Melbourne's linguistic and cultural diversity has continually changed in response to global economic forces and shifting patterns of war and conflict. Immigrant and refugee communities have arrived with different skills, educational and professional profiles, and cultural and religious values. The ecological niches of three contrasting linguistic…

This book is a timely comparison of the divergent worlds of policy implementation and policy ambition, the messy, often contradictory here-and-now reality of languages in schools and the sharp-edged, shiny, future-oriented representation of languages in policy. Two deep rooted tendencies in Australian political and social life, multiculturalism…

This paper describes a research project designed to find out what happens when process drama strategies are applied to an advanced level of additional language learning. In order to answer this question, the author designed and facilitated six process drama workshops as part of a third-year course of Italian at a university in Brisbane, Australia.…

This paper illustrates research on the effects of "process drama" to enhance intercultural awareness for learners of Italian as an Additional Language. To validate the potential synergy between "process drama" and intercultural language learning, I created six "process dramas" to explore some contemporary Italian…

This article reports on an inter-generational inter-cultural pilot project carried out in suburban Melbourne which supports the second-language acquisition of younger people and enhances the social inclusion of older people of migrant background. The article begins with an outline of the multilingual context in which the project is based. The…

This study presents an insight into content and language integrated learning (CLIL) practices in the Australian state of Queensland. The article comprises four main sections. The first section outlines the context of CLIL in Australia and Queensland; there follows a brief review of the literature on stakeholders in CLIL programmes, such as…

In this paper we consider what happens at the "teaching-learning interface" in some Indonesian and Italian examples of classroom interactions within an intercultural orientation to languages teaching and learning. Using activities from textbooks as a starting point, we identify the underlying linguistic, cultural, and intercultural…

The use of reflective tasks, such as journals, as a means to enhance learning is not uncommon in higher education. However, the formative value of reflective tasks is not easily reconciled in tertiary settings where assessment requirements traditionally favour product over process. While learner perception and resolution of this tension have…

Kindergarten in Victoria, Australia is the preschool year, attended by children who are four going on five, and who will go onto primary school the following year. These are part-time programs, run over a small number of sessions per week, typically for 3-5 hours per session for 10-12 hours per week. North West Brunswick Kindergarten, in the…

The Assessment of Language Competence (ALC) certificates is an annual, international testing program developed by the Australian Council for Educational Research to test the listening and reading comprehension skills of lower to middle year levels of secondary school. The tests are developed for three levels in French, German, Italian and…

This paper considers the design and development of CALL materials with the aim of achieving an optimal mix between in-class and out-of-class learning in the context of teaching Italian at an Australian university. The authors discuss three projects in relation to the following themes: (a) conceptions of the in-class/out-of-class relationship, (b)…

This article seeks to explore how various language policies may have impacted Year 12 language candidature in Victoria. Australian Federal and Victorian State Government language policies are but one of the influences yet, it may be argued, the most significant influence. These stand alongside waves of immigration, global events and conflicts, and…

A team of university Italian teachers at an Australian university has been able to obtain enduring benefits from computer-assisted language learning (CALL), through projects that last, and indeed grow and develop over time. The projects have focused on supporting students in effective use of out-of-class time once they reach an intermediate level…

In this paper, we describe an initial exploratory study designed to compare the outcomes of online listening and online text-based tasks in the context of the study of Italian at The University of Melbourne. Our findings allow us to characterise online listening and online reading as a qualitative difference between deep and surface approaches to…

This article discusses an experiment in sending regular Short Message Service (SMS) messages to support language learning, and vocabulary learning in particular, at beginners' level in Italian at an Australian university. The approach we took built on the initiatives of Thornton and Houser (2005) and Dias (2002b), and was informed by the results…