Talking together: how language documentation and teaching practice support oral language development in bilingual education programs

ABSTRACT

When an endangered or minority language is spoken by children and taught in schools, both oral and literacy skills are crucial for continued language maintenance. In school settings, literacy skills are often prioritised to support the transition to second language literacy, and rich oral language development is overlooked. This paper presents a transdisciplinary collaboration between a language researcher, curriculum support staff and educators in Warlpiri schools, designed to address this. In the project, language documentation research was re-purposed to support professional learning for oral first language development. Educators increased their metalinguistic knowledge and understandings of children's oral language development. They planned programs to meet the learning needs identified from children’s data and mapped these to curriculum documents. They enhanced their capacity to develop the Warlpiri language skills of their students and promote children’s bilingual, and potentially biliterate, language development. The process and practice described are transferable to other minority, Indigenous and endangered language teaching and learning contexts.

KEYWORDS:

• Maintenance bilingual education
• teacher professional learning
• Warlpiri
• language documentation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Video reports on YouTube:

For Lajamanu visit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nVry7Q_QG8

For Willowra visit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RQi1xrg8lw

For Nyirrpi visit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_vrI2HhqpJ0

For Yuendumu visit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lh0dtH1Ugws.

2 In Warlpiri, lengthened vowels are used to mean that the action took place over a long time or long distance. Yanu-u-u-u means ‘went for a long time’.

3 In Warlpiri, most of the grammatical functions are indicated through word-endings (suffixes). In English many of these would be shown through prepositions. Elements in italics are from Warlpiri. Reported here are -jangka ‘from’, yanirlipa ‘we’ll go’, nyinirlipa ‘we’ll sit’, -ngku, a suffix that shows who is performing an action.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Samantha Disbray

Samantha Disbray is a Research Fellow at the University of Queensland specialising in languages education. She has written extensively on bilingual education, curriculum development for Indigenous languages, effective education models for remote Indigenous learners and languages policy and practice in Australia. She has documented also Warumungu language and language development among Warumungu children, investigating their development of both traditional and contact languages remote in Central Australia.

Carmel O’Shannessy

Carmel O’Shannessy is Senior Lecturer in the School of Literature, Languages and Linguistics at the Australian National University. Her research examines aspects of Australian Indigenous languages, in the areas of language contact and acquisition. She documents the emergence of Light Warlpiri, a new Australian mixed language, and children's development of Light Warlpiri and Warlpiri. She has been involved with languages and education in remote Indigenous communities in Australia since 1996, in the areas of bilingual education and her current research.

Gretel MacDonald

Gretel Macdonald is a linguist that has been working with Warlpiri Schools for the past five years. In her work with Warlpiri educators, she supports the ongoing development of the local language and culture curriculum, namely the Warlpiri Knowledge Cycle. She also works with Warlpiri literacy workers at the Bilingual Resource Development Unit to produce resources such as books and posters that support the maintenance of Warlpiri through teaching and learning in the school context.

Barbara Martin

Barbara Napanangka Martin is a highly experienced and passionate Warlpiri educator and leader, who has been involved in schools in both Yuendumu and Lajamanu over the past thirty years as a teacher and literacy worker. She qualified as a teacher in the early 2000s. Over the years Barbara has been heavily involved in developing the Warlpiri Knowledge Cycle, which is a unique local language and culture curriculum and has also published about this curriculum. Currently she is working at the Bilingual Resources Development Unit at Yuendumu School as a senior literacy worker and a mentor to young assistant teachers. She is also a committee member of the Warlpiri Education and Training Trust (WETT), which supports education across all sectors of Warlpiri communities from the early years, through to adult learning.