TOK PISIN FOR QUEENSLAND SCHOOLS

On the blog PNG Attitude, there has been an eccentric and Quixotic campaign to have the Queensland Department of Education include Tok Pisin as a language subject. No mention is made of the aboriginal Creole.

Rejection has been taken by one Paul Oates to mean an unfriendly and unneighbourly attitude by the Department of Education. Dare we say racist? Please click:

News Flash! Terra Incognita is rediscovered

As a long term and ongoing teacher of Tok Pisin, I am the first to suggest that Tok Pisin is a splendid cameo language that teaches many skills that help the students to think clearly and break ideas down. Please click:

FAMILY POSITIVE LIVING - AIDS HOLISTICS: TOK PISIN IS A ...

familypositiveliving.blogspot.com/.../tok-pisin-is-sweet-language.htm...Cached

1 Sep 2011 – Tok Pisin is a sweet, logical and useful language for PNG, evolved over

200 years in communication with villagers in the colonial world.

But in Queensland schools the effort could at best be only half baked. Teachers will never have the opportunity to practise Tok Pisin in a real cultural setting.

Tok Pisin seems to have become what each person wants to make it.

Already I have young people telling me that my Tok Pisin is old man talk. That means that I do not speak code switched jive talk.

I never use an English word if there is a perfectly good Tok Pisin word.

People are getting lazy especially politicians making speeches. They start to use abstract English words that make speeches unintelligible to villagers.

A politician opening a bridge once told the villagers - "Yupela olgeta i prone long procrastination. " Huh?

Modern Tok Pisin is changing but held in place by the traditional structure and syntax. The basic structure never changes. See the Tok Pisin Tree below.

Tok Pisin is not taught to students in PNG. There is no educational infrastructure.

I once took my 8 year old daughter to a Tok Pisin class. She interrupted the lesson to tell me my Tok Pisin was wrong. Students saw the funny side of it.

Tok Pisin has been changed with the practice of code switching. That is the mixing of another language.

Productivity bilong nation will not increase in the next financial year if yumi no introdusim wanpela program bilong education of all the basics in implementim training bilong nesenel developmen.

The only true teaching authority of Tok Pisin has been the RAAF School of Languages now the Defence School based at Laverton near Melbourne.

Defence personnel and wives have been trained there on 4 week courses for almost 40 years. Please click:

FAMILY POSITIVE LIVING - AIDS HOLISTICS: TOK PISIN FOR ...

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25 Aug 2011 – This blogspot is about Positive Living in families. But the focus is on

the Australian army teaching Tok Pisin to soldiers on posting to Papua New ...

The school was a key source of standardization together with Wantok niuspepa and dictionary prepared by the late Fr Francis Mihalic.

The dictionary is now very much out of date. On every page, there are words never used. It still lists German carpentry tools. The meisel comes to mind. Please click:

FAMILY POSITIVE LIVING - AIDS HOLISTICS: TOK PISIN TREE (1)

familypositiveliving.blogspot.com/2011/08/tok-pisin-tree-1_24.htmlCached

24 Aug 2011 – I came to PNG to serve at Igam Barracks during 1976-1977. I had just completed

a Bahasa Indonesia course at the RAAF School of Languages ...

The University of Papua New Guinea fell by the wayside with the death of Dr Otto Nekitel and retirement of Dicks Thomas - Linguistics Department. It looks as if I am the last of the Mohicans.

Tok Pisin is being used by AIDS Holistics in the Positive Living campaign in PNG. Please click:

LIVE STRONG - LIVE LONG

It is eccentric in the extreme to suggest that ex-kiaps could be the vanguard of Tok Pisin teaching in Queensland schools.

Over a 14 year period 1978-1992, I had several Defence teachers working in the Tok Pisin Department of the RAAF School of Languages on normal 2 year postings. Please click:

MASTERY LEARNING OF TOK PISIN

If they left as apprentices, what hope would Queensland teachers have? And one was an ex-kiap. He thought it was still the 1960s and he was in the highlands talking to natives and manki mastas. That last word dated him.

They would need to be skilled at tailoring courses to the jobs of the students, prepare sequences of patterns and write stories graded according to the language patterns and job related topics. Very few teachers can do that.

Tok Pisin courses for groups of doctors have to have a medical focus. So too a group of engineers has to be able to talk about roads and bridges.

Infantry officers talk on tactics in Tok Pisin. Senior officers and foreign affairs officers make speeches.

I found teaching Tok Pisin interesting and was able to explain any topic at all in the language.

Students learned to understand and talk about malaria parasites, road building, military tactics, HIV/AIDS, sorcery, social problems, culture, aircraft maintenance, engines, flow charts and military history.

Flow charts are useful tools to demonstrate the logic of Tok Pisin. Go long ensin. Ensin i ran o nogat? Sapos yes, orait go bek long duti rum. Sapos nogat, go chekim tank.

Tank i pulap o nogat? Sapos yes, orait go bek long duti rum. Sapos nogat orait, go tokim ensinia. Em i kros o nogat? Sapos yes, orait tokim em long kaikaim as bilong em.

My explanation of HIV/AIDS dated from the Tok Pisin course. I had a flying start with AIDS Holistics in 2001.

Over the years, I absorbed massive practical information from dozens of infantry officers, engineers, aircraft maintenance mechanics, missionaries, foreign affairs officers, doctors, nursing officers and naval officers. Police officers were conspicuous by their absence.

It was all turned back into the course. That is where professionalism of the course starts to shine through.

Queensland schools would require large amounts of mastery material by exercises and topics to sustain a Tok Pisin course.

That is beyond the capacity of teachers. The above approach to the Department is not a proposal but a huge set of problems. They thought they would plant a feather and grow a chicken.