Friday, September 13, 2019

Mother Tongue Multilingual Poetry

  • Monday 14 October, 7pm to 9pm
  • Smith's Alternative, 76 Alinga, Civic.
  • Free Entry.
Come and share your words or just enjoy the multilingual program. 

The feature for the evening - celebrating the International Year of Indigenous Languages - will be father and daughter Deveni and Salote Temu. They will perform traditional Aroma song and dance of coastal Papua New Guinea, share Peroveta missionary song in mixed Aroma, Motu and other Pacific languages, and take part in a discussion about knowledge, identity and language. 

There are a limited number of open mic spots available for the night. Those interested in presenting are invited to share poetry in, or including, a language other than English, or a mix of languages. 
Each spot is up to 5 minutes long. You can read or recite, and all styles of poetry are welcome - traditional forms, free verse, slam style or rap!  You can include a brief summary or introduction in English, or a full translation if you prefer.  To reserve a spot, email mothertonguemic@gmail.com

This Mother Tongue Multilingual Poetry Night is part of the Poetry on the Move Festival Fringe. For more details of the festival, see https://www.poetryonthemove.net/

Thursday, September 12, 2019

September ANU Language Teaching Forum

  • Monday 16 September, 4.15 – 5.15 pm 
  • Room W3.03, Level 3, Baldessin Precinct Building #110, ANU.
  • Presenter: Josh Brown from Italian Studies
  • Topic: On ‘Crisis’ and the Pessimism of Disciplinary Discourse in Foreign Languages
Abstract
This paper investigates how the disciplinary discourse on the contemporary state of foreign languages in universities (hastily) refers to these disciplines as being in ‘crisis’. This practice is nearly as old as the Humanities itself, and has been employed periodically since at least the 1940s. Despite a period of increasing foreign language enrolment in the first decade of the twenty-first century in Australia, calls of ‘crisis’ came from across the languages sector. In tracing the use of the term ‘crisis’, I show how the sector has long been characterised by such alarmist terminology, even when reality suggests otherwise. A topical report of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, which shows increased language enrolment over the period 2002-11, leads one to believe that things at universities may not be as bad as first thought. These data are contrasted against total enrolment in languages other than English from the most recent statistics available in 2016 from the Modern Language Association. This paper has implications for language enrolments not just in Australia, but around the world.

Everyone involved in language teaching and research within the ANU and in the wider community are welcome to participate in these forum meetings. The main objective is to foster the exchange of research and new approaches in language education. 

For more information and/or to join the mailing list, contact Wesley Lim at Wesley.Lim@anu.edu.au