Professor Peter Siemund, Hamburg University, during his guest lecture at Macquarie University It is easy to assume that bilinguals are better at adding another language to their repertoire. But is…
Dr Sabine Little during her guest lecture at Macquarie University When my daughter was five years old, she one day solemnly informed me that, from now on, she was no…
ESL teachers play an important role in home language maintenance (Image Credit: Macquarie University) Learning the host country’s language is important for migrants but we should not forget that maintaining…
Murugan Temple, Colombo (Source: Andy Nobes) Do you know which non-Christian religion has grown the fastest in Australia since the new millennium? You might be surprised to hear that it’s…
Editor's note: We are delighted to bring to our readers today another outstanding experience of bilingual creativity, the poem Malay Sketches by Sydney author Aisyah Shah Idil, a runner up of the…
"The English" migrated to their "ancestral homeland" in the first few centuries of the Common Era (Source: Wikipedia) “Indigenous languages” and “immigrant languages” are much discussed in language policy research,…
The researcher wearing a Zhuang employee's work uniform at the Black Clothes Zhuang House in the Ethnic Minorities Village, Nanning, China, 2014 I was surprised, frankly, during my recent fieldwork…
German International School Sydney It is one of the great narratives of our time that the market will fix everything. In education this means that parental choice is assumed to…
Carnatic singer Prema Anandakrishnan and her accompanists performing for the monthly Sydney Music Circle concert An important element of language relates to its aesthetic use, in other words, how we…
Multiculturalism in Australia: Should it be seen but not heard? (Source: det.wa.edu.au) Australia has embraced multiculturalism as official national policy since the 1970s. Interestingly, the most recent incarnation of the…