Professor Stephen May advocates bilingual education

Stephen May is a professor and researcher at the University of Auckland's Faculty of Education. Photo/File

An Auckland professor and bilingualism researcher is encouraging more parents to consider bilingual education for their children.

Professor Stephen May said there were many advantages to growing up bilingual and more parents should consider Maori-medium education.

"Bilingual and immersion programmes, like Maori-medium education, are highly effective but there's a lot of scaremongering out there about them, and some widely held and very entrenched negative attitudes about bilingualism and bilingual education."

The professor of education at the University of Auckland said he grew up monolingual in Christchurch, where he had had few opportunities to learn other languages.

Learning a new language was more difficult as an adult, May said.

He learned te reo Maori after a stint teaching English as a second language in Bangladesh.

"While I did learn te reo Maori as an adult, I have and will always be shaped by that lack of opportunity when I was young and that's what I want to change for others.

"Learning a new language as an adult is often a challenge and that was the case here as well.

"So, even years later, my receptive understanding of te reo Maori is much better than my speaking ability.

"That is also often a consequence of growing up in a monolingual environment."

Growing up bilingual or multilingual is an advantage which 75 to 80 per cent of people in the world had, he added.

"Those who can only speak one language (even if it is English) are immediately at a disadvantage compared with others who are able to use a number of languages in different contexts, with different people, and for different purposes."

Te reo Maori should be the first choice for a second language, May said.

"We need to reap the benefits of bilingualism and so it makes sense, as a first port of call, that we do so by first learning te reo Maori - after all, it's our language."

Continuing monolingualism brings a danger of New Zealand being left behind and becoming more isolated, he added. "It's time we caught up with the rest of the world."