With a focus on Australian Aboriginal students, in this article we argue that translanguaging provides a useful resource for multilingual learners. We point out that although translanguaging is a relatively recent term, in Indigenous Australia is has been used consistently throughout the ages as people from different languages communicated with…

Eight adult Aboriginal people residing in a remote community in the north-west of Australia participated in this research. The data were collected from an 'inside' perspective and, as culturally appropriate, through informal interviews (yarning) and ongoing conversations. These data were recorded as field notes and audio files which were…

The transmission and dissemination of knowledge in Aboriginal societies for the most part occurs orally in an Aboriginal language or in Aboriginal English. However, whilst support is given to speaking skills in Indigenous communities, in our education system less emphasis is given to developing equivalent oral communicative competence in Standard…

Suggests that while language variation is widespread and natural, it is subject to judgment and that where a standard has developed other varieties are judged against the standard. Investigates how teachers judge the speech of school-aged students and what influences that judgment. Results show teachers' perceptions of speech were most strongly…

This study reports on teachers' attitudes towards their students' speech varieties of English. A sample of 172 primary, district high and secondary teachers in Western Australian was surveyed on their attitudes towards language variation and towards their students' use of specific English variants. The teachers were found to have generally…