In your video, you will need to cover language policies as they pertain to education, politics, the legal system, signage, and any other relevant areas.
In this assignment I explored and critically compared language practices of two different countries (in our case places, as our group was assigned the administrative region of Hong Kong as subject of comparison with Australia), which related to our course, specifically, to policies and planning for national languages and linguistic varieties, which I’m particularly interested in at the moment. I investigated policy for signage in Australia and recorded both the introduction and the conclusion. I was also responsible for editing the video together, with that addition of segments and overlay and voice over provided by the other members.
Having lived overseas, where I also worked within the field of education in that particular country, this assignment, especially, has rekindled my interest in language practices in different societies, in education systems, and in the way they are implemented through policy. At the language institutes in Argentina where I worked, during a period of six years, I observed the way the people valued multilingualism over monolingualism, for themselves and for that country (Rozynski, 2012). I saw the way businesses prioritised L2 acquisition by their employees, and observed that L2 acquisition in primary schools was made obligatory for students by government (BBC Mundo, 2015). In Paraguay, I witnessed four languages being used in varied domains in very interesting ways. In terms of the medium of our assignment, i.e., video, my work experience at SBS and various broadcast and subscription TV companies helped me envision the format more easily, at least, of the ideas the group was having, and how the information might end up being presented. It was great to able to connect these two areas of knowledge, and the prospect of doing it again in the future is more exciting.
Being introduced to, in Janet Holmes and Nick Wilson’s core textbook (2017) for this unit, concepts to do with ‘language shift’, ‘national’ vs. ‘official’ and ‘standard’ vs. ‘variety’ languages, and also, ‘language planning’, enabled me to understand and express my viewpoint better in our conclusion, and follow the contributions of the others. For example, Australia and Hong share an English colonial history, and so it was useful to examine the status for languages each holds, the domains they have evolved in, and the degree of successes today to which they have been maintained, in society and legislation and planning. Keeping the distinction in mind between the British ‘exploitation’ type colonial history of Hong Kong and ‘settlement’ colony of Australia (where English abrogated First Nations' languages, and was, instead, the first language of the majority group), it was, nevertheless, easy to see a contrast between the language situation in both places, how multilingualism can come about, as defined in the textbook, in Hong Kong’s case, through influence of legislation and planning at government level, and dependence on economical development as well (Poon, A., 2010), whereas, in another, it can dominate other languages politically and socially, and result in monolingualism and language death, as in Australia’s case.
A challenge occurred in getting all of our findings, I think, to have an overall flowing structure, a consistent balance between critical and descriptive, and to generally integrate all of our parts in the script. We communicated frequently – daily – in the group chat, to resolve points like this, and the other members were co-operative in arranging to come to the studio, or various areas of campus to record their parts. However, overall I think I achieved what the assignment had set out for me which was to critically compare language policies, and having done so I’ve gained great insight into the state of the language where I live now, and knowledge I can take back to the place I used to live, in Argentina, as an English language teacher.
See:- https://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias/2015/02/150210_ingles_idioma_aptitud_indice_wbm
Rozynski, M. (2012.12.13) . Lessons from Stephen Krashen and the natural acquisition theory [Blog post]. Retrieved from Web address https://rozynskijournal.blogspot.com/ 2012/12/lessons-from-stephen-krashens-linguist.html
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