The education of languages teachers

Thursday, May 15, 2008

The education of languages teachers

Listen to and view the archive of our latest audio-conference on 14 May when Lesley Harbon of Sydney University presented "Over-enthused and under-prepared: pre-service languages teachers in the spotlight." Lively discussion followed. [Give the archive a full minute to load.] This is the future of the languages teaching profession at stake. In 1996 an investigation into 'Languages Other than English teacher supply and quality' produced a report for the Federal government entitled "Language teachers: The Pivot of Policy" (available as pdf). Sound analysis; sound recommendations. Then we went into the decade of decline. Now a brand new “Review of Teacher Education for Languages Teachers” has been handed to government (available as pdf - link at bottom of page). Is this the same old policy cycle, or is there hope of real action and results in languages teaching and learning?

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Favourite pro-languages quotes

A Recipe For Dreaming: Bryce Courtenay (1994). Man's greatest inheritance is the gift of speech:The gift of words is the gift of imagination. Life is too short to iron tea towels.

To grammar even kings bow. J. B. Molière, Les Femmes Savantes, 1672

Speech is human, silence is divine, yet also brutish and dead; therefore we must learn both arts. Thomas Carlisle.

Ein Freund ist ein Mensch, der die Melodie deines Herzen kennt und sie dir vorspielt, wenn du sie vergessen hast. - Albert Einstein - ... A friend is a person who knows the music of your heart and reminds you of it when you forget. [contributed by Katja Jefremow]

"Man spins language out from within himself, eventually gets himself entwined in it, and every language draws a circle around the nation to which it belongs, and which one can only leave to the extent that at the same time one enters the circle of another." Wilhelm Von Humboldt, 1836

Language is a city to the building of which every human being brought a stone. Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Mark Twain: "Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime." - Innocents Abroad

The palest ink is better than the sharpest memory. Chinese proverb.

"The ability to talk over problems, to sit around table and discuss varied points of view, to settle difficulties by means of tongue and pen, not by bombs and guns, is the halmark of civilized man." (Logan, L.H. 1972 Creative Communication. Toronto: MacGraw-Hill Ryerson Ltd.) Or as Atmazaki translates into Indonesian (16 Aug 2011)Jadi, orang yang berbudaya adalah orang yang dapat memanfaatkan potensi bahasanya dengan berbagai cara untuk memecahkan masalah sehari-hari, dengan lidah dan pena, tidak dengan bom dan senjata. Orang itulah yang termasuk kelompok manusia berperadaban.

“Translation is not a matter of words only: it is a matter of making intelligible a whole culture“ - Anthony Burgess. [Found on LinkedIn Language Learning group]

"If you talk in his language, that goes to the heart."

And most wonderful of all are words, and how they make friends one with another, being oft associated, until not even obituary notices them do part. O.Henry, Calloway's Code

When you lose a language, you lose a culture, intellectual wealth, a work of art. It's like dropping a bomb on a museum, the Louvre." Comment by the late Kenneth Hale, cited in The Economist (November 3,2001).

LANGUAGE, n. The music with which we charm the serpents guarding another's treasure. - Ambrose Bierce

Dance is the mother of all languages." R.G. Collingwood, British philosopher and historian.

[See Slideshare Move! Evolution of Dance - Dance of Evolution and also Where The Hell Is Matt?

The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page. St Augustine (quoted at photographer Kerin Burford's beautiful Travel Gallery)

Annie Robertson, who teaches Japanese and TESOL, sent a favourite quote: "Language is a steed that carries one into a far country."

American children's writer Russell Hoban, born in 1925, once said that language is an archeological vehicle, full of the remnants of dead and living pasts, lost and buried civilisations and technologies. The language we speak is a whole palimpsest of human effort and history. [in article by Ghilad Zuckermann, 26 August 2009 Aboriginal languages deserve revival]

http://www.blogger.com/home From a World Poetry Day site in the Philippines: "Poetry is the impish attempt to paint the color of the wind." -- Maxwell Bodenheim.

"Le coeur a ses raisons que la raison ne connait point." -- Blaise Pascal

Mark Twain: "Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.

The power, the efficiency and the beauty of all things are functions of their difference. Attributed to Frieda M. Holt.

"Be the change you want to see in the world." Mahatma Gandhi

Quote from artist Michael Leunig:- "Love one another and you will be happy. It is as simple, and as difficult, as that" put by the school chaplain in the school newsletter, Lilydale , Tasmania

Shinta Benilda kirim kutipan orang Manado yang bunyinya "Sitow timow timow tow" yang artinya dalam bahasa Indonesia "manusia itu hidup untuk memanusiakan orang lain". Hm.. bukan pekerjaan yang mudah [We humans live to humanize each other].

Sekali berarti Sudah itu mati Khairil Anwar

Javanese traditional saying: Rame ing gawe, sepi ing pamrih -- Give your all to your work and then just keep quiet about reward.

When nations grow old, the arts grow cold and commerce settles on every tree. —William Blake (1757-1827)

Gegen Dummheit kämpfen selbst die Götte vergebens. Against stupidity the gods themselves struggle in vain. Schiller

"Seek first to understand, then to be understood." Stephen Covey, at the WA Primary Principals Assn conference in Perth in June.

What kind of victory is it when someone is left defeated? Mohandas Gandhi

Kalah jadi abu, menang jadi arang [the defeated become ashes; the winners become charcoal.] Malay proverb

Dave Nutting spotted this in the Age newspaper. Passed on by by Catherine Gosling. “He’s got planes, trains, untold billions and even a spaceship. So is there anything Richard Branson [owner of Virgin-brand companies] can’t get his hands on? Well, yes actually.” “I wonder if there is anything Branson regrets not having done.” “I’d love to be able to speak languages, he says.” From: What’s not to smile about, by Mark Dapin, Good Weekend, August 16th, 2008

Australian General Peter Cosgrove: "I unequivocally endorse the sentiment, expressed by the eminent American historian Henry Adams, that “A teacher affects eternity; they can never tell where their influence stops.” Australian General Peter Cosgrove AC, MC. in address to the Ausralian Principals Association. Melbourne 30 May 2002.

Also from Gen. P. Cosgrove: "I cannot imagine a future in which people of all cultures and nations are not increasingly connected by ties of travel commerce and migration. [...] Language skills and cultural sensitivity will be the new currency of this world order. Along with computer literacy they will provide the keys to participation in the global economy.[...] Our future prosperity and security will depend on our ability to understand these cultures and to build bridges to the citizens of these nations and all our immediate neighbours."

"Prejudice is the ultimate form of human ignorance."

"One key deficiency in our capabilities in East Timor was the lack of language skills across the spectrum. We needed more linguists to provide liaison with our Coalition partners. And just as importantly there were more misunderstandings based on cultural differences than any of us could have anticipated, or would have desired."

"Commercial links, alone, will never render war unthinkable. What will, however, are mutual understanding and respect and the banishing of prejudice."

Download Peter Cosgrove address"

Language is the spice of life....The more spices the better!SOCIOLINGUISTS on Facebook

Encouragement for dispirited language teachers from the writer and linguist J. R. R. Tolkien.

All that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost; The old that is strong does not wither, Deep roots are not reached by the frost. From the ashes a fire shall be woken, A light from the shadows shall spring; Renewed shall be blade that was broken, The crownless again shall be king.

from The Lord of the Rings

"Another fairy dies every time someone says foreign languages are a waste of time." Michelle S, graduate of USC, now in Dept of Defence.

"In a world which is becoming smaller and more of a 'Global Community', understanding and tolerance are essential for a productive and peaceful future. The best way for students to gain an insight into another nation and its culture is through the study of its language and literature. For this reason all Principals must ensure that the study of Languages is an integral part of their school's curriculum."

Geoff Ryan (National Chair A.H.I.S.A.) Principal of Westbourne Grammar

"This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple. The philosophy is kindness." [Dalai Lama, by way of Eve-Marie Lainchbury]

THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Thomas Paine, English-born supporter of the American Revolution. [by way of Rupert Macgregor of ACSSO]

Professor Joe Camilleri, in opening the 2007 National Seminar on Languages Education (Melbourne, November 2007), spoke of language as being : at the heart of all human learning; the mirror of all human development; the link between the biological and the cultural; the compass of culture; and the mediation between I and Thou [by way of Michael Traynor in Catholic Education, ACT and NSW]

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951), Austrian mathematician and philosopher: “The limits of my world are the limits of my language.” [also via Michael Traynor]

Alle Kunst ist umsonst Wenn ein Engel in das Zündloch prunst", which roughly translates as: "All skill is in vain when an angel pisses in the flintlock of your musket"! (Field Marshal Gebhard L. von Blücher)

"Language is consciousness." “A language reflects a singular nature of a people speaking it.” “Language is identity.” "It’s going to give them a sense of self, to know themselves. The fact that they’re speaking the language is empowerment in itself.” Quotes from various speakers in a New York times article on preserving the 800 disappearing languages found among migrants in New York: Listening to (and Saving) the World’s Languages

“The poet, by composing poems, uses a language that is neither dead nor living, that few people speak, and few people understand … We are the servants of an unknown force that lives within us, manipulates us, and dictates this language to us.”~Jean Cocteau. >> [swiped from Karen Carter's Facebook.]

Any word over ten letters in English is the same word in French. Fact. Sloan Crosby, satirist, author.

May I recommend a thoroughly stimulating, sobering, unusual book for educators? [available free as a large pdf file]. http://www.mckinsey.com/locations/ukireland/publications/pdf/Education_report.pdf

Promoting Quality Language Education on internet talk radio [no longer maintained.]

ACTFL Talk Radio - Promoting Quality Language Education on internet talk radio

Language and languages - Australia

Thursday, May 15, 2008