Aussie Plus Audio CD

Raising Children in more than one language

By Irma Lachmund

The journey of creating an audio resource for bilingual and multilingual families

In 2005 I was involved in the Western Australian Ethnic Community Council and made great contacts between the different ethnic communities in Perth. Many were struggling to maintain their family-established language schools, which are available for a fee to children and adults and provide education in the home languages. These schools usually meet for two hours on a Saturday or Sunday morning and are sometimes connected to a church.

Although the Australian government supports ethnic schools with a small subsidy per school-aged child, these schools do not usually address the needs of parents for stategies to foster the language learning of their children at home. We heard accounts of grandparents speaking English when dropping off their grandchildren at the Saturday school and picking them up after two hours and speaking English again. The struggle to maintain the community language is especially strong when there is limited support at a local level and no ethnic community organisations are offering fun events that encourage the maintenance of the cultural traditions and language.

With the aim to assist families in such a situation, Bilingual Families Perth accepted an invitation in May 2005 for a weekly slot at the local ethnic radio station 6EBA World Radio. We were asked to talk about raising children in more than one language and to share our experiences, strategies and tips with other parents. The program was funded by the Western Australian Office of Multicultural Interest, which gives a total of A$300,000 each year in support of community development projects that support cultural diversity. The program was called MOSAIC and was broadcasted on Thursdays after lunch. We continued to have weekly sessions for about 6 months, then changed to monthly sessions until our final broadcast for Harmony Week in March 2006.The radio program was abandoned after an internal review.

We were sad, but nevertheless cheerful. Since all broadcasts were being broadcast live, we gained extensive experience in radio media, which we enjoyed a lot. Many women and men of our network gave it a go and told their stories over the radio. We approached other radio stations and had a run on national radio and a little on mainstream radio. Three interviews were taken by SBS Radio, a national Australian broadcaster, and one of the most diverse radio stations worldwide that broadcasts in 64 commuity languages, also available over the internet at www.sbs.com.au.

We were ready for the next step and thought about creating an Audio CD that would make our experiences available to a wider audience in hard copy and over the internet. Our hope was for mainstream radio stations to pick up on the issue and to provide a tool to parents, disseminated as a part of education support at schools. The idea soon got a name: Aussie Plus Audio CD ‘Raising Children with more than one language’. The Management Committee of Bilingual Families Perth early on agreed on proposed outcomes for the project (see insert at end of article). Funding negotiations were successful with the Western Australian Department for Education and Training and a Steering Committee of parents and acadmics was established in early 2006.

Although we were pretty clear about what issues parents wished us to address, we first conducted a parent survey with around 40 parents. Issues such as language mixing and how to motivate the child and yourself were running high on the agenda (see results at end of article).

It took us a year to get the CD together. Information was gathered mainly through parent interviews from two professionals who are working for the Education Department. We also included three broadcasts done by SBS Radio some years ago. It turned out to be an interesting mix of stories, thoughts, strategies and tips. And we shared a very proud moment when we launched the Audio CD on 20 November 2006 at the Loftus Community Centre. Parts of it are available on the internet at www.bilingualfamilies.net. We decided that this was not the end of the project, but merely Version 1. We plan to update the CD as the year progresses, with Version 2 expected in March 2007, hopefully containing the full CD on the internet.

Please have a listen and provide us with feedback to bfp@webace.com.au. Hard copies are available from Bilingual Families Perth, POBox 517, Mt HawthornWA 6915, Australia for the cost of the postage.

Results of Parent Survey

Aussie Plus Project Objectives

• To connect bilingual parents and link their issues and stories
• To disseminate information and experiences related to raising children with two languages to the community, schools and parents
• To share strategies, tricks and tips from parent to parent
• To provide parents information on bilingualism
• To empower parents to make an informed choice about the maintenance of the family language
• To increase awareness about the benefits of bilingualism and the situation of bilingual families
• To enable community radio stations to include information on two languages in one family in their regular program
  

Irma Lachmund is the founder and chairperson of Bilingual Families Perth. She is originally from Germany and is the mother of two bilingual children aged 8 and 9. Irma can be reached at:
bfp@webace.com.au.

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