Foreign Language

[skieurope]

Australia has quite a demanding foreign language component of its educational system, focused mainly on Asian languages. Maybe it’s just hype

It’s hype.

Australia is not just failing at languages (especially Asian languages), we are failing spectacularly. The percentage of students studying a foreign language in Year 12 has decreased from 40 per cent in 1960 to around 10 per cent in 2016 – and this includes native speakers.

https://pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/articles/australia-s-spectacular-failure-in-languages

My four year-old Canadian grandnephew, who lives in Montreal, is completely bilingual.

Hence my use of qualifiers. Montrealers being an exception amongst Canadians with a higher concentration of bilingual speakers. But of course there are exceptions amongst Americans as well.