Current RUMACCC Projects
Linked on this page
- Address in some Western European Languages
- Raising Children Bilingually / Raising Deaf Children Bilingually
- Multilingualism in Early 21st Century Australia
Reports:
Raising Children Bilingually / Raising Deaf Children Bilingually
RUMACCC conducts regular workshops for families raising their children bi- or tri-lingually and for interested professionals. These workshops have been free of charge due to the generous support of the Victorian Multicultural Commission. The workshops have included presentations from Dr Susanne Dopke and Professor Michael Clyne, two internationally respected authorities in the field of raising children bi/multilingually who have both successfully raised their own children to be bilingual, and Dr Robert Debski, and expert in computer-facilitated language learning.
RUMACCC will conduct three workshops for parents this year, organised by Community Languages Australia and funded by the Victorian Multicultural Commission. The first two will be in May at the Polish sports and recreation centre in Sunshine, and later at a yet to be announced venue in Tasmania. A future seminar will be held at the University of Melbourne.
Meredith Bartlett and Sandra Leanne will also be organising a number of seminars for Raising Deaf Children Bilingually in Australia.
If you would like to receive details if upcoming seminars, please email your name and/or postal address to Yvette Slaughter: rumaccc-info@ unimelb.edu.au.
Multilingualism in Early 21st Century Australia
Researchers: Professor Michael Clyne, Dr Sandra Kipp, Sue Fernandez and Felicity Grey
Funding: ARC Discovery Grant
This project encompasses several sub-projects, all of which have made significant progress during 2005. The research relating to community languages resources in the media, libraries, public services and education has concluded, resulting in two forthcoming journal articles. The Hungarian project has been completed and an article is to appear in ITL - Review of Applied Linguistics, with the final focus group for the Tamil sub-project completed in October 2005. Researchers in the Hungarian and Tamil studies are Michael Clyne and Sue Fernandez, with additional research assistance from Tibor Enrody and Judy Hajdu for Hungarian, and Anusha Premarajah for Tamil. Ingrid Seebus is currently conducting new Dutch interviews with Dutch-English bilinguals who completed similar interviews in 1971 and again in 1986.
The project has also produced a book, Australia's Language Potential, published by the UNSW Press in September, with a book launch held at the national ALAA conference.
Reports:
Languages Other Than English in government schools Annual report for the ESL Multicultural Programs Unit
In 2006, Yvette Slaughter, with the help of Raphie Kruse and Alex Blaszak will be writing the 2004 and 2005 LOTE reports for the Department of Education and Training, we well as writing a report on ESL provision in Victorian government schools.