About the Indigenous Language Fluency Transfer System online intensive training course

The Indigenous Fluency Transfer System (ILFTS) online training course is open to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community members who are interested in developing a fluency transfer system for their language.

Each workshop will be 90 minutes in length and will provide both practical guidance and collaborative working time, where participants will be led through a hands-on, output-based learning series. By the conclusion of the course, participants will have completed the Level 1 Language book for their language including all recordings and instructional materials.

Course outcomes

• Each participant group will be able to produce a finished version of the Level 1 Language book for their language.

• You will have created a set of accompanying recordings and instructional materials developed through the process.

• Participants will have a clear roadmap for sustaining and expanding their fluency programs.

• You will have developed capacity within your community to continue ILFTS implementation independently.

• Participants will receive a comprehensive Level 1 Language book Development Manual, created by Indigenous Fluency Now. The manual will incorporate insights from Australian communities and workshop participants.

Beyond the course, participants will become part of a small but growing network of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities implementing the ILFTS. This network will provide support to one and other throughout the process, with opportunities to share resources and best practices relevant to the Australian Indigenous language context. First Languages Australia will continue to support all communities interested in this work.

About the ILFTS

The Indigenous Fluency Transfer System and Curriculum is a comprehensive, sequenced curriculum project designed to help new learners become proficient in their Indigenous or endangered language. This system uses a communicative approach, and focuses on new learners being able to effectively communicate in their language. Taught in full immersion from the first lesson, the curriculum progresses in spirals. This means that each topic is revisited with increasing complexity throughout the levels, and eventually a full scope capturing the language is achieved. The foundation of the curriculum are hundreds of hours of audio recordings from fluent Elders or proficient speakers. These recordings form the core support for learners. 

Each of the four levels consists of two books: a language instruction book, and a literature (story) book. Immersion teaching support is provided with a direct acquisition teacher's manual containing immersion teaching activities for the lessons.

The curriculum model and its organization are provided by Christopher Parkin and LaRae Wiley and may, with permission, be adopted for different languages. Further guidance on appropriate acknowledgement will be included in the course.

To find out more about the ILFTS, you can watch the video below and visit: ILFTS | Home

What is required from participants?

With limited places, we are looking for community members that are ready and able to commit to this 6-month course and the development activities for Language Book 1. Whilst not all members of your development team need to attend every session, at least one person will and we highly encourage as many as possible to attend.

In addition to the 90-minute fortnightly sessions, project teams will need to complete roughly 5 hours a week of resource development activities for their book. (Note: time required may vary depending on the availability of language resources in your community).

Who is the course for?

The Indigenous Language Fluency Transfer System has been designed in the context of languages with confident speakers and people with technological capability who are interested in teaching their language to other community members. It also however can be developed by communities from revival contexts, drawing upon archival resources to complete the work.

This training course is for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander language teams of two or more, at least one of whom fit each of the above criteria, and want to work together to implement this program through immersion classes of adults in their home communities. If you are not sure if this method of teaching will suit your language community, please get in touch with us.

First Languages Australia, in collaboration with the Salish School of Spokane, Batchelor Institute and the Pertame School, hosted the Salish Fluency Transfer System Workshop in June 2025. This workshop gathered more than 90 community members from more than 40 language communities across the country to gain an introduction to the ILFTS. Attendees were given a first-hand experience of the system in action, and insights into how the ILFTS can support the development of speaker communities. If you did not attend this workshop but are interested in participating in this online course, please get in touch with us to discuss this in further detail.