Australian Review of Applied Linguistics - Volume 28, Issue 2, 2005

The Indigenous languages of southeast Australia have often been written off as a hopeless cause in current debates about language revitalization. In this paper we question this pessimism and report on some of the progress that has been made in recent years. It will be shown that revitalization is not only possible but contributes to the strength of identity of Indigenous people and to a heightened awareness for other Australians. We consider the role of education in this process and conclude with some thoughts on the appropriate contribution of the academy.

Bilinguals sometimes report on difficulties in finding words while speaking in the first language (L1) or the second language (L2), which is frequently attributed to the negative influence of one language onto the other. This paper addresses this issue by investigating the relationship between L1 and L2 vocabulary knowledge of Korean-English bilinguals who have been exposed to an L2 learning environment since the age of 12 years. Their vocabulary knowledge in L1 and L2 is measured by using a standardised vocabulary test in each language and their L1 vocabulary measures are compared with that of 12 year old Korean monolinguals. The findings show that there is a significant positive correlation between the scores from the L1 and L2 vocabulary tests among the participants. The findings suggest (1) that L1 vocabulary learning continues in the L2 learning environment, and (2) that the extent of the vocabulary knowledge in one language is the good predictor of the other, highlighting the positive role of L1 vocabulary knowledge in L2 learning. Implications for the support for L1 development of young immigrants are also discussed.

Australia’s language-in-education policy documents have consistently included references to the place of ‘culture’ in language teaching. This paper seeks to examine how the major national policies conceptualise culture and interculturality in relation to languages education. For each policy, this study will analyse the language focus, the conceptualisation of the relationship between language and culture, the contexts in which the policy envisages cultural knowledge will be relevant, and the overall educative vision for language and culture learning. From these analyses it can be seen that successive policy documents have shifted the domain and purpose of interculturality and have constructed views of interculturality that are increasingly instrumentaly focused. The policies show a transformation from a humanistically focused construction of education and a view of languages as relevant to diversity, to an economically focused construction of education and a view of languages as capital for economic deployment. At the same time, they have preserved a largely static, information-focused construction of culture which is not consistent with the user-oriented policy goals.

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 schools was surveyed on their attitudes towards language variation and towards their students’ use of specific English variants. The teachers were found to have generally conservative attitudes, particularly with regard to their students’ use of non-standard features. These features were also associated with falling language standards. The impact of the teacher background factors of gender, age, level of teaching qualification, teaching experience and professional development on attitudes was also considered. However, only teacher qualifications and length of experience were found to be significant and this influence was restricted to attitudes towards language varieties. Such findings have important implications for speakers of non-standard sociolects who would tend to use these features more often. It is of particular concern where teachers associate the use of non-standard varieties with lower academic ability as has been found in other research. The findings suggest that teachers need to understand the relationships between standard and non-standard varieties, written and spoken forms, formal and informal registers, and developmental and non-standard features.

For airline pilots, the call of ‘checklist complete’ is officially prescribed talk to claim that the crew’s joint conduct of a checklist is over, and the task can be understood as closed. However, very often this call is not the final talk for the task. This paper1 uses naturally occurring data, transcriptions of pilots interacting on actual passenger flights, to show that the recipient pilot commonly says something in response. That pilot might say thank you or okay. These two non-official responses do interactional work. They allow the other pilot to know that the call of ‘checklist complete’ was itself heard, and that there is now a shared crew understanding that the checklist is closed. Such an understanding is critical in the airline cockpit where it is crucial to perform tasks in strict sequential order. Thank you and okay are evidence of pilots’ orientation to their work as a progression through a series of tasks, and where there is value in making salient that one task is closed and it is legitimate to move to a next task. The paper examines how officially scripted talk for work is actually realised in situ.