Australia may be multicultural, yet English remains the dominant language spoken. Teachers and parents are hoping that the release last week of the draft Shape of the Australian Curriculum: Languages for comment may be one step towards a more multilingual society.
The paper, released by the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA), says students in NSW should have access to 300 hours to 400 hours of language education from kindergarten to year 6; 130 hours to 160 hours in year 7 and year 8; 130 hours to 160 hours in year 9 and year 10 and 200 hours to 240 hours in year 11 and year 12.
The draft says the Australian curriculum for languages is being developed on the assumption that all students will learn languages across the kindergarten to year 8 span. It also says the curriculum will provide for continuing learning through to the senior secondary level.
Learning a language in NSW is an area where many teachers and parents felt the state was lagging. It's mandatory in Queensland, Victoria, the ACT and South Australia but not in NSW, Western Australia, Tasmania or the Northern Territory.
An Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) report, Education at a Glance 2010, says on average 8 per cent of the compulsory curriculum for children aged nine to 11 in OECD countries is devoted to modern foreign languages, rising to 13 per cent for children aged 12 to 14.
In NSW it has been zero and about 2 per cent, respectively.
The ACARA draft paper says learning another language has been shown to extend students' intellectual and analytical capabilities and strengthen their cognitive and general learning capabilities, such as creative and critical thinking.
It says studying languages can also improve student knowledge of concepts across the curriculum and enhances their employment and career prospects.
Despite these benefits, language education in NSW has been in serious decline for many reasons. There is a sense that languages have been crowded out of the curriculum in the past decade, while the focus on English literacy and numeracy has intensified. As schools compete to do well in benchmark literacy and mathematical tests such as the National Assessment Program - Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN), the study of languages other than English has been viewed as an extracurricular option, rather than a valuable addition to learning.
Yet, a University of Melbourne study published in the Australian Journal of Language and Literacy in 2009 found that learning other languages did not detract from a student's ability to develop advanced skills in English and may actually enhance their English skills.
A senior lecturer responsible for pre-service teacher education in languages at Macquarie University, Dr Robyn Moloney, says there has been much research showing that ''second-language learning increased cognitive power, divergent thinking and creativity, enhanced literacy ability in the first language and communicative abilities''.
Moloney says children have the ability to understand and use a second, third or fourth language without inhibition, without confusion and, ''with a beautiful accent''.
The draft ACARA paper suggested Chinese (Mandarin) and Italian would be the initial priority languages in primary schools launching language education. Mandarin is seen as a priority language in Australia because of our growing links with China and Italian is learnt by the largest number of students nationally in the primary years and has the second-largest number of student enrolments overall. French, German, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean and Spanish comprise the second stage of development in coming months. Arabic, modern Greek and Vietnamese make up the third stage.
''Chinese is one of the national priority languages, to build students' language competence and, through that, their inter-cultural understanding of their relationship with the country,'' Moloney says.
''Italian is a popular choice for primary language teaching due to its relatively simple pronunciation and closeness to English in phonology.
''Young children have a lovely ability to mimic, use and play with an additional language without inhibitions. And after learning a secondary language, subsequent languages are easier to learn - patterns can be recognised a lot faster.''
In 2008, the federal government set up the National Asian Languages and Studies in Schools Program (NALSSP), to operate from 2008-12, and committed $62.4 million funding ''to significantly increase the number of Australian students learning the languages and understanding the cultures of our neighbours - China, Indonesia, Japan and Korea.
The program's aim is that by 2020 at least 12 per cent of students will exit year 12 with a fluency in one of the target Asian languages. But this may be ambitious.
A report, The Current State of Chinese, Indonesian, Japanese and Korean Language Education in Australian Schools, released by the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations last year, found that the proportion of Australian students studying the four languages (kindergarten to year 12) had decreased significantly since 2000, particularly in Japanese (most notably at primary-school level) and Indonesian.
The report identified impediments to language learning in Australia, including: insufficient time allocated to languages in schools; fear of competing against native speakers; and the perceived negative impact of language study on tertiary entrance scores. It also recognised a shortage of teachers and a decline in student, school, parental and community value for language learning.
So what went wrong?
A spokeswoman for the NSW Board of Studies says: ''If you go back to the 1950s, the statistics look really good because languages - Latin and French - were mandatory.
''But there has been a decline over time in Western countries, where a language is not mandatory - there has been an international demise. We have seen a decline everywhere.
''The availability of teachers is a major issue - it isn't necessarily that students don't want to learn but if the school doesn't have a teacher, they can't offer the language. Languages is one area where there has been a national curriculum for decades. We already nationally share resources, curriculum and the writing and marking of exams, so it's not a big task for ACARA to move into this side of things.''
The vice-president of the Modern Language Teachers Association NSW, Melissa Gould-Drakeley, says the ACARA report is exciting for NSW, though language educators would prefer languages to be mandatory until year 10.
''Twenty years ago, Japanese wasn't on the map,'' Gould-Drakeley says. ''Now Japanese and French (which has always been a constant) are the most widely taught languages in NSW.
''The Japanese government has helped in this, as they have provided seeding funding to schools, which has really given Japanese a head start.
''Chinese wasn't around [in schools] 20 years ago but has since flourished - the problem is getting good-quality teachers for Chinese, though. Latin was also more popular 20 years ago. It's now starting to have a comeback but I think it's a language that independent schools favour for status over pragmatism.''
For some parents of NSW primary-school students already learning languages, there have been lingering concerns about the way they are taught. Karyn Jacobs, from Manly, says there is difficulty when changing primary schools because language teaching is not consistent.
''My son started year 4 at a new school last year where the other kids had been learning Japanese for four years,'' Jacobs says.
''The teacher kept him in one lunchtime because he didn't know the Japanese word for stapler.
''There was an expectation that he could just do the same work and no accommodating for beginners or new students. His experiences haven't engendered a desire to be bilingual.''
Another primary parent, who does not want to be named, says: ''After three full years of Japanese at school, my son can count from one to 10 and say 'bye' - and that's absolutely it. He finds it all too hard. The way it's taught, the teacher, everything.''
Another concern is that while a child may study a language for five or six years at primary school, there is often no guarantee that this language can be continued at their high school because of teacher shortages or lack of interested students.
It's here where the Open High School and Distance Education Centres step in. They give students in year 7 to year 12 in government and private schools the chance to study languages through distance education. And the Saturday School of Community Languages offers students in year 7 to year 12 from all schools the chance to study a language up to HSC level when it is not available at their day school.
The Open High School is a NSW Department of Education and Training secondary distance education school offering courses in 13 languages.
Weekly telephone lessons are timetabled with the Open High School teacher and supporting course material is sent out, increasingly online. One or more days each term, students attend the Randwick campus, where they meet their teacher and exchange contact details with fellow students. A teacher from the home school supports the student and monitors progress.
The principal of the Open High School, Stephen Murray, says ''one of the ongoing issues in languages education in NSW has been the lack of continuity from K-6 into the seven to 12 years''.
''The provision of languages to ensure curriculum guarantee via distance education and the Saturday School has been somewhat fragmented for too long,'' he says. ''More flexible learning pathways such as distance learning that students can access 24/7, might just be the answer to ensuring that more students have access to the language learning program of their choice.
''Languages education - or the lack of it - in schools is a significant issue for the Australian community; one of national strategic importance.
''If we are to become 'the clever country', then the study of a second language in schools, colleges and universities is critical.''