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Part of
Plurilingual Education: Policies – practices – language development
Edited by Patrick Grommes and Adelheid Hu
[Hamburg Studies on Linguistic Diversity 3] 2014
► pp. 55–74

Australian Language Policy and the design of a national curriculum for languages

| Macquarie University

Australia’s efforts at valuing its multilingualism through the development of national language policy have been acclaimed by international scholars on bilingualism, but all is not well with Australia’s state as a multilingual society. A significant proportion of the population is bi- or multilingual, but this is not the norm, which is particularly obvious in the education sector where Australia-wide less than 15% of students in year 12, the final year of schooling, take a language other than English. In 2011, a national language curriculum Shape of the Australian Curriculum: Languages was drafted, which is discussed in this contribution against the background of Australian language policy and with a particular focus on the distinction between different pathways of language learning.

Published online: 15 July 2014
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/hsld.3.05mol
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