Amy Ziniak for Daily Mail Australia
It's hoped a new trial, which is set to see pre-schoolers learn a second language, will help to boost the declining numbers of high school students studying languages across Australia.
The federal government has selected 40 pre-schools from more than 1,000 applicants to take part in the trial, called Ella, which will use play based apps starting from next year.
'Our children are now techsperts from early on, particularly with the vast array of interactive early education applications and games that are now available at their fingertips,' said the assistant minister for Education Sussan Ley.
'This play-based approach is therefore a fun and easy way to get our kids interested in learning skills for life, such as a language other than English, from early on in their education journey.'
Following on from the strong response to participate in the trial, Ms Ley said it clearly shows the Australian public wants the chance for their kids to learn another language from the early years through to year 12.
'And it's easy to see why, when the proportion of Year 12 students studying a language other than English has dropped from about 40 per cent in the 1960s to about 12 per cent today,' said Ms Ley.
'We also hope it will give our kids an early insight into other cultures and help promote inclusive communities, given almost one-in-five Australians speak a language other than English at home.'
12 pre schools in New South Wales will be taking part in the trial which offers five different languages including Mandarin (Chinese), Japanese, Indonesian, Arabic or French.
KU Shalvey pre school in Sydney's west will be teaching Japanese to their children and believe learning a language and literacy are two of the most important things for a child to learn.
'Learning a language you can have a better understanding of cultures and connect with the community,' said school principal Katrina McGovern.
'At an early age the learning capacity for children is optimal, the first five years is the best time they can learn.'
'We had a Japanese student here a few years ago who taught the kids a few words and they really enjoyed it, I think they will love it and it will definitely help the children to be engaged,' she said.
The trial will also reach nine pre-schools in Victoria, eight in Queensland, five in Western Australia, three in South Australia and one in Tasmania, the ACT and the Northern Territory.
Kool Kidz on Taylors in Melbourne's south east have been very much focused on their kids learning a language.
'It's a big part of my philosophy,' said school principal Sheela Edwards, 'We come from big multicultural backgrounds.'
The teacher who was born in India and lived in England for 20 years says she knows five different languages and didn't realise how much she would end up using them.
'It's so important to understand and to be able to connect with people of the world, to do business with them,' she said.
'We're no longer local populations, we need to look at global jobs, look at children travelling to Europe for work and help them to do that.'
A year ago Ms Edwards followed up on research into what languages primary schools were learning around the area.
'We wanted to see which language we could teach our kids so when they move to primary school they had an advantage.'
She found that Indonesian was a popular language so when applying she chose Indonesian which they were granted.
'This announcement came as a timely beneficial opportunity, hence we jumped on it,' she said.
'Very important, children learn from each other, it's an important part of learning.'
A high school Chinese teacher in South Australia believes pre-schoolers should definitely be learning languages.
'Learning a second language not only helps you to understand a different culture and way of thinking, it also helps you to understand your first language better,' she said.
'These days we don’t tend to teach English in the old way of understanding the parts of language: verb, adjective, pronoun etc. However when you learn a second language you invariably come across these terms (metalanguage) and are able to understand and apply it much better.'
She believes that even if students swap and change their language later on, they should have the foundations of understanding the parts of a language.
'In an ideal world, this would also positively impact numbers in high school years. Hopefully it will, that remains to be seen,' she said.
'With the increasing globalisation of the world, it is important for our future generation of students to be able to speak another language and respect and attempt to understand another culture. English and the Anglacised world is no longer enough.'
The federal opposition has criticised the trial, saying it was meant to cover 400,000 students, but it is now only going to be rolled out in 40 centres.
They have also questioned the government on allocating the full $9.8 million of funding for the one year period.
'It is being spun as a trial of a trial but what this Government would be better off doing is just delivering what they promised they would,' said shadow education minister Kate Ellis.
'This is a clear broken promise – just like the billion dollars of cuts to child care families were told wouldn’t happen but have been hit with in just a year,' she said.