BY SAT News Desk
Melbourne, 17 July: Nearly 1.3 million people have migrated to Australia during the past five years, with a substantial
increase in the number of people who speak a language other than English at home.* Reflecting
on Australia’s growing multicultural society, SBS hopes to inspire young minds by contributing to
language retention with a nationwide competition.
To celebrate a love of learning languages, the SBS National Languages Competition, is back
for 2017 and it is bigger and better. In its inaugural year, the competition received close to 20,000
entries in partnership with the Community Languages Association (CLA) and with participation
only from CLA students. This year, the nationwide initiative is open to all school students
across Australia, who are learning a language other than English. Young Australians, aged four
to 18 years, can enter the SBS National Languages Competition 2017 online by going to
sbs.com.au/NLC17. The competition will be live from 9:00am on Monday 24 July, 2017 until
midnight on Friday 1 September, 2017.
With a guardian/parents’ consent, participants will need to create a 30 second video summarizing,
“What learning a language means to me?” in a language other than English. The more creative
the better and entrants can choose to sing, enact, dress up in national costume, or simply
describe their love for languages. Once the video is uploaded, they will also be required to fill in
an entry form along with an English transcript explaining the video content.
SBS Director of Audio Language and Content, Mandi Wicks, said: “As one of the world’s most
multicultural and multilingual broadcasters, SBS Radio is proud to run this fantastic competition to
encourage young Australians to explore and celebrate their language learning. The competition
will highlight Australia’s cultural and linguistic diversity and we look forward to receiving many
entries from children showcasing their language skills for their chance to win.”
Entrants are categorised into four groups: Junior Primary (Aged 4 – 7); Primary (Aged 8 – 12);
Junior High School (Aged 13 – 15); Senior High School (Aged 16 – 18). There are four grand
prizes, one winner from each age category, who will each receive an iPad Pro 12.9 inch 256GB
for the winner and one for their school. The winner along with one guardian will also be invited to
the awards ceremony to be held at SBS in Sydney; along with a full day pass for two to Luna Park
in Sydney.
* Australian Bureau of Statistics 2016 Census of Population and Housing.
Source: SBS Media release.
