Speaking foreign languages is about confidence, explains language expert Professor Ger Graus, and making connections with others through language.
More investment to ensure kids growing up in a multicultural society can learn the language and culture of their families can only be a good thing, he says.
A Chinese language school in Toowoomba and a Ukrainian school in Perth are among 600 community language schools to receive financial support as part of the Federal Government’s program to help keep kids connected to languages.
Announced in April, the $15 million scheme will directly assist more than 90,000 students learning 84 different languages at not-for-profit Community Language Schools in every state and territory.
The funding will help schools with the upgrades they need to teach more students, whether that be through purchasing educational equipment, improving access for disadvantaged students, strengthening online delivery, or setting up another school.
The investment will ensure more kids growing up in Australia can learn the language and culture of their families who have migrated here from overseas, ensuring the nation’s diverse traditions, languages and cultures live on for generations to come.
“Australia is the best country in the world. One of the reasons for that is we are made up of people from all around the world,” Minister for Education Mr Jason Clare says.
“Community language schools are a key part of helping families to pass on the language of their ancestors to their children. That’s why this funding is important.”
Minister for Immigration, Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs, Mr Andrew Giles, says the Government’s investment in community language schools means that migrant families in Australia can continue to share their language, culture and beliefs with their children and grandchildren.
“Community schools don’t just teach kids a new language – they build a community for families of similar backgrounds and help kids connect to elders in their communities,” he says.
“We also know that the younger someone starts learning a language, the easier it is for them to pick up. That’s why we’ve made sure that this investment will help more schools open their doors to pre-schoolers, not just school-aged kids.”
Shortly after the government announcement, the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) announced, in May 2024, a review of the Australian Curriculum: Languages had been completed.
The review included Arabic, Auslan, Chinese for background and first-language learners, Classical Greek, Classical languages framework, framework for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages, Hindi, Latin, Turkish and Vietnamese.
“These latest subjects to be reviewed make up a large and important part of the languages learning area in the Australian Curriculum,” acting ACARA CEO Stephen Gniel says.
“It will help ensure we have an Australian Curriculum that meets the needs of the next generation of Australian children.”
The Australian Curriculum Review’s terms of reference provided for the Languages curricula to be reviewed and endorsed in phases, with the languages French, Japanese, Chinese and Italian having been reviewed and endorsed as part of the first phase.
The remaining languages of the Australian Curriculum then went through the review process in phases, including public consultation, before being approved and published.
Languages are a subject for life
A renowned figure in the world of education and linguistics, Professor Ger Graus has been described, in learning terms, as “Jean-Jacques Rousseau (philosopher and writer) meets Willy Wonka.”
Professor Graus is a Board Director at My Global Bridge and advises a number of edtech start-up companies. He is also a member of Bett’s Global Education Council, advises the Fondazione Reggio Children in Italy, and is a Visiting Professor at the National Research University in Moscow.
Born in the south of the Netherlands, Professor Graus grew up a short bike ride from neighbouring Germany and Belgium, learning to converse in their native tongue, and picked up English watching Coronation Street on TV. He moved to the UK as a teacher in the 1980s.
He was later approached by the Secretary of State for Education to become Education Director for South Manchester – based at Manchester Airport.
“The Australian Government initiative should be welcomed for a number of reasons. One of the issues I think we sometimes have in secondary schools is that our thinking becomes very compartmentalised; the model we deploy in secondary schools is not always helpful for the learner to connect with reality and purpose,” Professor Graus says.
“I think that the language initiative that the government in Australia announced is much more about education than it is about schooling, because that language model is about lifelong learning.”
When moving to another country, he says, the elements of culture and heritage play an enormous part in identity.
“From that point of view, to introduce these support schemes so that culture and heritage – of which language is an expression – can stay alive and meaningful is incredibly important,” he says.
“If we want to present ourselves as a true multicultural and diverse society, we must invest in that. I would hope that similarly, the government invests with the same effort and sentiment into the maintenance and development of First Nation languages and culture, because it’s part of the same thinking around diversity and multiculturalism, and we are all better for that.”
In 1988 in England, Professor Graus was invited onto the national curriculum working group for modern foreign languages. At the time, the group recommended to the government that there should be 19 languages under statutory orders.
“This included obvious European languages such as French, German, Spanish, Italian, Russian, but in addition, there were Urdu, Punjabi and Gujarati – languages originally spoken in areas that were once British colonies before people moved to the United Kingdom starting with the industrial revolution,” he says.
“Those additional languages were placed on par, in the public perception, with other European languages.”
Not long after, Professor Graus took a post as modern languages advisor in Manchester, which, as the former centre of the industrial revolution, is a linguistically diverse city.
“There was a realisation that young people don’t start to learn that language from the age of 11 – they’ve actually learned that language, in many cases, from birth, more often than not, in terms of speaking and listening, and less so in terms of writing and reading,” he says.
“One of the things that I would say to all secondary schools is that languages are not just a subject for five years; languages are a subject that is for life.
“Secondary schools might want to invest in partnerships with primary schools so that learning languages starts earlier because there is a truth in the fact that primary-age children learn languages better and more easily because they have fewer inhibitions and are not yet programmed in terms of the red pen and the fear of making mistakes.”
Speaking foreign languages is about confidence, in his opinion, and teaching is about helping students find their ‘light switch moment’ in connecting with others through language.
“When I moved to England in 1983 and became a German teacher, the first thing I was confronted with was, ‘Why are we teaching these kids German? The whole world speaks English’. The arguments as to ‘why’ were flimsy at best and mainly based on economics. To help build better connections to the language, I quickly partnered with a school in Germany, establishing pen friends. This was in the time before email; students had to write a letter, it took a week to get there, another week to get a reply, another week to write back,” he says.
He also took the students to Germany, en mass.
“We made it meaningful. I deliberately took large groups of youngsters to Germany in the winter. They were from Norfolk on the east coast of the UK, which was flat and wet. We went to the Eifel mountains in Germany – there was snow, they could go tobogganing, skiing, ice skating, they could take part in the carnival celebrations. And the whole thing became a massive success,” he says.
In exchange, young German students came to Norfolk, staying with students’ families.
“Then something magical happened,” Professor Graus says.
“After a while, some of our students, aged 14 or 15, came to me and said, ‘Can we go for longer?’. I then organised six weeks’ work experience, in Germany, in the summer holidays. So, they went on work experience and when they came back, their lights were switched on, shining. They were completely sold.”
One of his former pupils, who became International Director of Education for a major organisation, credits Professor Graus and the exchange program for his career success.
“When I was at a conference in Kuala Lumpur, he was giving the keynote address. He saw me in the audience and told everyone, ‘By the way. I’m here today because of him’.”
One advantage Australia has over the UK, he says, is exposure to languages from Asian countries, owing to geographical proximity.
“I sit on the advisory board for Bett Asia, an education conference, which is in Kuala Lumpur in October this year. It isn’t that long ago that Bett Asia was for educators in Singapore and Malaysia. Now, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, you name it, everybody’s there. So, returning to the Australian government’s $15 million investment, I think there’s a value added in that initiative, potentially.”
“Imagine if you said to language students in Australia that they could earn 10 per cent of their grade if they engaged in an Asian language with a friend in Asia, on email or WhatsApp, or took part in a language project in the community. The ‘real’ factor becomes a wow factor, and as a teacher you have an opportunity to give purpose and reward participation purposefully,” he says.