This essay uses storytelling as a mode of inquiry to explore how students with languages other than English and with diasporic experiences and identities negotiate a pathway for themselves in a relentlessly Anglophone environment. I share a story that provides a small window into the everyday work of an English teacher in a large, linguistically…

Failure to adequately address language differences between home and school is one of the many ways in which education systems frequently disadvantage Aboriginal students. Children from predominantly Aboriginal English-speaking homes face specific challenges, as the language differences between their home variety and the Standard Australian English…

This article aims to visibilise the opportunities for decolonising standardised language practices for multilingual students learning English as an additional language or dialect (EAL/D) in Australian schools. We suggest that a decolonising approach to language education would value the multilingual, non-standard, and diverse language practices of…

Diglossia is a language situation that does not always take place between two dialects of the same language; speaking two different languages in two different encounters is also considered diglossia. This study examines the use of language among Arabic-speaking Australians in Sydney. After analyzing ten authentic doctor-patient examination…

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…

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…

It came as a surprise to me, after an extensive Google search and reading of numerous policies, that English, and more specifically Standard Australian English, is not the official language of Australia (ACARA, 2016c; Lo Bianco, 1987). There are examples cited by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) (1999) that state, 'English is regarded as…

Texts in Aboriginal English (AE) and creole varieties have been created by Indigenous and non-Indigenous writers for a range of purposes. In this paper, we focus on materials created in and for five educational contexts, and investigate the orthographic or spelling systems developed in each setting. Choices about orthography are guided by…

The language ecologies of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities in Queensland are characterised by widespread language shift to contact language varieties, yet they remain largely invisible in discourses involving Indigenous languages and education. This invisibility--its various causes and its many implications--are explored through a…

As part of the "Bridging the Language Gap" project undertaken with 86 State and Catholic schools across Queensland, the language competencies of Indigenous students have been found to be "invisible" in several key and self-reinforcing ways in school system data. A proliferation of inaccurate, illogical and incomplete data…

There are now significant numbers of children who speak a language other than English when they enter the formal school system in Australia. Many of these children come from a language background that is entirely different from the school language. Many Indigenous children, however, come from creole-speaking backgrounds where their home language…

This volume brings together research carried out in a variety of geographic and linguistic contexts including Africa, Asia, Australia, Canada, the Caribbean, Europe and the United States and explores efforts to incorporate linguistic diversity into education and to "harness" this diversity for learners' benefit. It challenges the largely…

It is probable that the majority of the 455 000 strong Aboriginal population of Australia speak some form of Australian Aboriginal English (AAE) at least some of the time and that it is the first (and only) language of many Aboriginal children. This means their language is somewhere on a continuum ranging from something very close to Standard…

Investigates whether speakers of standard German and Dutch maintain their language variety better than speakers of German and Dutch dialects. Also investigates the phenomenon of diglossia in immigrant societies and shows that the type of diglossia prevalent in the immigrant's home country significantly affects the language situation in the new…

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…