Recognising the SAE language learning needs of Indigenous primary school students who speak contact languages
Most Indigenous peoples live in urban and regional locations across Australia and no longer speak their traditional languages fluently. Instead contact languages, creoles and dialects, are widely spoken. In many educational settings, educators may know little about the first languages of the Ind...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Journal Article |
| Published: |
Taylor & Francis
2021
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| Online Access: | http://purl.org/au-research/grants/arc/CE140100041 http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/87225 |
| Summary: | Most Indigenous peoples live in urban and regional locations across
Australia and no longer speak their traditional languages fluently.
Instead contact languages, creoles and dialects, are widely spoken. In
many educational settings, educators may know little about the first
languages of the Indigenous children they teach, and not recognise
these as different languages or dialects. Consequently, these students
may not be treated as second language learners of Standard Australian
English (SAE) and their language learning requirements are not considered.
From a sociocultural perspective, language is crucial to students’
learning. In this paper, we quantitatively analyse the SAE learning needs
of Indigenous primary school aged children in Far North Queensland
using oral elicited imitation of simple sentences in SAE as a research
method. Using one-way ANOVA, the results are compared with native
monolingual SAE speakers showing significant differences between the
two. This finding has important implications for classroom teaching
practices and educational policies. |
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