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IN
THIS ISSUE
(No. 5) |
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| REPORTS |
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Austalia
From:
“Since
1991 I have been working with Joyce Hudson and other TESOL
Resource Teachers from the Catholic Education Office in
the Kimberley on preparing and delivering the Professional
Development course Fostering English Language in Kimberley
Schools (FELIKS) to teachers in Catholic schools in
the region. “In
conjunction with the course, I’ve trialed games and
activities in primary classrooms aimed at enabling the children
to understand that two languages (SAE and Kriol/Aboriginal
English) are involved in their social and school interactions
and to be able to differentiate between them. A number of
the games involve consciously switching between the languages.” [FELIKS
is mentioned under Publications below.]
From:
“Interests
include pidgins and creoles used by the deaf community.”
From:
“Working
on a book on linguistic imperialism in the Pacific Area,
which contains a chapter on this topic [pidgins and creoles
in education].”
From:
“In
my work as the Aboriginal Studies Curriculum Adviser for
Kimberley Catholic schools, the use of pidgins and/or creoles
is part of the knowledge teachers must have to be effective
in working with Aboriginal children who employ this type
of language for communication. I work with a language team
that offers people who can in-service staff to identify
the language type employed by Aboriginal students so they
can be aware of this in their roles as teachers.”
From:
“I
work as a lecturer for Batchelor College in a Kriol-speaking
community, Ngukurr, and am interested in literacy, particularly
visual literacy as in writing. “Ngukurr
is an interesting educational environment in that Kriol
is the language of instruction in a school with an all-Aboriginal
staff and no bilingual program.”
From:
The
following is taken from a description of the “Critical
Steps Program” in English as a Second Language (ESL): “Purpose: “Program
description: The
program will extend and develop projects already operating
in the Kimberley and Kalgoorlie Districts. Schools will
be grouped into cells and receive support from visiting
support teachers. Students in a transitional phase of schooling
(ie K-Yr 1, Yr 4-5, Yr 7-8, Yr 10-11, Yr 12) will be targeted
in particular to receive support. The support teachers will
utilise First Steps and Stepping Out strategies and developmental
continua in implementing programs in each involved school.
The emphasis of each school-based program will be in providing
direct classroom support for teachers and students. A research component will be included in this program and the findings of the research will be disseminated to all schools with Aboriginal ESL students.”
“I
am interested in the provision of basic literacy skills
in a community language to children in the Pacific. In the
complicated linguistic demography of Melanesia, vernacular
literacy is not always feasible. I would like to see Melanesian
Pidgin [MP] being promoted as a vehicle for literacy (as
well as oral communication). “Presently
Melanesian children in the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu are
expected to become literate in English (or French in Vanuatu).
However, teachers are often found to be using MP as the
de facto medium of communication in the classroom. It would
be far more beneficial to children already conversant in
MP to use the language for the acquisition of literacy,
too. This would confirm and build on community learning,
decrease the dislocation between community and school learning
and reaffirm cultural identity.”
From:
A
pilot project in under way to evaluate the teaching of initial
literacy in Bislama (Melanesian Pidgin) in a Vanuatu preschool.
Two teachers at Lawa Preschool (Southwest Bay, Malakula)
attended Literacy Training workshops run in Port Vila by
Nick Faraclas of UPNG in 1993. They have been using some
of the methods they learned back in their school. The children’s
progress will be monitored when they begin primary school
next year. The project is being overseen in Vanuatu by Enikelen Netine, of World Vision, who already has wide experience in the Melanesian Literacy Project’s work on adult Bislama literacy in Vanuatu.
South America
“I am involved in research on linguistic contact in Brazil from the 16th to 18th centuries. I am interested in the way lingua geral was transmitted by the missionaries. Recently I found an 18th century ‘specimen’ written in Latin by a German Jesuit priest to teach lingua geral. It is interesting because he was following the Janua Linguarum model of teaching almost 150 years later.”
Caribbean and Central America
“There
is growing interest in the promotion of the use of the Creole
language. There have been Creole radio talk programs for
several years and now the first Creole television talk show
has begun. There are people in the Department of Education
that are interested in the possible use of Creole in education.
There is occasional informal use of Creole for giving explanations.
We’ve even heard unconfirmed reports of a few teachers
that have encouraged students to try to write in Creole.
We have positive hopes for the possibilities for the development of Creole as a written language and for the use of Creole in Education.”
“I am interested in education in Tok Pisin and vernacular language socialization, discourse analysis, language ideology and code-switching between Tok Pisin/vernacular as part of language acquisition.”
“I
worked for a number of years as a teacher in a bilingual
pre-school program for Haitian Creole-speaking children.
In that context I began to explore various issues related
to language and literacy. I am presently part of a project
looking at science-learning in bilingual classrooms. I am
working in a Haitian-speaking classroom (5th-8th grades)
where the children are studying ants. They develop investigations,
do observations, analyse their data and theorise all in
Haitian Creole.”
From:
“My interest in this area began with an interest in the use (or the lack of use) of native American languages for literacy education – specifically Mayan languages for elementary schooling and adult literacy. From there I learned more about languages in contact and began to examine contact between the Mayan and Spanish languages. I would like to put this all together and the topic of pidgins and creoles in education seems to be an appropriate direction to follow.”
Europe
From:
“I
am at present carrying out a research project into the language
needs of bilingual pupils, including Creole speakers, for
the Hackney Education Directorate. “I
have also initiated Creole Studies at a Black Supplementary
School in London and meet with a group of Afro-Caribbean
linguists on a regular basis to discuss the current issues
in Creole and Education in Britain.”
From:
“[I
am undertaking] sociolinguistic/
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