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The main aim of this paper is to review eight humanistic sociological studies related to Australian linguistic diversity and consider their implications for languages education in contemporary Australia. Over the period 1976-2006, Smolicz and his research colleagues used Znaniecki's humanistic sociological approach to investigate the attitudes of individuals toward maintaining their home cultural values, especially their ethnic language. Groups of respondents ranged from 23 to 90 in the case of six specific ethnic communities, and from 111 to 126 in the two larger studies drawn more generally from the Australian community. Respondents were asked to express their views on the maintenance of home languages in response to an open-ended question in a face to face interview or in the course of writing a personal statement. Many respondents expressed positive attitudes to learning their home language alongside English. The findings from these studies support the development of the Australian Languages Curriculum in eleven key languages, as well as the provision of opportunities for students to learn the smaller Australian community languages. |
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