Doctor of Education / With the heightened profile of language learning in a global community, language education is exploring a new model of intercultural language learning. The goal of intercultural language learning is to produce language users equipped with explicit skills in understanding connections and differences between their own culture and the culture of the target language. The research literature suggests that language learners’ resulting intercultural competence will encompass a range of characteristics. There have been few empirical studies, however, to provide illustration of intercultural competence, in order to assist teachers’ understanding of desired outcomes and student development. This case study investigates the characteristics of intercultural competence in young language learners in one Australian primary school. The learners have been engaged in an immersion language program for up to eight years, in one of three languages: French, German or Japanese. The study also investigates the behaviours and understandings in their language teachers which may facilitate the development of learners’ intercultural competence. It explores in summary what may be the nature of intercultural competence in the case study language learners. The study is relevant to research of both intercultural language learning and of immersion language classrooms. Using a case study design, the study incorporates qualitative data in the form of student focus group interviews, teacher interviews, and classroom observations. Data were collected at the case study school, in Sydney, Australia, over a school semester, and involved 49 Year 6 students and four teachers. Results of the study suggest a number of indicators of the case study students’ development in intercultural competence – that is, through understanding of language culture and identity. The student is and sees him or herself as a purposeful interactive communicator. The student understands the target language itself to be the vehicle of the target culture, and often displays metalinguistic curiosity and skills. Some students are able to critically reflect on their (multiple) linguistic and cultural memberships, and to negotiate their identity as a non-native language user. The study found that teachers provide a model of interculturality to their students. The teachers’ interculturality is enacted in their relationships and pedagogical choices, in their design of experiential learning tasks, and their facilitation of linguistic and cultural connections for their students. The study also found that the nature of the immersion language classroom itself facilitates intercultural competence in students. The study provides a case study illustration of intercultural competence in language learners which is relevant to research in intercultural language learning, immersion pedagogy and the emerging related pedagogy of content-based language learning.

Doctor of Education / With the heightened profile of language learning in a global community, language education is exploring a new model of intercultural language learning. The goal of intercultural language learning is to produce language users equipped with explicit skills in understanding connections and differences between their own culture and the culture of the target language. The research literature suggests that language learners’ resulting intercultural competence will encompass a range of characteristics. There have been few empirical studies, however, to provide illustration of intercultural competence, in order to assist teachers’ understanding of desired outcomes and student development. This case study investigates the characteristics of intercultural competence in young language learners in one Australian primary school. The learners have been engaged in an immersion language program for up to eight years, in one of three languages: French, German or Japanese. The study also investigates the behaviours and understandings in their language teachers which may facilitate the development of learners’ intercultural competence. It explores in summary what may be the nature of intercultural competence in the case study language learners. The study is relevant to research of both intercultural language learning and of immersion language classrooms. Using a case study design, the study incorporates qualitative data in the form of student focus group interviews, teacher interviews, and classroom observations. Data were collected at the case study school, in Sydney, Australia, over a school semester, and involved 49 Year 6 students and four teachers. Results of the study suggest a number of indicators of the case study students’ development in intercultural competence – that is, through understanding of language culture and identity. The student is and sees him or herself as a purposeful interactive communicator. The student understands the target language itself to be the vehicle of the target culture, and often displays metalinguistic curiosity and skills. Some students are able to critically reflect on their (multiple) linguistic and cultural memberships, and to negotiate their identity as a non-native language user. The study found that teachers provide a model of interculturality to their students. The teachers’ interculturality is enacted in their relationships and pedagogical choices, in their design of experiential learning tasks, and their facilitation of linguistic and cultural connections for their students. The study also found that the nature of the immersion language classroom itself facilitates intercultural competence in students. The study provides a case study illustration of intercultural competence in language learners which is relevant to research in intercultural language learning, immersion pedagogy and the emerging related pedagogy of content-based language learning.

This thesis is an investigation of case morphology in a mixed language, Gurindji Kriol. Gurindji Kriol is spoken by the Gurindji people in northern Australia. It fuses Gurindji, which is a member of the Ngumpin-Yapa subgroup of the Pama-Nyungan family, with Kriol, which is an English-lexifier creole spoken across the north of Australia. Gurindji Kriol exhibits a structural split between the NP and VP systems, but is lexically quite mixed. Kriol provides much of the verbal grammar including tense and mood auxiliaries, and transitive, aspect and derivational morphology. Most of the NP structure is of Gurindji origin including case and derivational morphology. Lexically, nominals and verbs are derived from both source languages. In form, the various sub-systems of Gurindji Kriol bear a close resemblance to their source languages. However contact and competition between Gurindji and Kriol in the process of the formation of the mixed language has altered the function and distribution of these systems, including the Gurindji-derived case morphology. The aim of this thesis is three-fold: (i) to provide the first detailed socio-historical and grammatical description of Gurindji Kriol (§2 and §A1), (ii) to propose a path by which Gurindji case morphology was incorporated into the Gurindji Kriol clause (§3-§5), and (iii) to demonstrate changes in the use of four case markers quantitatively (§6-§9).