According to the 2011 Census, the number of Australians who speak only English is gradually falling and those who say they speak two languages 'very well' is on the rise.
But proponents of bilingualism argue that too much emphasis is placed on English proficiency in multicultural Australia and while some competence in English is important, it shouldn't be at the expense of other languages.Deputy chair of the Ethnic Communities' Council of Victoria, Marion Lau, says having a second language is hugely beneficial if you want to do business with the rest of the world.
She believes Australia is characterised by monolingual thinking, from the government level down.
"Most of the decision-makers and policy-makers are people who are from a monolingual background. I think given that the world is becoming so globalised, we need to take advantage of all opportunities to be communicating with people from different parts of the world," she says.
Victoria-Gras, a researcher at the Department of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics at Monash University in Melbourne says that despite multiculturalism, Australia isn't supportive enough of languages other than English.
"It's a problem for the actual immigrants who come here, which is what the country has been built with," she says. "They sense this message that they actually have to forget about their language. But it's also a problem for the monolingual Australian who wants to learn a language because it's seen as something that it's very difficult to achieve."
Professor of Language and Literacy Education at the University of Melbourne, Joe Lo Bianco, says English-language speakers are seen as dominant and successful, making maintenance of other languages less of a priority.
"The problem is that knowledge of English is ranked higher than knowledge of any other languages and that immigrant children and new arrivals in general make a big effort to learn English," he says.
"And because English is a very important world language, many Australians don't quite make enough effort to learn other languages so the overall effect of these tendencies is to rank English much higher than other languages in social power and that tends to make language maintenance weaker."
The federal government provides 510 hours of free English language classes to newly-arrived migrants and refugees through Adult Multicultural Educational Services (AMES).
A recent client survey by AMES found that just over half rated "learning English" would be the most important thing to successfully settle in Australia, eventually.
However, the biggest immediate worry for most was "finding a job".
"You know, it's not really the right time really, for them to devote themselves intensively to language study, so there are people who fall through the gaps," says Professor Lo Bianco.
Gisela Schumacher, who is a training co-ordinator at the Australian branch of the German FROEBEL group that provides bilingual early childhood education, believes there'd be more support for bilingualism if the health benefits were more widely known.
"[Bilingualism] has a great impact on your cognitive abilities. It leads to great flexibility in the brain. And there are studies which say it can delay the onset of Alzheimer's actually, so people also have healthy benefits in the long term."
Share
