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LANGUAGES EDUCATION IN AUSTRALIA

Volume 3 Number 7, 7 July 2009

CERVANTES INSTITUTE OPENS IN AUSTRALIA

Spanish establish final link with opening of Cervantes Institute

Bernard Lane, the Australian, June 26, 2009

JUAN Carlos of Spain, the king many republicans admire, came to Sydney yesterday to open Australia's first Cervantes Institute, forging the last continental link in a global chain of culture centres.  The Sydney branch, in a Chippendale warehouse revamped with bright flourishes of Spanish design, brings the Madrid-based language agency to the only continent where it lacked a beachhead.

At the opening ceremony, the King said the Asia-Pacific adventure of the Cervantes Institute - Beijing and Tokyo have new centres - recalled the voyages of exploration 400 years ago by Pedro Fernandez de Quiros and Luis Vaez de Torres.   Had de Quiros not changed course mid-Pacific, they might have reached Australia, where English was to be the language of discovery.

"There is no doubt that Spanish and English are the two great languages of international communication in the 21st century, the mother tongues of millions of people across continents," the King said.   "The name of Cervantes (author of Don Quixote) represents in just one word the language and universal culture of nearly 500 million people in more than 20 countries."

The Sydney centre will teach Spanish, train teachers, and host exhibitions, writers, film screenings and performances.

Read entire article: http://tinyurl.com/nv469o

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Spanish Royals Inaugurate 1st Cervantes Institute in Oceania

Latin American Herald Tribune, Caracas, Venezuela, 26 June 2009

SYDNEY – Spain’s King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia inaugurated on Thursday the first branch of the Cervantes Institute in the Oceania region.

Juan Carlos said that the centre in Sydney strengthens the desire of the Institute to have an ever greater presence in Asia and the Pacific, adding that the opening of the centre was a “prime element” of the state visit he began in Canberra on Wednesday.

The Cervantes building is located in the university zone of this city of more than four million inhabitants, including more than 100,000 Spanish-speakers.

The new Cervantes offices will begin their teaching activities in September, and at that point the Institute will be up and running in 42 countries.

Source: http://tinyurl.com/n3racm

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... but wasn’t it the Portuguese?

Letters to the Editor, Canberra Times, 30 June 2009

I was surprised to hear King Juan Carlos of Spain referring to the discovery of Australia by the Spaniards.  Various other countries have claimed that they discovered Australia, but Spain seems to be a new entry.

All are forgetting that the Portuguese were the first Europeans to sail into this part of the world: and the king should know his history – he spent his young days in Portugal.

He would also know that Pedro Quiros (correct spelling Queiros) and Luis Torres were Portuguese, as was Magellan (correct spelling Magalhes).  Even Columbus was educated and trained in Portugal in the arts of sailing and cartography, and was known in the Spanish court as “el Portugues” – the Portuguese bloke.

Arthur Phillip also served in the Portuguese navy in Brazil, where he reached the post of captain, before he subsequently went to sail to Australia for the British.

If President Hugo Chavez had been present, he might have said: “Callense, no sabem lo que dicen…”

Carlos de Lemos, Honorary Consul of Portugal, Victoria.

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BUILDING A BI-LINGUAL AUSTRALIA

How do we start building a bi-lingual Australia?

ABC Radio “Saturday Breakfast” 27 June 2009

The study of a second language in Australian schools and universities has declined dramatically. Now only around 12% of Year 12 students are studying a second language.

Professor Joseph Lo Bianco:  Chair, Language and Literacy Education Associate Dean-Global Relations Graduate School of Education University of Melbourne

Professor Michael Wesley:  In-coming Executive Director, The Lowy Institute Former Director, Asia Institute, Griffith University

Download audio and read transcript at: http://tinyurl.com/ngty4o

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Asian languages in schools

ABC Radio, 18 June 2009

The NSW government has announced it will set up four bilingual primary schools to teach Asian languages. Already, about a dozen Victorian primary schools operate bilingual programs. This morning we discuss the issues and benefits with:

Peter Lord: Principal, Richmond West Primary School

Michael Wesley: Executive Director, Lowy Institute

Paul Molyneux: Graduate School of Education, Melbourne University

Download audio and read transcript at: http://tinyurl.com/n4k666

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Taking the language leap – as early as possible

Caroline Milburn, the Age, June 15, 2009

Every Wednesday after lunch at an inner-Melbourne primary school, the students follow an unfailing ritual. They make a mental leap and stop writing in English and spend the rest of the week learning in Mandarin or Vietnamese.   The curriculum for the prep to year 2 students at Richmond West Primary School doesn't change - just the language.

The changeover is a small sign of how interest in bilingual education is on the rise, as more parents seek to equip their children with skills to live in a global economy. Signs of change are beginning to appear. Primary schools that once had trouble attracting a broad mix of students are reporting rising enrolments due to their curriculum offering bilingual programs in Chinese and Vietnamese.

At Richmond West, student numbers have been rising since the election of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd - a fluent Mandarin speaker - and wider community awareness of Asia's growing economic power, according to assistant principal Janet Beck.   "A lot of middle-class, English-speaking families are seeking out our program because they're beginning to acknowledge the benefits of bilingual education," says Ms Beck, whose school runs a half-week bilingual program for years prep-2 and a 1-day program for the older students.

"We've now got children coming here from the wider Richmond catchment and from outside the area, as far away as the western suburbs and the outer northern suburbs. People are recognising the notion of global citizenship: that you are preparing a child to be a global citizen."

Bilingual education in Victorian government schools is currently limited to 12 primary schools and two secondary schools.

Read entire article: http://tinyurl.com/lo4gr5

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Budget funding for bi-lingual primary schools

AAP, June 15, 2009

SOME NSW primary schools will soon offer students a bilingual education, with subjects taught in Asian languages.

The NSW Government is funding the four-year $2.25 million program in tomorrow's state Budget, with the first four schools to start offering the stream next year.

Schools will have to apply to be part of the program, which will be taught by specialist teachers and run alongside the standard English curriculum.

NSW Education Minister Verity Firth said that with Asia on the doorstep, the program was vital to the state's future economic and social prosperity.

"We are preparing the future workforce to be fluent in key Asian languages including Mandarin, Korean, Japanese and Indonesian," she said.

Read entire article: http://tinyurl.com/lgjto5

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SHOULD ASIAN LANGUAGES HAVE PRIORITY?

The gulf between rhetoric and reality with Asian language policy that sees easier ways into languages learning cast aside.

Bernard Lane, the Australian, July 08, 2009

EARLY this decade, Richard Fotheringham held a high position in the Queensland school system when news came through that John Howard had axed a celebrated program to push Asian languages. "I was understandably concerned," Fotheringham says. As chairman of the old board of senior secondary school studies, he turned to officials and principals. Up in arms they were not.   “They hadn't been able to make this policy work and so they were not going to scream and complain about the withdrawal of funding for it."

What began as a four Asian languages policy in Queensland went national between 1994 and 2002 - then returned this year under a near identical name, the National Asian Languages and Studies in Schools Program.   The common elements were: Mandarin, Japanese, Indonesian and Korean as chosen languages; ambitious plans to conquer in the classroom; urgent talk of Asian engagement for trade and diplomacy; and Kevin Rudd.  

Rudd drove Queensland's policy from the cabinet office of premier Wayne Goss. When Paul Keating made the policy federal, he did so courtesy of the 1994 Rudd report.   And the policy is back now that Rudd is prime minister. Yesterday his spokeswoman said the Government was "committed to making Australia the most Asia-literate country in the collective West".

But there has been a gulf between rhetoric and reality, says Fotheringham, now arts dean at the University of Queensland: "The decision to focus on three difficult Asian languages - leaving aside Indonesian - where there just wasn't a large supply of well-trained teachers, was quixotic at best.

"Principals themselves told me of their staff being sent off for ineffective quickie eight-week how-to-teach-Japanese courses because schools simply couldn't - and still can't - get enough teachers who are competent themselves, let alone also able to make difficult study interesting. Unsurprisingly, students avoided these subjects."

Meanwhile, subjects such as French and Italian, offering students an easier way into language learning, had been cast aside.

Read entire article: http://tinyurl.com/mdll5f

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Don't overlook Indonesian as a starting point

Jamie Mackie, June 24, 2009

THERE are strong arguments in favour of a much higher degree of bilingualism and multilingualism in Australia - and a far greater knowledge of Asian languages. I am strongly in favour of actively pursuing these, but I suspect that the arguments advanced in favour of either one do not necessarily help the case for the other.  In fact, they may be in conflict. So we badly need much more discussion and debate about what we are trying to achieve.

Luke Slattery also seeks to abolish our monolingual mind-set, but argues that while bilingualism must be our minimal aim, the emphasis should be on cognate languages with which English has an affinity: German, French, Spanish and Italian.

The study of character-based Asian languages should be reserved for Anglophones who have already cut their teeth on a European language, since it takes three times as many tuition hours for English speakers to learn character-based languages.   That sort of cognate apprentice tongue would then give students an appetite for more, and a useful understanding of how foreign languages differ from ours.   But in that case Chinese and Japanese will have to take their place as third in the multilingual queue, not second.

Indonesian may be an exception as a second-language option, however, since it is not character-based and is relatively easy to get started on.

Read entire article: http://tinyurl.com/lp3dw3

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Why start with character-based Asian tongues?

Luke Slattery, the Australian, June 17, 2009

AUSTRALIAN language policy is in crisis. A concerted national effort is needed to ensure that all students finish year 12 with proficiency in a second language. Bilingualism must be the minimum policy aim, as in Europe.

State and federal authorities should nominate a few priority languages along with stepped-out attainment targets: that is, 30 per cent of year 12 students should have a second language by 2012, 50 per cent by 2015 and 100 per cent by 2020.

The emphasis should be on those European languages with which English has an affinity: German, French, Spanish and Italian. These tongues have a dual action: they are relatively easy to learn and enrich one's knowledge of English.

In most instances the study of character-based Asian languages, such as Japanese and Chinese, should be reserved for Anglophones who have cut their teeth on a European language. This acknowledges a reality of language learning: it takes three times as many tuition hours for English speakers to learn character-based languages. All power to Kevin Rudd for his mastery of Mandarin, but he has been the beneficiary of untold hours of taxpayer-funded tuition.

Bahasa Indonesia is an exception as it is relatively easy.

Read entire article: http://tinyurl.com/matf5g

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Are students at risk of being jacks of all languages, masters of none?

Tony Taylor, the Age, June 12, 2009

A broader study of Asian languages in Australia - we are told in a recent report by Griffith University's Asia Institute - urgently needs a boost at university and school level. This is because it is "critical for the country's prosperity that half of all Australians became competent in a key Asian language over the next 30 years".

This latter claim comes even though it is English that is the established assistant language of India, the world's second most populous nation (with 90 million English speakers), and of Pakistan. In mainland China, there are an estimated 10 million English speakers, many of these involved in business.

Why do so many of our Asian neighbours aspire to speak English? Because it is English that is the lingua franca of international commerce, finance, the media and diplomacy, not Cantonese, not Wu, not Min, nor even Mandarin (the four major Chinese languages). The same prevalence of English as the second language applies in Japan and Indonesia, and increasingly in the formerly Francophone sections of Vietnam and Cambodia.

While I unreservedly support the view that we need to know more about our Asian neighbours, their lives, their culture and, in a seriously analytical fashion, their histories, I am more than sceptical about the suggestion we need to switch scarce school resources into a scatter-gun Asian languages policy for our non-Asian descent students.

Read entire article: http://tinyurl.com/mg4n8o

Tony Taylor teaches and researches at Monash University.

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ENGAGING WITH ASIA

The absence of Asia from schooling

Maureen Welch, “EQ”, June 2009

While Asia is well represented in the formal curriculum, a recent study suggests that there is a distance to travel before it is represented in what is actually studied in the senior years.

The most disturbing finding is that teachers and students do not opt for the study of Asia even when it is available as an option within courses. Notably, this trend is mirrored in the study of Asian languages, where the 23 per cent who study Asian languages K–10, drops to 6 per cent in year 12.

The evidence is that state and territory curriculum authorities have made efforts to include Asia in senior curricula, though the picture varies across subject domains.

English is characteristic. English courses usually include a range of texts from which schools select which to study. Some courses include no texts with an Asian focus. In others, there is a limited selection.

Where there are texts with an Asian focus, they are often older established texts written by non-Asian authors (e.g. Graham Greene’s The Quiet American) or relate to war and conflict.

Examiners’ reports indicate that Asian texts are less often selected than other texts, such as The Great Gatsby. We need to be asking why this is the case.

Read entire article: http://tinyurl.com/mukgds

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Lament for our Asian ignorance

Greg Sheridan, the Australian, June 27, 2009

IT is a perpetual astonishment to me the absolute lack of interest Australians display in Southeast Asian culture. We are the losers on this score.

Try substituting the words Jakarta or Cebu in the title of a book, for, say, Paris or Tuscany and you'll see what I mean. Don't get me wrong. I'm not against a love of Europe or the US. But in so comprehensively ignoring the cultural output of Southeast Asia, we deny ourselves pleasure and profit and wisdom.

A few years ago I had a modest gig interviewing Southeast Asian authors for the Sydney Writers Festival. One year we got a pretty good audience for Karim Raslan, the Malaysian short-story writer, columnist, lawyer, international relations heavyweight, smoothie and all-round overachiever. In those days Karim's column was appearing in the now defunct Australian magazine The Eye, so he had a natural audience. He's such a witty, entertaining extrovert that he was an easy sell.

Another year, however, I interviewed Vietnamese author Ho Anh Thai about his beautiful collection of stories Behind the Red Mist. These were superbly translated into English and dealt with social and even political issues, often with an intergenerational theme, right on the edge of permissibility in Vietnam's still constricted artistic space. Sadly, there were almost as many of us on the stage as in the audience.

Read entire article: http://tinyurl.com/nsrd24

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Extra $15m for Australia-Asia Student Exchange

Hon Julia Gillard MP, Minister for Education, 7 July 2009

The Minister for Education, Julia Gillard, today extended the Endeavour Australia Cheung Kong Scholarship Program for a further 10 years at a signing ceremony in Melbourne.

The unique partnership between the Australian Government and leading Hong Kong-based company, Cheung Kong (Holdings) Limited will continue to support international education exchange and research links between Australia and Asia.  Cheung Kong’s generous contribution of $7.5 million over 10 years will be matched by the Australian Government.

The funding will provide for about 2000 student exchanges and research fellowships for Australian and Asian scholars.

These scholarship opportunities will foster long-lasting education, research and professional linkages between individuals, institutions and countries.  That leads to further strengthening the bilateral ties between Australia and our Asian neighbours.

Further information: http://tinyurl.com/mlr2px

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OPINION

An investment that speaks for itself

Joseph Lo Bianco, the Australian, 8 July 2009

Money talks, we all know, and the money metaphor makes us talk about the currency of codes.

In Language of Money Edna Carew defines the insurance term surrender value as: "What the life office will pay you if you choose to cash in your policy before its expiry date."

Unfortunately this is very relevant for language teaching in Australia today; the vast majority of learners cash in their language chips before either maturity or proficiency.

Unlike the life office, however, schools and universities neither pay nor recognise any accumulated investment.

These students are 88 per cent of the total. Many take up languages again at university and so perhaps they are shirking language exams, rather than languages.

They often choose a different language from the one school offered them, but alas a large majority raise the white flag at the end of first year. Discussion about language teaching in Australia could usefully spend some time debating this tale of attrition.

This will be more productive than berating those among the 12 per cent who persist for choosing "wrong" or "bad" languages.

Read entire article: http://tinyurl.com/lpos2t

Joseph Lo Bianco is professor of language and literacy education at University of Melbourne

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Lingua, frankly, is underrated

Bernard Lane, the Australian, June 24, 2009

"WHY write about the universities? They do nothing." I'd never seen my Spanish teacher angry before. He agreed there was a story to be told about the rise of Spanish but for him, our universities would be a minor, often clueless character. There was institutional politics in his anger and some exaggeration, too, but not ignorance. He knew our system.

Consider the latest, bleak report from the language departments.

On average, nine out of 10 first-year students take no modern languages at all, according to a 10-university study for the Australian Academy of the Humanities. About a third of the students who do begin a language last just one semester.

In our "aggressively monolingual culture", as the report puts it, students learn that languages are an easily discarded "add-on" rather than a central part of an education. The report blames indifference or even hostility to languages on the part of leaders, from government through university management down to faculty deans.

Hence our campuses with their ever narrower offering of languages by global standards, high attrition rates, a dramatic skewing of programs towards beginners, a curriculum built on the assumption of a three-year program, the threat of abolition if enrolments fall too low and de facto financial penalties if numbers rise.

One tactic of the academy under pressure is to cut contact hours. You'd imagine the more time that teachers and students spend together the better, but it costs money. Italian at one university went from eight hours a week in 1964 to four in 2007 and three in 2008.

Read entire article: http://tinyurl.com/mr5w74

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PRESERVING THREATENED LANGUAGES

It’s not just the whales in trouble: Save the languages!

Peter Monaghan, June 24, 2009

Linguists know what causes languages to disappear. Demographic shifts, government neglect or suppression of regional and indigenous languages and the depredations of mass media all play a role.

Less often remarked is what happens on the way to disappearance; languages' vocabularies, grammars, and expressive potential all diminish.

"Say a community goes over from speaking a traditional Aboriginal language to speaking a creole," says Nick Evans, an Australian National University linguist and leading authority on Aboriginal languages. "Well, let's just use talking about the natural world as an example. You leave behind a language where there's very fine vocabulary for the landscape. Inside the language there's a whole manual for maintaining the integrity of the landscape, for managing it, for using it, for looking for stuff. All that is gone in a creole. You've just got a few words like 'gum tree' or whatever."

As speakers become less able to process and express the wealth of knowledge that has imbued ancestors' lives with meaning over millennia, it's no wonder that communities tend to become demoralised, says Evans, who has dedicated his career to the tall order of keeping shrinking languages going.   "There are times when what people speak is like seeing the world through very badly made, thick glasses," he says. "You can avoid bumping into objects, but you don't see all the beautiful detail."

Read entire article: http://tinyurl.com/nuwh2p

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Aboriginal revival languages

ABC Radio, Lingua Franca, 27 June 2009

The work of language reclamation in Australia is showing that languages of revival are their own type of language, with characteristics and needs peculiar to themselves that are well worth understanding.

Dr Christina Eira, community linguist with the Victorian Aboriginal Corporation for Languages (VACL).

Download audio and read transcript at: http://tinyurl.com/lbvs6x

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Disappearing indigenous languages

ABC Radio “Breakfast” 26 June 2009

It's estimated that half of the world's languages will disappear in the next 50 years. Now the race is on to protect our indigenous languages.

Richard Green: Dharug teacher

Nicholas Evans: Linguist, author of “Dying Words: Endangered languages and what they have to tell us”

Download audio and read transcript at: http://tinyurl.com/l8p2oh

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INDIGENOUS LANGUAGES EDUCATION

Gaps in Australia's Indigenous language policy: dismantling bilingual education in the Northern Territory

Jane Simpson, Jo Caffery & Patrick McConvell, Australian Institute of Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Studies, 29 June 2009

Young children learn best when taught through their mother tongue. This commonsense principle has been supported by decades of research on bilingual education for children who don't speak the dominant language. The research has also shown that there are positive effects on children’s cognitive development if they are encouraged to become strong bilinguals.

For Indigenous communities, bilingual education has been highly valued not only because it helps children to maintain Indigenous languages, but also because it provides an honoured place for Indigenous languages in the curriculum and an honoured place for Indigenous teachers.

However, in the Northern Territory bilingual education has been a controversial issue since its inception in the 1970s.

In part this is due to the failure of policy-makers to recognise that children who are monolingual in a language other than English need explicit teaching of the English language, by trained English as a Second Language (ESL) or English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers, before they can learn through English as the medium of instruction.

Consequently, there has been much political debate on the issue and frequent moves against bilingual education.

At the end of 2008 the Northern Territory Government, supported by the Commonwealth Government, all but closed bilingual education in remote Indigenous schools by determining that the language of instruction for the first four hours of school must be English. This decision could spell the death of the remaining endangered Indigenous languages in Australia.

Yet it was taken without apparent regard for the evidence from research on how monolingual children learn a second language, or on the positive value of bilingual education, or the language rights of Indigenous peoples, or the evidence from schools which had abandoned bilingual education.

This paper argues that the policy gap revealed by this event should be filled by a national commitment to serious consideration of evidence, and recognition of Indigenous language rights. Through national and international evidence this discussion paper outlines the cognitive, societal and education benefits of bilingual education for children whose first language is not English. It is anticipated that this paper will stimulate political discussion on using evidence-based research to improve education for Australia’s Indigenous children.

Read complete paper: http://tinyurl.com/lem7xy

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NEWS FROM HERE & THERE

Indonesia: Teachers lack English language skills

The Jakarta Post,  Jakarta   10 June 2009 

Teachers may not be ready to take up the challenge of teaching subjects in English, as stipulated by a current government policy that requires every province to have at least one international-standard school.

"Some teachers still struggle to teach the English language in English, let alone teach other subjects using the language," Itje Chodidjah, the British Council's educational advisor said on the sidelines of a symposium on bilingual education, which was attended by representatives of 10 countries.

In 2006, the government introduced the English Bilingual Education (EBE) policy and designated 112 schools to start pilot programs in English.

"The need to master English is becoming more pressing," Suryanto, the director general of primary and secondary education said at the event, adding that fluency in English would open many doors.

Read entire article: http://tinyurl.com/mytlss

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Northern Ireland: Minister praises Irish language education teachers

Irish Government News, 8 June 2009

Education Minister, Caitríona Ruane, congratulated 36 bilingual education students at a ceremony in St Mary’s University College, Belfast this morning.

Speaking at the event, the Minister said: “More and more people on the island of Ireland are learning Irish. In education it is one of the fastest growing sectors and there is an increasing demand for qualified Irish language speakers with experience and training in other subjects. To meet this demand I recently increased the intakes to Initial Teacher Education for St Mary’s, with an additional 10 places for the BEd primary Irish Education.

“In 1991, there were fewer than 400 pupils at an Irish medium school - today that number is over 3,000. Partnerships such as the one between St Mary’s and the other universities are producing high quality Irish language graduates who can inspire and motivate our young people to keep the Irish language thriving.

“I also believe that having a second language is becoming increasingly important in today’s society. Research has shown that children who have had experience of two or more languages benefit in other subjects at school.”

Source: http://tinyurl.com/m9pkqs

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UK: Overcoming the language barrier: Why we need more language teachers

Steve McCormack, Independent, 4 June 2009

As an island race, we might have once been forgiven for forgetting that we're living on a continent where numerous different languages are spoken. But those days are gone. I, for one, have my letters delivered by a Portuguese postman; buy coffee at the railway station from someone with a heavy Polish accent; and watch a football team where French and Spanish dominate in the dressing room.

So today's schoolchildren are growing up surrounded by examples of people making their way in another country and speaking another language, namely English. But, according to British businesses, we shouldn't just sit back and let foreigners come here and master our tongue. We should follow suit.

A recent report from the Council of British Industry (CBI), the employers' organisation, showed that around three-quarters of companies look for recruits with some foreign language skills, and are likely to demand more such expertise in the future.

Read entire article: http://tinyurl.com/ns59ck

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UK: Review of university language courses amid concern over cuts

Anthea Lipsett, Guardian UK, 22 May 2009

The provision of modern foreign languages in England's universities will be reviewed amid concerns over cuts to course budgets and departments.

Several top universities have announced they face a funding shortfall that threatens language courses and departments after changes to the way research funding is allocated.

Ministers have moved to protect science and engineering after last year's Research Assessment Exercise (RAE), which is used to allocate £1.5bn in research funding. As a result, arts and humanities subjects have suffered.

The review of languages announced by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (Hefce) today will report in September. Led by Professor Michael Worton, vice-provost of University College London, it will make recommendations to Hefce and ministers on the "long-term sustainability and vitality of modern foreign languages".

Read entire article: http://tinyurl.com/o8vqhe

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UK: Top university language departments face harsh cuts:

Classes scrapped as funding is diverted to science subjects

Polly Curtis, Guardian UK, 21 May 2009

Some of the country's most prestigious universities – including Oxford, Edinburgh and King's College London – are facing swingeing cuts to their language departments because the government has diverted funding from arts and humanities subjects to protect the sciences.

Oxford University, which is ranked number one in the country for languages, faces a £1m shortfall in its language budget as a result of the new funding allocations, and academics are now working on a financial rescue plan.

European linguists at Edinburgh University have been told to save £400,000 over two years and there are warnings that they will have to scrap some subjects and expand class sizes. Russian, Italian and Portugese are said to be threatened. Students at the university are staging a protest on Monday against the plans in another sign of the rising militant mood on campuses where undergraduates are increasingly demanding better quality classes in return for their fees.

Read entire article: http://tinyurl.com/p45t6j

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REMINDERS

9-12 July - AFMLTA National Conference 2009 - Sydney, NSW - http://tinyurl.com/qpxy4w

11-12 July - Chinese Language Teachers Federation of Australia Annual Conference - Adelaide, SA - http://tinyurl.com/kop93y

13-16 July - JSAA International Conference on Japanese Language Education - Sydney, NSW - http://tinyurl.com/m8yvkw

14-15 July - Australian Society of Indonesian Language Educators Conference - Waverley, NSW - http://tinyurl.com/qxkqpn

22-23 August - Weekend Italiano - Melbourne, VIC - http://tinyurl.com/pt6x9j

12-13 September - Victorian State Conference for German Teachers - Geelong, VIC - http://tinyurl.com/obudjn

29 October-1 November - Second Language Research Forum Conference - Michigan State University, USA - http://tinyurl.com/r4llc3

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