The aim of this study is to identify factors associated with Vietnamese-Australian parents' language use and attitudes towards home language maintenance. Vietnamese-Australian parents (n = 151) with children aged under 18 completed a survey regarding demographic factors and factors conceptualised by Spolsky's language policy theory: language…

Despite the many critiques of views that categorise and simplify Chinese international students' use of memorisation as deficient or rote learning, these views persist. Using ethnographic methods to collect data over 18 months, this study identified the key practices employed by students as they negotiated their learning experiences in an…

Drawing on data from a longitudinal linguistic ethnographic study of a trilingual (English, Japanese, Spanish) family in Australia, this paper suggests that rather than looking at their language use in terms of family language policy, better insights can be gained by exploring the translingual family repertoire. This repertoire is a central…

There have been few Australian studies of language maintenance amongst immigrant languages from the Indian subcontinent. The present study focuses on Tamil speakers in Melbourne from Sri Lanka or India, who are Hindus or Christians. Tamil is a pluricentric language that has been under the domination of English in these countries, at least amongst…

Discusses the literature in Australia about cultural pluralism and its implications for educational policy, concentrating on the debate about the merits and weaknesses of the 1978 Australian government adoption of multiculturalism as its guiding policy. Critics accept multiculturalism as valid only in the domain of ethnic family and community.…

Investigated the relevance of emotional and familial factors to language maintenance in immigrant families. Information on the family relations of 40 children from Chinese-speaking immigrant families in Sydney, Australia. Analysis revealed that children likely to use their parents' mother tongue were those who perceived their family to be more…

Two competing theories of "both ways" (dominant culture access and minority culture maintenance) education are examined: Harris' culture domain separation theory and Kemmis'"negotiated meaning" approach. Analysis along three dimensions (view of culture, language, and epistomology/ontology) suggests Harris' theory is based on a…

Queensland, Australia, is embarking on a massive limited bilingual second-language learning program for all students in the first eight years of school. Potential implementation problems and implications for the wider society are discussed, including the effect of the emphasis on studying Asian languages. (Contains 40 references.) (Author/LB)

Study of native language maintenance of 10- and 11-year-old children of Lebanese immigrants in Australia found that most could speak but not read or write Lebanese. Lebanese competence depended on subjects' parents' literacy level and interest in language quality, and actual use reflected children's opportunities or necessity to speak Lebanese.…

Discusses the issue of language ecology, focusing on Polish language maintenance in Victoria, Australia, and reports on a study conducted with Polish students at a Saturday language school. Results indicate that the longer the period of residence in Australia, the less students use Polish. (25 references) (Author/CK)