ACT Bilingual Education Alliance

Description

The ACT Bilingual Education Alliance (ACTBEA) is a local non-profit community group that seeks to support and encourage bilingualism in the Canberra region. The Alliance supports and promotes family-based bilingualism as well as formal bilingual education programs, from preschool years throughout primary and secondary schooling, both mainstream and community based.

The Alliance includes educators, academics, principals, teachers, community language school representatives, tutors, parents, adult students, and others who recognise the importance of learning another language, not only for its own sake and for the cultural insights it brings, but also for the associated benefits such learning has on general educational achievement.

We also work with staff of schools and preschools with bilingual programs, as well as parents who have children attending these programs.

Through these events, its occasional Bilingual Updates, and this website, the Alliance provides information about bilingualism and its benefits, details about language programs for children in the Canberra area, practical and academic advice about language learning, and keeps members up to date with local news and events related to languages.

Celebrate the many languages spoken in the Canberra Region!

Be part of an exciting marathon performance of the beloved Austrian Christmas song Stille Nacht (Silent Night) in Garema Place in December 2012! The idea – born at a meeting of the ACT Bilingual Education Alliance (ACTBEA) some time ago – is to perform the song in as many languages as possible. We may even get into the Guinness Book of World Records!

The song will be sung in each language, one after the other, by small groups. Each group should contain at least one native-speaker-ACT region-resident. The event may be associated with stalls and other activities.

Would you like to get involved? You don’t need to sing! Plenty of logistics and planning needed as well …

For more details and to register your interest, contact: canberrasilentnight@gmail.com