Australia

from: Paul Bubb
Northern Territory Dept of Education (NTDE)
Board Services Division
GPO Box 4821
Darwin, NT 0801
“The NTDE operates 21 formal bilingual programs in 20 schools. One of the programs runs a formal Kriol program (Barunga School) and one other program offers a traditional language (Nunggubuyu) but the lingua franca (Kriol) is used to assist student learning in both Nunggubuyu and English. We also have senior high school programs teaching Australian indigenous languages as LOTEs [Languages Other Than English]. Kriol is one of the languages being utilised.
“I am the Principal Education Officer for Aboriginal Languages and Bilingual Edu-cation with policy over-sight for these programs.”

from: Joyce Hudson
Catholic Education Office
PO Box 1264
Broome, WA 6725
AUSTRALIA
j.hudson@ceowa.broome.catholic.edu.au
“The FELIKS approach, developed by the Catholic Education Office in the Kimberley region of Western Australia, has been described in the publication Making the jump: A resource book for teachers of Aboriginal students which won the Australian Award for Excellence in Educational Publishing — Primary teacher reference section for 1998. FELIKS stands for Fostering English Language in Kimberley Schools and this approach has been trialled in schools around the Kimberley for the last few years. With the publication of the resource book, it is now able to be shared further afield. In June, authors Rosalind Berry and Joyce Hudson were invited to run FELIKS Approach seminars in Queensland. These were held on Thursday Island and Cairns and participants came from schools across the state.
“Although the FELIKS approach focusses on the Kriol language (spoken across the Northern Territory and Kimberley) and Aboriginal English, it was shown to be just as relevant in Queensland where many students speak Torres Strait Creole. Teachers who attended were most enthusiastic about the strategies they were given for teaching Standard English and at the end there was talk of running more similar seminars in 1999.”

from: Bruce Rigsby
Anthropology
University of Queensland
Qld 4072
AUSTRALIA
“I do research and work in communities on Cape York Peninsula where creole and Aboriginal English varieties are the vernacular. While this no doubt influences children’s performance in school, people are most concerned about indigenous language loss and how to address it. There is little or no interest in developing P/C or Aboriginal English programs for school, but teachers and educators would do well to learn more about their students’ vernacular varieties.”

France

from: Marie-Christine Hazäel-Massieux
Institut d’Etudes Créoles et
Francophones
29 ave Robert Schuman
13621 Aix-en-Provence FRANCE
hazael@newsup.univ-mrs.fr
“Notez l’adresse de notre site web: http://www.lpl.univ-aix.fr/iecf”

Brazil

from: Maria Carlota Rosa
Universidade Federal do
Rio de Janeiro
Rua Flack, 101 casa 3 apt. 201
Riachuelo - Rio de Janeiro
RJ 20.960-150 BRASIL
carlota@acd.ufrj.br
“I have finished a paper (written in Portu-guese, 69 page ms) on missionary grammars written by Jesuits in Brazil in the 16th and 17th centuries. I focused on four works, seen as instruments for the teaching of a second language: Anchieta (1595) and Figueira (1621?), both on Lingua Geral; Dias (1697), on Kimbundo, intended as a help for those priests who had to wait for the slave ships from Africa; and Mamiani (1699), on Kiriri, or Kariri (Kariri family, now disappeared ).”