Preschoolers show app-titude for languages

THEY may still be learning to get their tongues around English, but next year Australia’s preschoolers will be encouraged to learn a foreign language too.

Tabitha Kulendran, Riley Wilson, Arjun Pandya and Aaliya Agarwal, of Chermside Early Education Centre and Preschool, have enjoyed taking part in the languages pilot program. Picture: Mark Calleja

ALL Australian preschool students will be able to learn foreign languages next year.

Thousands of Queensland’s four-year-olds are already learning Chinese and Japanese under a trial of the Federal Government’s $9.8 million scheme.

Education Minister Simon Birmingham will today announce that, due to the success of the pilot program, the early-learning languages app will be made available in all Australian preschools.

Almost 10,000 preschoolers across Australia have been learning languages via the government-created iPad apps.

Jessica McKenzie, the director of the Chermside Early Education Centre and Preschool, said the language apps had been a hit with her little ones, who were learning Chinese.

Education Minister Simon Birmingham says the program is vital in supporting children to take full advantage of globalisation. Picture: Kym Smith

“The children have really enjoyed the apps; they are easy to use, the kids can understand them and they are fun,” she said.

Ms McKenzie said the preschool had begun using Chinese words for hello, goodbye and thankyou in the classroom.

Senator Birmingham said four new languages would be introduced, with youngsters able to learn Italian and Spanish from next year, and Hindi and Greek from 2018.

With the proportion of Year 12 students studying foreign languages having fallen from 40 per cent in the 1960s to 12 per cent today, Senator Birmingham said it was important to encourage young Australians to learn another language.

“We live in a globalised world and initiatives like the language apps are vital in supporting our children to take full advantage of the new opportunities our economic transition presents,” he said.

“It is particularly encouraging to see, in what many describe as the ‘Asian Century’, that almost two in three students are studying the significant regional languages of Chinese and Japanese.”