Towards a More Articulate Australia: The Case for Applied Linguistics and Language Centres

Abstract

The urgent need to develop in Australians inter-cultural understanding and the ability to communicate with non-English speakers is observed. The failure of the present education system to cope with this need is traced back to insufficient and low quality language teaching. It is argued that this problem can be rectified only through better understanding of the nature of the task, i.e., especially by more emphasis on the study of linguistics in the education of teachers of language. Rather than for general linguistics, however, the need is shown to be for facilities for work in applied linguistics. Language centres are shown to be the ideal site for such work since their inter-disciplinary nature brings together workers in all the sciences of language and language teaching. The lack of such centres in Australia has led to the difficulty language teachers face of finding worthwhile post-graduate training or research facilities in Australia. It is emphasized throughout that the notions discussed, though especially relevant to foreign language teaching, are also pertinent to other forms of language teaching (such as English to native speakers and speech education).