Ian Malcom, honorary emeritus professor of applied linguistics at Edith Cowan University, Western Australia, and long-time Honey Ant Readers friend, gave a terrific interview about Aboriginal English on Radio National’s Lingua Franca show with Maria Zijlstra last week. Ian has long been advocating the need for recognition of Aboriginal English as a dialect of English in its own right, with recognisable and agreed forms spoken across the continent.

He explains that at the time of settlement of the Australian continent, two separate ‘Englishes’ developed, one among the settler community and the other among the Indigenous community. Among Indigenous groups, two varieties of English also emerged, the first for communicating with the settlers and the other, as a lingua franca, for communicating among Indigenous groups speaking different mother tongues. Some words were taken from the maritime community, other jargon was picked up from the settlers, most notably Irish English is more prominent in Aboriginal English than the Standard Australian form!

With time, it developed into a mother tongue for many groups, but as the Creole was influenced heavily by Australian English, it “decreolised” meaning it became more like English, but quite distinct from Australian English. Far from a “careless” or “inadequate” English, Aboriginal English is derived from pidgin and Creole origins, but is in fact a fully developed dialect which expresses the need and identity of its speakers. Professor Malcom believes that there needs to be a place in education for both dialects, that we need to teach Aboriginal speakers with sensitivity for their language in order to balance the rights of speakers of different dialects in the classroom and enhance their learning. Education must add rather than detract from what students bring to the school.

Follow the link below to listen to the full interview :

http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/linguafranca/aboriginal-english/3709226

Video of Sean, a secondary school teacher in the NT
Sean is a secondary school teacher in Alice Springs. In this video he explains why the Honey Ant Readers are working so well with his students.

Last week, Dianne Natt, Head of Junior Secondary at Cannon Hill Anglican College, Brisbane visited Yipirinya School where the Honey Ant Readers first began and continue to be used and developed by the school and wider community. Cannon Hill Anglican College has been very generous in supporting the development of the Honey Ant Readers and have an active relationship with Yipirinya School through various exchange activities. We are looking forward to ongoing collaboration between schools and there have been exciting discussions about shared music programs in the future.
Below is a photo of Dianne, Jennifer, nana Honey Ant’s cultural mentor, and Yipirinya student, Sheree who has had the highest attendance in the Secondary this year. Sheree is very talented at learning languages and proved herself be an excellent public speaker when she spoke to the school in assembly last term and at a function in Darwin recently. We are all very proud of her progress with the Honey Ant Readers program!

Dianne, Jennifer and Sheree at Yipirinya School

The Honey Ant support team: Gail Barker, Ken Langford-Smith and Pieta Laughton with Margaret James

On Thursday November 10th the recipients for the NT Australian of the Year Awards 2012 were announced in a ceremony at the Darwin Convention Centre.

The honor of NT Australian of the Year 2012 went to Dr John Boffa , who has played an active and inspirational role in changing attitudes toward alcohol in Northern Territory communities through supply reduction, early learning and mental health programs. Laurie Baymarrwangga received NT Senior Australian of the Year 2012 for her extraordinary commitment to maintaining the culture and environment of the Crocodile Islands, while Rebecca Healy was voted NT Young Australian of the Year 2012 and Rob Cook was announced NT Local Hero 2012.

While Margaret did not receive the award, her place among the 4 outstanding finalists highlights the challenges Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students face on entering school, and acknowledges one innovative and effective way in which the challenges can be addressed.

In her finalist speech she said,

I would like to acknowledge the traditional owners of this land, the Larrikia people.
I feel very honoured and humbled, especially with such deserving fellow finalists.
I feel that the nomination recognises much more than me. I share it with the elders and community who worked with me to create the Honey Ant Readers, developed for their children. I especially treasure the children in this – as much for their input into the project in terms of stories and chatter, and of course their feedback on the final product – as for the inspiration they give me. Sometimes they call out ‘Nana uney hant’ when I walk through school grounds, which is really lovely – as long as they are not referring to my ‘honey ant’ figure!
(or once as I crossed a bridge in Alice, little voices sung out from the sandy riverbed below – “ey you dat nana wat bin writin dem uney hant pooks’!)
It is for these children that I do this work in my own time, so that they can have a choice in their lives. With their knowledge of oral languages, reading may not be essential, but it gives them choices in life and access to Western knowledge and way of life.
To remove one of the major hurdles facing many Indigenous children in Australia, we have developed these books in the conversational language of the playground.
I quote a Warlpiri elder and vice-chairman of Yipirinya School who prefaced this by telling me that never before have people from the bush had books they can relate to:
“With these books they can look at it and say : ‘I can try this. I can do it!’ Once they begin to read they get hungry for more. Soon they are reading.”
Thank you:
Rosie my daughter and editor, my mother Nana Betts, my illustrator Wendy, Ken and Gail, Pieta, my children, Rob, Tim and Caroline and the 2 who legitimise my title ‘Nana’, Lucia and Richard.
Indigenous people across Australia learning to read face huge disadvantages. I believe passionately and will continue to advocate for this, that we compound the disadvantages when we belittle their own languages, including Aboriginal English.
In the Honey Ant Readers we address this issue and it is working. The Indigenous community feels ownership of the books in terms of content, style of storytelling and language. I share this honour with all AE speakers across Australia and thanks to your nomination I now feel stronger in advocating for them, and in seeking funding to keep developing more books!
As they might say: ‘yea deadly, this b’long us mob. We real happy.’

TED talks is a wonderful online resource, which shares videos from a global set of conferences formed to disseminate “ideas worth spreading”. At the independently organised TEDx conference, “Blood, Sweat and Ideas” held in Darwin in August this year, senior NT school teacher, Chris Garner, talked about just one of these ideas that we at the Honey Ant Readers absolutely believe is worth spreading.

Among many inspiring initiatives, he emphasised the importance of making schooling relevant to the context of the learners.

According to Chris, the missing element in the equation that dominates expectations in Australian education:

potential + effort = success

is “making school relevant to the context”

potential + effort + when content is relevant to learner’s context=success

Indigenous students are talented linguists with enormous potential. Making schooling relevant, with activities that make sense in real life and aligning success with what kids aspire to and their desired outcomes has ensured greater school retention and positive outcomes after school.

Recognition of the need for relevant and appropriate learning material is also a key aspect of the Honey Ant Readers program. The characters, scenery, language and way of story-telling in the books are familiar to the students. Indigenous learners can relate to them and engage easily with the text. Children  often see their own nana in the story, and nominate themselves or their friends as a particular student on the bus.

At the HAR, we believe that success breeds success, and if students feel engaged and confident in their reading, they will enjoy reading, they will want to read.

Following on from Chris’ equation, the Honey Ant Readers formula for reading might be something like:

relevant, fun, engaging  content + gradual scaffolding of vocabulary and decoding skills

=

motivation+ confidence+ success!!

To watch the video click here: Transforming the teacher in Indigenous Education