Languages Other Than English
[2] The home environment plays a significant role for acquisition of multilingualism in early childhood development.
[4] Parents who expose their child to libraries, picture books, reading aloud, storytelling, playing games, and rhymes improved literary and language skills.
[13] The language brokers skills are typically utilized for official documentations, such as government forms, bank statements, applications, and insurance.
[14] In one study the brokers outperformed native English speakers as their literacy exposure was beyond a typical school setting.
[14] The study concluded that the unique role has shown greater cognition and problem-solving abilities as the language broker would reason at an adult-level real-world context.
[14] These situations naturally improved the broker's skills in developing literacy as children as young as 12 years old were translating linguistically challenging official documents and meditating conversations.
[13] This role places greater responsibility on the child which potentially helps them mature more quickly as they interact in more adult situations.
Consequently, families may transition to speaking English at home to prepare a child for the dominant language at childcare centres and school.
[21] Furthermore, one study found that teachers who did not receive training for heritage languages were more likely to have indifferent or negative attitudes towards LOTE maintenance.
[9] One study found that the language transition to English is occurring much more quickly as a LOTE can be loss within a generation.
[27] Of individuals born overseas 61% live in New South Wales or Victoria and between 1996 and 2016, Queensland and Western Australia have increased from 9.5% to 16.5% and 9.3% to 12.9%, respectively.
[28] The Adelaide Declaration on National Goals for Schooling in the Twenty-first Century was produced in 1999 by the Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs (MCEETYA).
[30] The Adelaide Declaration formed languages as a Key Learning Area due to the belief that cultural and linguistic diversity is valuable.
[33] VSL was formed due to a small core group of teachers and administrators and financially supported from other benefactors.
[33] VSL mainly taught staff's interest and locally available resources as opposed to a formal, summative assessment system.
This surge was attributed to the influx of two million European migrants during the post-war period due to ethnic groups lobbying the government for additional heritage language classes.
The Victorian education department's decision to accredit VSL also validates its quality for parents and schoolteachers who might otherwise doubt its value.
[39] With the increasing role of technology in education VSL's ability to access school facilities enables teachers to be better equipped to teaching HLs.
This poses political considerations because VSL is a state accredited institution and different ethnic communities, and groups may be affected depending on the variations taught.
[40] This poses a tension between the secularization of education as well as ethnic communities’ views and expectations of teaching HLs.
[33] Another study, in Athens, found that some parents responded positively to the inclusion of religious practices as core values for heritage language learners’ cultural identity.
[9] Some local government councils across New South Wales acknowledge different heritages by running ethnic festivals.
The festival included traditional activities and performances such as dragon dancing, ethnic foods, moon cake.
