Professor Ian Malcom “Making Tracks” at the ALAA Conference, Curtin University

Marg James’ presentation ‘Language, Literacy, and Aboriginal English’ at the ALAA Conference at Curtin University followed a brilliant seminar by leading expert in the field of Aboriginal English (AE) whose work has long been a source of inspiration to the HARs program – Professor Ian Malcom.

Professor Malcom’s paper,  ‘Making Tracks: Towards an Inclusive Paradigm for Aboriginal Learners‘ highlighted the sense of ‘shame’ experienced by many Aboriginal English speaking learners resulting from a lack of understanding among speakers of Standard Australian English (SAE) in mainstream schools. This shame he argued, should really be felt by those who persistently and systematically fail to recognize the roots of this miscommunication and promote Standard English as the ideal language of the classroom. He cited Walt Wolfram (1991, p 268) who compared the deficit view of non-standard dialect speakers to “a position in modern geophysics maintaining that the planet earth is flat.”

Indeed Professor Malcom referred to a great wealth of empirical research emerging from the United States in the 1960s highlighting the development and use of non-standard English dialects. Coinciding with the growth of the field of sociolinguistics, work on Vernacular Black English in particular, clearly demonstrated that the language had systematic structured rules and met the specific communication needs of its speakers. Australia has also produced significant literature on the topic, with the first study of Aboriginal English conducted in 1960-1968 by Elwyn Flint and students at the University of Queensland. This was expanded on over subsequent decades by the work of Margaret Sharpe (1977), Diana Eades (1983), Kaldor and Malcolm (1982). Sharifian (2002) and Grote (2004)among others.

The implications of this research for classrooms, are many:
– dialects should be used for teaching literacy and encouraged in wider classroom activities
– differences need to be made explicit to learners (as to many learners this isn’t intrinsically clear)
-teachers to be familiar enough with the key features of non-standard dialect to distinguish errors from dialect forms
-teachers also need to understand the historical origins of non-standard dialects to appreciate their development and use

Prof Malcom described the example of the Tracks to Two Way Learning program, a set of materials informing the delivery of training for two-way bi-dialectal education, as an example of promoting “inclusive paradigm for Aboriginal learners.” (HAR author, Margaret,  was part of the group invited to take part in the inaugural training workshop.) This resource was developed over the past decade by over 200 contributors from teachers, Aboriginal/Islander Education Officers, principals to researchers, community consultants and advisers. It includes training materials to support Aboriginal learners with Standard English dialect and its future uses while drawing on their skills in AE as a learning resource and a way for non-Aboriginal classmates to access Aboriginal ways.