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In the last forty years, indigenous communities’ social and economic environments have been through particularly disruptive changes (Connell, 2016), consequently the indigenous children are required to learn values and practices of their communities at the same time of learning skills, especially literacy and language skills, needed for educational success (Rose, 1999). However, the continuous well lower high school completion rate and several times higher unemployment rate of indigenous people in the historical statistics (ABS, 2017) both prove that to help indigenous students develop their educational language is an on-going and important inclusive practice we need to consider. Many schools lack English literacy development or used ineffective models of language pedagogy in indigenous education, therefore a visible progressivist English pedagogy for indigenous children was introduced in Rose’s article (1999).

The pedagogy contains three steps:

The first step is to employs interaction in direct joint experience (Rose, 1999), such as bringing horses into the PE class, measuring and analysing indigenous instruments in physics class or mathematics class, hatching eggs in biology class and bringing indigenous elders to tell stories in humanity class (Barton & Barton, 2017). Based on and Vygotsky’s social psychology of learning and scaffolding, the curriculum start with the literacy they are familiar with so they can learn from this point. On the other hand, these practical actions can eliminate barriers between indigenous communities and contemporary course then include indigenous students in or let them lead the classroom.

The second step is still goal oriented towards a sociocultural performance in the familiar context but lies beyond the learner’s current literacy level which the learner still has the ability to predict meanings (Rose, 1999). This step includes both listening and reading. Once they can speak or read the text fluently, teachers need to help them focus on its lexicogrammatical features and the spelling patterns of words in the text, and processing them in terms of visual patterns (Rose, 1999). Not only the English teacher but all subject teachers should explain sentences of concept and subject-related vocabularies with lexicogrammatical features and spelling patterns in the context, so indigenous students will better understand these terms and develop their literacy skills.

The last step is interactive learning activities and reconstructed writing, which asks students to produce an approximate reproduction of a cultural product with product from adult as guide. Indigenous students will be more cordial with writing about activities they regularly experienced and prefer to be supported by elders or peers on the reproduction (Rose, 1999). This requires teachers to be familiar with the local indigenous community thus they can assign cultural tasks and indigenous family can support their children as well.

As we have in the theme, same as immigrants’ parents, indigenous parents have the same language and culture barriers. With inefficient communication with Indigenous parents about modern culture and life style, they would value more on their cultural contexts and wish their kids competent in them instead (Rose, 1999). Therefore inclusive practice that involves indigenous parents into the local modern community is one of the key actions to support students’ learning of literacy. We need indigenous young people acquire higher literacy to reach modern society, culture, technology and life style.

Reference

Australian Bureau of Statistics. (2017). LABOUR FORCE CHARACTERISTICS & EDUCATION. Retrieved fromhttp://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Lookup/by%20Subject/4714.0~2014-15~Main%20Features~Labour%20force%20characteristics~6 on 11th October 2017.

Barton, G., & Barton, R. (2017). The importance of storytelling as a pedagogical tool for indigenous children. Narratives in Early Childhood Education: Communication, Sense Making and Lived Experience, 45.

Connell, J. (2016). Rural change in Australia: population, economy, environment. Routledge.

Rose, D. (1999). Culture, Competence and Schooling: approaches to literacy teaching in Indigenous school education. Pedagogy and the shaping of consciousness: Linguistic and social processes, 217-245.

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Recent years, more and more international students from foreign countries go abroad to study overseas. Australia is one of the hottest places where they choose to get a higher education ("International students in Australia | Study in Australia", 2017). This globalization of education can be a double-edged sword (Spring, 2014). On the one hand, it promotes the economy of Australia, and some talented students can be cultivated to make contributions to the community in the future. Those international students generate immeasurable benefits and revenue to Australia. On the other hand, research suggests that most of the international student find it is challenging to be assimilated into the local community and the most common reason they give is the language and literacy problems (Spring, 2014). The chosen article talks about the language and literacy challenges that are faced by a special group of people: International students (The international students that the article focuses on is ESL students) in Australia. It is undeniable that international students should be valued and treated like the other millions of local students (Mukherjee, 2017). Therefore, the article puts effort to change the current situation of international students. It puts forward that the main cause of the issue is the effect of prior learning experiences. The previous education of those internationals students in their home countries is not matched with the learning experience and learning environment in Australia (Sawir, 2005). This gap attributes to many aspects. The article elaborates them one by one and comes up with the intervention for each aspect of the main issue.

1.    The prior learning experiences of international students have emphasized reading and writing skills more than listening and speaking skills. According to the finding by this article, many countries totally ignore students speaking and conversation skills. For example, students in Japan and China do not need to speak even one word to pass their English exam (Sawir, 2005). For this situation, the article promotes that schools should add examinations of speaking skills to enhance the stats of speaking in language learning.

2.    The article grasps the feedback from twelve international students from several countries, and those students said they did not have enough chance to speak English both in their home countries and in Australia. The methods that the article offers is that teachers should design more classroom activities related to conservation skills and the government should launch more programs to help international students (Sawir, 2005). From these activities and programs, students can talk with each other, practice their speaking skills and be braver in talk with others in English. Moreover, the activities and programs should relate to the real situation and foreign cultures. Hence, students can adapt to the foreign environment in advance (BABA & HOSODA, 2014).

3.    The international students accustomed to a main pedagogical style of didactic (one-way) and teacher-centered classroom environment. This education pedagogical is exactly what their home countries conduct in school. The classroom practices that teachers design tend to shape students’ belief of emphasizing the grammar and it is going to be a stereotype of students to study in a formalist way. Therefore, the article suggests that the school should enhance the competency of their faculty so that teachers can innovate their teaching methods (Sawir, 2005). For example, teachers can design their lesson in a multi-mode class routine (Dong, 2009), substitute the explanation of grammar with doing speaking practice, and give students opportunities to speak out their thinking. In literature, learners should be leaded in exploring their thinking, trained with correct belief, given more opportunities in voice, and able to interact with their teachers (Tudor, 1996) (two-way).

BABA, Y., & HOSODA, M. (2014). HOME AWAY HOME: BETTER UNDERSTANDING OF THE ROLE OF SOCIAL SUPPORT IN PREDICTING CROSS-CULTURAL ADJUSTMENT AMONG INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS. College Student Journal, 48(1), 1-15.

Dong, P. (2009). Identity and style in intercultural institutional interaction : a multi-modal analysis of supervision sessions between British academics and Chinese students.

International students in Australia | Study in Australia. (2017). Studies in Australia. Retrieved 30 April 2017, from https://www.studiesinaustralia.com/studying-in-australia/why-study-in-australia/international-students-in-australia

Mukherjee, M. (2017). Educating the Heart and the Mind: Conceptualizing inclusive pedagogy for sustainable development. Educational Philosophy & Theory, 49(5), 531-549. doi:10.1080/00131857.2016.1185002

Tudor, I. (1996). Learner-centredness as language education. Cambridge ; New York, NY : Cambridge University Press, 1996.

Sawir, E. (2005). Language Difficulties of International Students in Australia: The Effects of Prior Learning Experience. International Education Journal, 6(5), 567-580.

Spring, J. (2014).Globalization of Education. [electronic resource] : An Introduction. Hoboken : Taylor and Francis, 2014.

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Refugees are differentiated from many other low SES immigrants due to their special and urgent needs in language and literacy development. The differentiation comes from, as mentioned in the introduction, their severe sufferings of interrupted schooling or little or no experience of school education (Refugee Council of Australia, 2011). Lacking schooling causes deficits in their first language print literacy, which seriously constrains the acquisition of an additional language (Garcia, 2000). It also has crucial implications for their level of engagement in school curriculum, with literacy competence being the foundation of content processing across a wide range of subjects (Wood, 2009). While support is needed for first time learning literacy, it would not be earned from the typical ESL training (6 to 12 months of intensive English instruction) that has been set for a different focus and fails to consider the educational background of recent refugee arrivals (Miller, Mitchell & Brown, 2005; Wood, 2009). This calls for an attention shift from the traditional practice to teaching and learning approaches introduced by schools that encourage the students’ adaption to higher education. In response, one high school that has high recognition of literacy competence issue has used primers well below the age and targeted on building phonetic skills. While the intervention has the best intentions supporting refugee learners, skills acquired contribute little to their application of literacy in mainstream classrooms (Wood, 2009). This indicates that, in any model designed to provide socially just education for this particular group, access to ‘effective’ teaching and learning of language and literacy have to a priority (ibid, 2009).

In the paper titled “Approaches to teaching low literacy refugee-background students”, Miller and Windle (2012) have demonstrated from the survey that teachers of low literacy refugee-background (LLRB) students in Victoria are following literacy approaches that ‘have not been designed with LLRB students in mind’. The responses showed clear proneness to teacher-centred instructions, and questioning and discussions over scaffolding through written resources. While the practices resonate with the suggestions on extensively implementing discussion in literacy education (Gibbon, 2009), the questions are mostly closed and the sequences are limited in the amount of student input. Windle and Miller (2012) have adopted the interpretation of literacy for LLRB learners as the ability to ‘take part fluently, effectively and critically, in the various text- and discourse-based events that characterise contemporary semiotic societies and economies’ (Freebody & Luke, 2003). Based on which, therefore, the former strategies need to be polished up, and new tactics shall be inserted to level up the involvement and active participation of all students.

Further in the paper, additional advice on various stages of language and literacy development of LLRB learners has been listed. Successfully motivating students requires teachers to make the language and content more meaningful to them, and this can be done by fostering a learning environment in which their cultural knowledge is recognised, understood and respected. Teachers then could engage students’ existing understanding through discussions on multimodal presentations and experiences sharing (Pass & Mantero, 2009; Schifini, 1994), showing appreciation to LLRB learners’ highly oral cultural characteristics. Language learning is heavily dependent on the ‘guided co-construction of knowledge’, thus student discussion should be encouraged in diverse organisational structures such as pair and team collaboration (Gibbons, 2009). In this way, they are also given opportunities to build up social capital (Wood, 2009). Teachers should not ignore the basic skills (e.g. handwriting), and should provide booklets that contain glossaries, models and other materials for repeated practice and recycling. When selecting textual and non-textual resources, teachers should prioritise those that have connections to the ‘lived experience and immediate needs’ of LLRB students (e.g. Australian culture; Workplace education). In particular, the paper highlights the need to teach western conventions of visual literacy to LLRB learners. This has derived from a successful case where LLRB boys were engaged to narrate their stories through documentary film, with elaborative linguistic instructions (Hewson, 2006).

Reference:

Brown, J., Miller, J., & Mitchell, J. (2006). Interrupted schooling and the acquisition of literacy: Experiences of Sudanese refugees in Victorian secondary schools. Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, 29(2), 150–162.

Garcia, G. (2000). Lessons from research: What is the length of time it takes limited English

proficient students to acquire English and succeed in an all-English classroom. Washington DC: National Clearinghouse for Bilingual Education.

Gibbons, P. (2009). English learners, academic literacy, and thinking: Learning in the challenge zone. Portsmouth, NH: Heinnemann.

Hewson, S. M. (2006). Inside out: Boys' voices: Identity and refugee students in a secondary school.

Luke, A., & Freebody, P. (2003). Literacy as engaging with new forms of life: The four roles model. In The literacy lexicon. Prentice Hall.

Miller, J., Mitchell, J., & Brown, J. (2005). African refugees with interrupted schooling in the high school mainstream: Dilemmas for teachers.

Pass, C., & Mantero, M. (2009). (Un)covering the ideal: Investigating exemplary language arts teachers’ beliefs and instruction of English language learners. Critical Inquiry in Language Studies, 6(4), 269–291.

Refugee Council of Australia. (2011). Australia’s Refugee and Humanitarian Program 2011–12: Refugee Council of Australia.

Schifini, A. (1994). Language, literacy, and content instruction: Strategies for teachers. Kids come in all languages: Reading instruction for ESL students, 158-179.

Windle, J., & Miller, J. (2012). Approaches to teaching low literacy refugee-background students. Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, The, 35(3), 317.

Woods, A. (2009). Learning to be literate: Issues of pedagogy for recently arrived refugee youth in Australia. Critical Inquiry in Language Studies, 6(1-2), 81-101.

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In the past decade, the dramatic development of digital technologies has significant shaped teaching and learning strategies. Following this trend, educators gradually increase their use of digital resources to enrich children’s learning experience. At the same time, vocabulary acquisition plays a fundamental role in learning of both English language and subject literacy, and it is usually highly problematic for indigenous and international students. Thus, an online-based learning resource, Language Perfect, can be utilised to rise a modern way of language and literacy learning practices.

Language Perfect is one of the major subject-based platform designed by Education Perfect (2017). Besides second language learning, it offers numerous learning resources to support students’ vocabulary retention and active engagement across a wide range of subjects such as Economics, English as Additional Language (EAL), Geography and History. Moreover, since it can be run on various electronic devices including PC, laptops, smartphone and tablets, students have mobile accesses in both indoor or outdoor environments at any time. In this way, students can develop their language and literacy skills not only in classes but also in their free time, especially for new students or absent students.

One of the advantage of Language Perfect is its capacity to create customised modules to meet the clear curriculum-based purpose. Teachers can customise their own subject terminology list from relevant chapters to suit their literacy teaching goals. Unlike traditional pen-and-pater approaches, it enriches students’ vocabulary learning experience in both aural and visual ways, and research indicates that there is a continuous increase in vocabulary retention for students who have online accesses to customised vocabulary (Absalom, 2015). On bases of equality, catch-up or extended resources are provided to benefit the high diversity of language competence among indigenous and international students. Most importantly, individualised learning enables each student to take control of their learning journey at their own pace. It therefore provides a flexible learning environment to cater the need of individuals with different ability levels (Foreman, 2017).

Throughout various learning activities, teachers can monitor student learning progress by setting homework tasks, target individual weaknesses with the support of student reports and propose vocabulary tests by using its assessment tool. For teachers’ convenience, the official website also provides Getting Started Videos to demonstrate how to use all different features of the platform. In addition, Vicars’ research (2013) emphasises that teachers must achieve a more inclusion of student motivation and involvement in pedagogies of literacy learning. Language Perfect raises student motivation and enthusiasm by offering in-class, in-school, national and world-wide competitions and the end of class fun. It is evidenced by Absalom’s research (2015) that most students learned with the support of Language Perfect showed keen interests to continuously utilise this online platform to learn vocabulary.

With increasing features of the programme, Language Perfect is an effective program to encourage students to learn English language and subject-based terminologies in an involving and enjoyable technology-supported way. Most importantly, there is a positive effect on increasing indigenous and international students’ explicit focus on vocabulary learning via Language Perfect, and therefore, it meets the greatest challenge in relation to the development of language and literacy competences.

References

Absalom, M. (2015). Perfecting language: experimenting with vocabulary learning. Babel (00053503), 49(3), 37-43.

Education Perfect (2017). Retrieved from http://worldseries.educationperfect.com.

Foreman, P. (2017). Introducing Inclusion in Education. In P. Foreman & M. Arthur-Kelly (Eds.), Inclusion in action (5th ed., pp. 2-49). South Melbourne: Cengage.

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Yvonne Foley speaking at The Bell Foundation Launch of an EAL research report , 'Policy, Pedagogy and Pupil Perceptions: EAL in Scotland and England', conducted by Edinburgh and Reading Universities. Recorded at The British Council, London.

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Group member:

Xiaoyi Bao

Fangyu Liu

Chuping Liu

Zhaoyi Su

Xinyi Wan

Yusheng Wang

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Language and literacy education is the foundation of learning cycle (Lover, Baker & Quinn, 2008). Any independent individual who can comprehend texts thoroughly, speak fluently, read regularly and write clearly widen their experiences to the whole world. According to Ofulue (2011), language and literacy skills are essential for anyone in contemporary society. There is strong relationship between individuals' aspect of literacy and their material affluence (Freebody, 2007).

There is no doubt to say that language and literacy practices changed significantly since the society and technology changed dramatically in the past decade. Although literacy has always been regarded as a pile of cultural and communicative practices which shared among groups or communities, multimodal resources do influence a literate person simultaneously. Contemporarily, a literate person should grasp various literacies, ranging from reading news online to participating into virtual reality classroom. Language and literacy education now is a maverick concept instead of limiting in a single area.

As teachers, these changes brought us significant challenges at the same time. Language and literacy practices are now permeated in wider communities and new communication practices (Vicars, 2013). We need to pay our serious attention to these modern literacy practices. Here are several quick questions: 1. Do our students read newspaper anymore? If not, how could they get new information? 2. What's the way of our students sending message? How they communicate after school?

By recognizing and learning the pattern of how literacy is structured through and how students perform their literacies within the complex social world, we should be able to respond to their literacy behaviours among young people. Language and literacy is no longer a set of single skills to be taught, it is plural and student-centred. It is paramount that teachers adopt student-centred pedagogies to involve various learners in order to cater different learning needs. The skill of teaching context-dependent literacies is what a contemporary teacher should possess.

In the Australia context, Aboriginal people and immigrants are two vital parts of the total population. In terms of the indigenous people, including both students and parents, teachers are facing bigger challenges than ever before. More and more young generation of indigenous people are taking schooling than before, however, their parents may have language and literacy barriers between themselves and the school (Demie, 2013). Therefore, it is essential that teachers translate and interpret school relevant information to them. Although this practise is regarding as essential, it does pose significantly challenges for teachers. Teachers should receive proper training programs in order to use provide the translation and interpretation services. In terms of immigrants, it is true that low-literate immigrants have limited second language skills. It is even more so for immigrants who have never been to school (Wrigley, 2013). Teachers are facing the challenge to assist those who have to acquire literacy in a second language faced by immigrants who move from their home country to Australia.

Language and literacy challenges are becoming prominent gradually in contemporary society. Therefore, we, as teachers should adopt multi-resources to respond these challenges.

Reference:

Demie, F. (2013). English as an additional language pupils: how long does it take to acquire English fluency? Language and Education, 27(1), 59-69. doi:10.1080/09500782.2012.682580

Freebody, P. (2007). Literacy education in school: Research perspectives from the past, for the future. Australian Council for Education. ACER Press.

Love. K, Baker. G, Quinn, M. (2008). LASS: Literacy Across the School Subjects.

Ofulue, C. I. (2011). Literacy at a distance in multilingual contexts: Issues and challenges. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 12(6) Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com.ezp.lib.unimelb.edu.au/docview/1634475786?accountid=12372

Vicars, M. (2013). Literacy: Who needs books? They're not 'Kewl'. Engaging the disengaged, pp. 129-140. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Wrigley, H. S. (2013). New to literacy: Challenges facing immigrants with minimal prior schooling. Perspectives on Language and Literacy, 39(2), 31-35. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com.ezp.lib.unimelb.edu.au/docview/1439533122?accountid=12372

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In conclusion, language and literacy education is vitally important to every individual member in the contemporary society. As the society and technology have changed dramatically over the last decade with respect to the components of population and as well as social and economic environments, language and literacy practices have changed greatly which brought significant challenges to teachers, especially in terms of international students, Indigenous students and refugee student groups. For example, the challenges resulted from mismatched prior learning experiences for international students. However, teachers can adopt the strategies mentioned above to promote language and literacy development of students. In this way, international students, Indigenous students and refugee students are able to meet their immediate needs in schooling including engaging their understanding in the curriculum content and building up social capital (Wood, 2009). Furthermore, obtaining a high level of literacy can improve many factors in students’ life in the future, including increasing their employability which ensures a better chance to succeed in their future everyday life (Hull,1997). In addition, the development of language and literacy skills help to empower them and enable them to become more informed citizens (Snow, 1991) which is crucial to address the problems in relation to the building of a more sustainable and just society. It helps to increase social inclusion and citizen participation (Fletcher-Campbell, Reid, & Soler, 2009). Encouraging all young Australians to become informed and active citizens is also a central goal of education in Australia (Dawkins, 2008).

Reference

Dawkins, P. (2008). Melbourne declaration on educational goals for young australians. Melbourne: Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs.

Fletcher-Campbell, F., Reid, G., & Soler, J. (Eds.). (2009). Understanding difficulties in literacy development: issues and concepts. Sage.

Hull, G. (Ed.). (1997). Changing work, changing workers: Critical perspectives on language, literacy, and skills. SUNY Press.

Snow, C. E. (1991). The theoretical basis for relationships between language and literacy in development. Journal of Research in Childhood Education, 6(1), 5-10.