The level and rate of learning the mother tongue of individuals whose mother tongue is different from the language of the society they live is not the same compared to people who learn their mother tongue in their homeland. Turkish people who live in abroad, have to study more in order to learn Turkish compared to people in Turkey. The language…

The reawakening of the Indigenous Gamilaraay language in northern inland New South Wales, Australia involves righting two centuries of prohibition and mistreatment after invasion by English-speaking settlers. Gamilaraay is no longer used as an everyday language in the community, although it has strong emblematic value for the Gamilaraay community.…

Families that live temporarily abroad for work or education (amongst other reasons) often encounter some difficulties to maintain their children's L1; particularly when they live in English-speaking countries. This study explores the language maintenance experiences of ten Saudi Arabian families sojourning in Australia, from the perspective of…

This critical systematic review of Australian research literature provides insights into the aspirations of Indigenous communities to collaborate with schools in establishing local Indigenous language and cultural programmes. This systematic review investigates the body of Australian research into the cultural, social and educational impacts on…

In the famous Djuranydjura story from North-East Arnhem Land, when the visiting 'Macassan' offers the Yol?u ancestral dog rice, shoes and blankets, he rejects them all, in favour of his own land and resources. At Gäwa homeland on Elcho Island, this powerful story is reinterpreted to include the arrival of balanda (white) teachers, and their focus…

This article reports on language narratives in the ecology of a Vietnamese community language school (VCLS) in Australia. The study takes a dialogical perspective, where the stories about language that informants in the research setting tell are understood to shape and be shaped by the contexts in which they are told. Systematic analysis of…

Australian research on immigrant languages has paid little attention to interactional approaches to language alternation as identity construction, and sites other than the family and the mainstream school. We argue for the need of studies that take into account a wider range of sites, in particular "community" sites, and adopt…

This paper investigated linguistic practices and choices of Australian children of Indian descent, an under-researched group, who are studying Hindi in primary education. Data was collected using a questionnaire and semi-structured interviews with sixty participants across 3 primary schools in the Sydney area. The findings revealed, as expected,…

Community language schools are complementary schools set up and run by minority communities in Australia. They aim to assist in intergenerational language and identity transmission, but previous research has indicated that these schools position their students in monolingual ways that contradicts how bilingual speakers use their language in…

When linguistic minority parents wish to develop and maintain their children's literacy in heritage languages (HLs), what can they do to help? How and to what extent do the individual contexts of language use and background affect the development and maintenance of HL literacy, compared with the sociocultural context of community? What are the…

This article considers the current debate in Australia into the learning of literacy and foreign languages. It examines not only the literacy levels attained by Australian students in their national language (English) in comparison to these in other countries, as well as between Australian states, but also theories involved in school learning and…

Traces the recent history of the teaching of Australian Aboriginal language in Walgett (New South Wales), and discusses the possible future of this important issue. Until recently, native Australian languages were frowned upon and were not used publicly. Through funding received for several programs beginning in 1996, there has been a dramatic…