Language education by region

In most school systems, foreign language is taken in high school, with many schools requiring one to three years of foreign language in order to graduate. In some school systems, foreign language is also taught during middle school, and recently, many elementary schools have begun teaching foreign languages as well. However, foreign language immersion programs are growing in popularity, making it possible for elementary school children to begin serious development of a second language.

In 2008 the Center for Applied Linguistics conducted an extensive survey documenting foreign language study in the United States.[1] The most popular language is Spanish, due to the large number of recent Spanish-speaking immigrants to the United States (see Spanish in the United States). According to this survey, in 2008 88% of language programs in elementary schools taught Spanish, compared to 93% in secondary schools. Other languages taught in U.S. high schools in 2008, in descending order of frequency, were French, German, Latin, Mandarin Chinese, American Sign Language, Italian, and Japanese. During the Cold War, the United States government pushed for Russian education, and some schools still maintain their Russian programs.[2] Other languages recently gaining popularity include Arabic. The Center for Applied Linguistics also conducted a study that concluded that while the number of schools from the elementary to secondary level offering foreign language instruction are on the rise, a pitfall of the curriculum is that students are not becoming proficient in the target languages.[3] Researchers also note that American students of foreign languages significantly underperform in comparison to their European and Asian counterparts. It has been suggested that a system where foreign language instruction is required from PK-12 should be implemented in order to fix this problem.[4]

Prior to European colonisation, there were hundreds of Aboriginal languages, taught in a traditional way. The arrival of a substantial number of Irish in the first English convict ships meant that European Australia was not ever truly monolingual. When the gold rushes of the 1850s trebled the white population, it brought many more Welsh speakers, who had their own language newspapers through to the 1870s, but the absence of language education meant that these Celtic languages never flourished.

Waves of European migration after World War II brought "community languages," sometimes with schools. However, from 1788 until modern times it was generally expected that immigrants would learn English and abandon their first language.[5] The wave of multicultural policies since the 1970s has softened aspects of these attitudes.

In 1982 a bipartisan committee of Australian parliamentarians was appointed and identified a number of guiding principles that would support a National Policy on Languages (NPL). Its trend was towards bilingualism in all Australians, for reasons of fairness, diversity and economics.

In the 1990s the Australian Languages and Literacy Policy (ALLP) was introduced, building on the NPL, with extra attention being given to the economic motivations of second language learning. A distinction became drawn between priority languages and community languages. The ten priority languages identified were Mandarin, French, German, Modern Greek, Indonesian, Japanese, Italian, Korean, Spanish and Aboriginal languages.

However, Australia's federal system meant that the NPL and ALLP direction was really an overall policy from above without much engagement from the states and territories. The NALSAS strategy united Australian Government policy with that of the states and territories. It focused on four targeted languages: Mandarin, Indonesian, Japanese and Korean. This would be integrated into studies of Society and Environment, English and Arts.

By 2000, the top ten languages enrolled in the final high school year were, in descending order: Japanese, French, German, Chinese, Indonesian, Italian, Greek, Vietnamese, Spanish and Arabic. In 2002, only about 10% of Year 12 included at least one language other than English (LOTE) among their course choices. In 2009, Lo Bianco and Slaughter, recommended a new approach, stating that “What is needed is a universal apprenticeship in learning how to learn languages”.[6] An apprenticeship language is a relatively easy language which is taught to overcome the limitations of monolingualism, in preparation for later mastery of a different language or languages.

Reasons to use an apprenticeship language are:

• To make a start when target language teachers are unavailable.
• To master a whole foreign language, for motivation and effective subsequent learning.
• To combat procrastination in the face of diverse priorities in Language education.
• To normalize bilingualism and promote flexibility.
• To model creative problem solving, ethical behaviour and global citizenship.

A resource and method has been devised to implement the ALL approach by equipping generalist primary (elementary) teachers to teach the simple designed language Esperanto as a first, fluent, intercultural, foreign language.[7]

The professional body for teachers of foreign languages in Australia is the Australian Federation of Modern Language Teachers Associations.

Native Cantonese-speaking Hong Kong children commence learning English and maybe also Mandarin from age 3 when they go to kindergarten and continue until they finish their secondary education. The Hong Kong government's language policy is to produce people who are biliterate in English and Written Chinese and trilingual in Cantonese, Mandarin and English. In order to enter university in Hong Kong, students must pass both English and Chinese exams, or in the case of those who did not learn Chinese at school, due to having studied at an international school, another foreign language.

In Key Stage 2 it is compulsory to for all primary schools to teach an ancient and modern language. In Key Stage 3 it is compulsory for all secondary schools to teach a modern language up until Key Stage 4. French, German, and Spanish are commonly taught in all schools. Arabic, Bengali, Mandarin, Greek, Gujarati, Modern Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Panjabi, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Turkish, Urdu are also taught.[8]

Due to the growing dominance of the English language, language education has been noted as lacking. The government plan on transforming language learning and in 2014 introduced a richer language curriculum. Since 2014 all children must be taught compulsory languages from the age of 7.[9]

The syllabus taught in schools highly depends on the state. Most of the states follow a 3 language policy in high schools. Three languages usually include the local language of the state and English as a first and third language and Hindi or Sanskrit as a second language (or recently some other foreign languages like French, German, Italian and in some schools, Arabic). Hindi-speaking states have recently started offering other regional languages in India as a second language. Primary and middle schools mostly only teach two languages, the local language of state and English. In medium and large cities, most private schools use English as the medium of instruction.