Bucking the language trend

Safety Bay Senior High School is bucking the trend when it comes to language popularity, with more students choosing to study Indonesian over the European choice, German.

According to the latest School Curriculum and Standards Authority figures, more than 850 WA students are studying a European language with only 200 doing Chinese or Indonesian.

But Safety Bay language teacher Kerry Bailey said there were 16 Year 11 and 12 students studying Indonesian and only seven studying German.

Mrs Bailey believed students chose to study a European language because of the difficulty of learning Chinese.

‘‘They may stay away from Chinese because it is so difficult and unless you go to the country you won’t pick up the fluency quickly,’’ she said.

‘‘It is a different script, whereas European languages tend to have the same alphabet as us and the words are more recognisable.’’

Year 11 Shauna Harold is studying German because of her family background and a desire to travel to Europe.

‘‘I have family in Germany so I thought I’d learn German and then I could go visit them,’’ she said.

Year 12 student Rebecca Kimmorley chose Indonesian because she already had a grasp of it from primary school and didn’t want to start from scratch.

‘‘It is pretty simple and I enjoy it,’’ she said.