Issues in Chinese Language Teaching in Australian Schools

Abstract

The teaching of Chinese in Australian primary and secondary schools has a history of more than 40 years, but it has only been in the past two decades that it has become widespread. Nonetheless, until the last year, of the six most taught languages in schools, Chinese has had by far the smallest number of students. Several factors contribute to maintaining this situation, key among which are the greater time it takes students to master Chinese compared to other languages; the still underdeveloped pedagogy and resources for making learning Chinese an intellectually stimulating educational experience; and the impossibility of achieving good exam results due to the overwhelming number of students of Chinese background already proficient in the language. The result has been a uniform 95% drop out rate from early on. The factors involved in creating this situation are explained and concrete proposals made for improving the situation which take account of newly created gains and advocate collaborative work between those involved in teaching Chinese as an international language inside and outside China in helping to close the gaps.

Keywords:

• Chinese as a second language
• foreign language education in Australia
• international Chinese
• overseas Chinese background students

Notes

Compiled from Lo Bianco and Slaughter (2009), De Kretser and Spence-Brown (2010), and Orton (2010).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jane Orton

Jane Orton is a professor at the University of Melbourne, Australia.