the Department of Immigration for a visa to teach in Australia, and if successful, these visas are recognised by state education departments. Nevertheless, while DIMA lists a number of teaching categories as priorities for skilled migration intake, including ironically ESL teachers, foreign-language teachers are not on the priority list.

There also remains a crucial language-based obstacle in Australia that is not so prevalent in Japan; for Australia demands a high level of English proficiency for any teaching position. In most cases, an International English Language Testing System (IELTS) score of 5.5-6.0 (advanced) would be required. There exists few such language requirements for Japanese elementary or secondary schools; which can recruit teachers of elementary or indeed no Japanese language proficiency if they wish. (The standard of Japanese required to work in university of course remains very high.)

As a result, the Australian education system has relatively few foreign-background teachers in language departments, whereas in Japan, the proportion of foreigners is substantial. A 1993 survey of 582 Japanese teachers in Australia found only 62 were native speakers, and that at that time Australian schools did not recognise native-speakers’ existing teaching qualifications.

Since that time, the explosion in teacher re-skilling means the proportion of foreign-background teachers today is most likely even lower. By contrast, a 2002 study of an English-teaching university in Tokyo found that 80 per cent of the faculty were foreigners. Although such a situation is inconceivable in Australia at the present time, yet in Japan such institutions have long proved to be both effective and stable.

Japan also has historical antecedents for supporting such large numbers of foreign teachers, echoing the policies of the Meiji period (1868-1912), during which time the number of foreign teachers ranged between 3,000-6,000.

The educational edict that drove the Meiji reformers was “[k]nowledge shall be sought throughout the world”. Such sentiments helped transform Japan from the isolated feudal-agricultural society it had been under the Tokugawa shogunate, into an open, industrialised imperial power that defeated its two regional rivals, China and Russia, in successive wars in the opening years of the 20th century.

What could Australia achieve if it adopted its own Meiji-style edict? Of course, history mocks comparison, and I don’t propose we unleash well-educated armies upon New Zealand and Indonesia. But instead of being driven by such outward-looking philosophies as "knowledge shall be sought throughout the world", Australia is locked into the Hawke-Keating-era myth of the Clever Country, which we lately have taken to mean that everything we need to succeed is right here within our own ever-shrinking borders. This is a curious mindset for a nation of migrants to hold.

Given the conspicuous educational success that Japan has enjoyed through the large-scale recruitment of foreign teachers, consideration should be given to the possibility that a similar approach could solve the language teacher shortage here in Australia.

However, whereas Japan enthusiastically recruits thousands of foreigners who speak little Japanese, and the sky in Tokyo does not fall; it is obvious that there would be vehement political and popular resistance in Australia to the recruitment of foreign teachers with low English proficiency. For the Japanese-style solution to work in Australia, a number of local cultural and political norms would first need to change.