By Jewel Topsfield
WHEN Alice Warrington started prep, she didn't speak a word of German.
Five years later, the 10-year-old is so fluent she speaks without an accent.
It was all foreign to Alice Warrington when she started at the Deutsche Schule Melbourne five years ago. Now she is fluent in German.Credit: Pat Scala
''Alice is native-speaker-like … it's amazing,'' says Sandra Battistoni, the head teacher at Deutsche Schule Melbourne.
The tiny primary school in North Fitzroy has adopted the Canadian immersion model of bilingual education in which 90 per cent of the curriculum is taught in the second language. By the time students reach year 5, the curriculum is equally divided between the two.
''The idea is that students become completely bilingual,'' Ms Battistoni says.
Alice, whose parents were born in Australia and New Zealand, said she had no idea what anyone was saying when she started at a German-English bilingual school. ''It was quite hard - I went quiet for six months, which for me was very very unusual, it was a record. I learnt by listening, no one sat down and explained what the words were.''
Alice, who also learns French and Latin, modestly concedes her German is probably now as good as her English. ''It feels pretty cool to know the amount of languages I do,'' she says.
Ms Battistoni says the most striking thing about the proposed national curriculum for languages is the lack of hours allocated. ''I see the great benefit kids have here speaking German every day'', she says.
''If you want to deliver a quality language program, you have to spend more time teaching the kids.''