St Clare’s Day

Language Faculty

Languages

Learning a language has many benefits. For children, it can

improve literacy, maths and science skills. It can enhance social interaction and empathy, and give them an appreciation of cultural diversity. Speaking, listening, reading and writing are integral to everyday life, where language is the primary tool for expression and communication. Studying how people use language – what words and phrases they unconsciously choose and combine – can help students’ better understand themselves and why humans behave the way we do. In fact, research has shown that studying a new language can stimulate the brain and enhance creative thinking and mental agility, regardless of the student’s level of proficiency.

“It can mean you get more flexible in how you think, because you begin to imagine phrasing something in a different way in that other language,” says Bencie Woll, a linguist at University College London. This flexibility and creativity can even improve your grasp of your own native language.

In 2020, the Federal Government pointed to the importance of languages in preparing job ready graduates. University students who study in areas of expected employment growth will pay less for their degree as the Government incentivises students to make more job-relevant decisions about their education.

Senior Language Students

We are in the second year of the new BSSS Modern Languages Course and students have engaged in The Individual and Society and Community units this year. Students have been learning about how relationships and personal experiences shape identity. They explored ways of belonging and reflecting on their own expression of identity through comparing and reflecting on the challenges, concepts and opinions of teenagers about personal interests and relationships in the target language. In the Inquiry task students were

questioning and posing problems

to “Is belonging essential to our sense of identity?” They were asked to use their research to compare and contrast an aspect of the target language’s culture and think flexibly about their own experience of belonging in Australia. In doing this, they

applied past knowledge to new situations.

Year 9 and 10 Students

Students are learning to talk about types of part-time work for young people in France, Italy or Japan, thinking flexibly about what is prioritised in different cultures. The specific conditions for the

type of work that is popular in different cultures, the abilities that teenagers need to have to secure a job and the skills they will learn on the job is the focus of the new grammar and vocabulary. They are applying past knowledge to new situations, using numbers to describe amount of pocket money and what young people spend their money on.

Students are questioning and posing problems about the physical, historical, cultural and artistic beauty in Japan, France, and Italy. They explore the importance of creative arts in the school curriculum and the way in which they reflect the culture and creativity of the country, and its contribution to the world.

Year 8 Students

Cultural festivals, community and school events are the focus for this semester. Students have been looking at the difference between school calendars in Australia and the target language country/s. They have been questioning and posing problems about leisure activities and how different cultures spend their spare time. Students are applying past knowledge to new situations around the significant

role food plays in society and culture. Thinking interdependently and persisting to use their acquired language to invite people to events, and suggest activities and outings.

Year 7 Students

New skills are developing in their second language and they are persisting and thinking interdependently to describe other people, family and friends, and the towns and cities that they live in. Students will be questioning and posing problems about what makes a liveable city and persisting to build confidence

in their skills and knowledge to describe the attractions/amenities towns/suburbs they have in the target language.

Our Language staff are passionate, dedicated linguists, who are always looking to provide engaging and productive lessons to create a multilingual world. Our goal is to continue to provide and receive feedback to improve the teaching and learning in our classrooms.

Interesting facts

• The word “hyperpolyglot”, someone who is both a gifted and massive language accumulator, was coined two decades ago by a British linguist, Richard Hudson, who was launching an Internet search for the world’s greatest language learner. However, the phenomenon and its mystique are ancient. • In Acts 2 of the New

Testament, Christ’s disciples receive the Holy Spirit and can suddenly “speak in tongues” (glōssais lalein, in Greek),

preaching in the languages of “every nation under heaven.” According to Pliny the Elder, the Greco-Persian king Mithridates VI, who ruled twenty-two nations in the first

century B.C., “administered their laws in as many languages, and could harangue in each of them.” Plutarch claimed that Cleopatra

“very seldom had need of an interpreter,” and was the only monarch of her Greek dynasty fluent in Egyptian. • Elizabeth I also allegedly mastered the tongues of her realm—Welsh, Cornish,

Scottish, and Irish, plus six others.

Lisa Bourne

Language Faculty