Aboriginal English, the language many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students bring to the classroom, represents the introduction of significant change into the English language. It is the argument of this paper that the linguistic, social and cultural facts associated with the distinctiveness of Aboriginal English need to be taken into…

Despite their (albeit limited) access to Standard Australian English through education, Australian Indigenous communities have maintained their own dialect (Aboriginal English) for intragroup communication and are increasingly using it as a medium of cultural expression in the wider community. Most linguists agree that the most significant early…

A widely-observed postcolonial phenomenon is the indigenization of English by communities into which it was formerly involuntarily introduced. When this takes place, the community which has appropriated English to serve its own purposes regards the language as their own. The question of the ownership of English has been extensively discussed by…

Aboriginal English has been documented in widely separated parts of Australia and, despite some stylistic and regional variation, is remarkably consistent across the continent, and provides a vehicle for the common expression of Aboriginal identity. There is, however, some indeterminacy in the way in which the term is used in much academic and…

Although English is widely used by Indigenous Australians as the main means of communication, national testing has consistently raised questions as to the level of their English language and literacy achievement. This article examines contextual factors (historical, linguistic, cultural, socio-political and educational) which underlie this…

The study reported in this paper explored the schemas that Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal educators bring to the task of comprehending oral narratives produced by Aboriginal children. During each data collection session, a participant listened to a series of eight passages and tried to recall each passage immediately after listening. The…

This research examined how Aboriginal speakers of English in Western Australia used genre in discourse, noting that the genre approach in most Australian schools has tended to ignore out-of-classroom performance and concentrate on changing behaviors rapidly through classroom instruction. Researchers analyzed 200 oral narratives produced by…

This paper examines factors impacting the acquisition and use of the standard dialect by Australia's Aboriginal youth. It explains that acquisition of a second dialect has implications for the learner's cognitive-affective and sociocultural life and argues that preservation of an "insider" perspective (related to identity) is a key…

Learning a second dialect entails learning new schemas, and in some cases learning a whole new set of language schemas as well as cultural schemas. Most Australian Aboriginal children live in a bicultural and bidialectal context. They are exposed, to a greater or lesser extent, to the discourse of Australian English and internalise some of its…

Learning a second dialect entails learning new schemas. Most Australian Aboriginal children live in a bicultural, bidialectal context and are exposed to the discourse of Australian English, so they internalize some of its schemas but may not be able to use its schemas effectively or distinguish them from Aboriginal English schemas. Analysis of the…

Presents an analysis of five first-person oral narratives of Aboriginal children of Western Australia recorded outside the classroom. These narratives are compared with a first-person oral narrative of a non-Aboriginal child and with teacher-led interactions in the classes of which the Aboriginal children are members. (26 references) (Author/CK)

Activities at Edith Cowan University (Australia) in support of the maintenance of Aboriginal languages and Aboriginal English are discussed. Discussion begins with an examination of the concept of language maintenance and the reasons it merits the attention of linguists, language planners, and language teachers. Australian policy concerning…

This paper discusses Aboriginal English speakers in Australia, noting the importance of recognizing prior learning and of recognizing Aboriginal English within the context of programs that understand the particular areas where Aboriginal English speakers need support to achieve outcomes in standard English. It defines recognition of prior learning…

A program at Edith Cowan University (Australia) to develop a teacher training curriculum supporting bidialectalism in the schools is described. Underlying principles of this approach to bidialectal education are the acceptance of Aboriginal English, creation of a bridge to standard English, and cultivation of Aboriginal ways of approaching…

A study investigated the role of the Aboriginal Student Enclave, one of five campuses of Edith Cowan University (Australia) as a discourse community. The relatively small but cohesive university subcommunity is designed to provide additional support for Aboriginal students enrolled in standard programs and an environment in which the students are…