Media Release
July 27 2006
Multi-million dollar grant for language education
The University of South Australia has been awarded a $2.2 million government grant for a project that will help shape how languages are taught and learned in Australia. This major educational initiative will involve over 400 teachers across the country in every state and territory.
“This is one of the biggest projects for languages teaching in a very long time,” says project leader Angela Scarino, Director of the Research Centre for Languages and Cultures Education at UniSA’s School of International Studies.
“It places UniSA at the forefront of languages education in Australia.”
The focus of the project is to improve the quality of languages teaching, learning and assessment across Australia. It will take an intercultural approach to languages education, which is a growing trend in this field.
“Intercultural language teaching and learning helps increase a students’ knowledge of self, of the construction of linguistic and cultural identity, of the ability to communicate and to understand communication not only within their own language and culture but across other languages and cultures,” explains Scarino.
“In the context of the increasing diversity of world communication, this focus on learning languages has critical importance. We want language learning to prepare our students to live and work in a globalised community.”
The project is being funded by the Australian Government Department of Education, Science and Training under the Australian Government Quality Teacher Programme (AGQTP). It builds on more than a decade of research in the area of intercultural language learning at UniSA’s Research Centre for Languages and Cultures Education.
“We‘ve been developing intercultural language teaching over a number of years and it’s changed the way we think about teaching languages at UniSA,” says project co-leader and Associate Professor in Applied Linguistics Dr Tony Liddicoat.
“Winning a project like this allows the Centre to use the knowledge we’ve developed to give a new direction to languages teaching in Australia.”
The project is currently getting underway and should run until
December 2007. UniSA introduced a special Bachelor of Applied Language
and Intercultural Communication this year to help meet the growing
demand in this area.
Contact for interviews
- Angela Scarino mobile 0409 283 814 email angela.scarino@unisa.edu.au
- Dr Tony Liddicoat mobile 0408 212 42 email tony.liddicoat@unisa.edu.au
Media contact
- Tess van Straaten mobile 0412 102 662 email tess.vanstraaten@unisa.edu.auName