Reconciliation and Social Justice Library

A MATTER OF SURVIVAL - ENGLISH AS A SECOND DIALECT

4.42 In many Aboriginal communities as well as many mainstream schools, both urban and rural, Aboriginal students come to school with Aboriginal English as their first language. This is the language of their parents and friends. Unfortunately these students are usually treated as though they speak Standard Australian English incorrectly. The damaging effect this has on their self-esteem and their attitude to school is totally unnecessary and is due to inadequate preparation of teachers.

4.43 Most teachers do not recognise Aboriginal English as a separate dialect nor have they been trained to teach English as a second dialect. Those teachers are also unlikely to understand the socio-linguistic aspects of Aboriginal English and will be less likely to communicate effectively with such speakers.

4.44 Teachers must have accurate and reliable information on the speech of their students as such information is essential to communicating and teaching ⁶⁰ Teachers must be aware of the differences and similarities between their own speech and that of their students if they are to effectively teach those differences to students speaking another dialect.

4.45 Aboriginal English speaking students do not speak a foreign language and justifiably expect their teacher to understand them. Teachers of such students need to develop "receptive" competence in Aboriginal English so that they can understand their students 61

4.46 The learning of Standard Australian English as a second dialect is a difficult task:

Second dialect learners (in contrast with second language learners) have to build up the target language variety (SAE) out of elements they are already using as part of their mother tongue and out of new elements which they have previously not used in their speech. At the same time they must learn to distinguish between elements of their dialect which are also part of SAE and those elements that are not shared and keep the latter out of their speech when speaking SAE.

These are very difficult processes involving the observation and memorising of fine distinctions 62

4.47 Because of the similarity between the dialects and a lack of awareness of the differences, Aboriginal English speaking students may regard learning English as a pointless and boring exercise 63

4.48 Education authorities need to address these deficiencies. The committee believes these deficiencies have a disproportionately large adverse influence on the school education of those children with Aboriginal English as their only language.