October 19, 2004

Page Tools

The study of languages is undergoing a renaissance with NSW students, influenced by immigration, the lure of a job in a globalised economy or simply the linguistic benefits.

One in eight students - more than 8000 teenagers - now takes a language for the HSC. Many courses will be tested today. The most popular is Chinese, followed by Japanese and French

In 1955 only 120 students studied Chinese and there were two students each in Hebrew and Japanese. This year there are 64 HSC courses for 38 languages and Chinese has almost 1600 students.

The inspector, languages, with the NSW Board of Studies, Margaret Silink, said language candidatures were dynamic and "ebb and flow according to a range of factors".

Tourism and trade made Japanese popular in the 1980s.

Student numbers in the past generation peaked in 1994 at about 8400 students, before falling until 2000 when the HSC syllabus was overhauled. Growing demand since then has put this year's crop of HSC language students close to the mid 1990s peak.

Chinese (Mandarin) has been growing each year and while most students are background speakers - meaning they can already converse in the language - there is also an increase in the number of beginners. All beginner language courses can only be taken by students who have previously done no more than 100 hours study of the language.

The teaching of languages has progressed from reciting phrases and conjugating verbs and is now linked to the cultural study of the country. "You can't learn the language without learning about the communities," Dr Silink said.

But there are some languages soon to be wiped off the study books.

Next year Albanian and Bengali, which are not currently offered, will be suspended, along with Czech, Latvian, Lithuanian and Slovenian.