Chinese Language Teaching in Schools - Australia, USA and UK

• creating a supply of Chinese-language teachers;
• increasing the number and quality of school programs; and
• developing appropriate curriculum, materials, and assessments, including technology-based delivery systems.

As Australian schools are once again being urged by the Federal government to develop Asia literacy, recent developments in the United States and the United Kingdom show that this time round, Australia is not alone in the endeavour. Indeed, from the perspective of one involved in the teaching of Chinese in Australia, the experience of reading the above paragraph from a report by the New York based Asia Society produces a strong sense of déjà vue and the desire to cry, “Snap!” Yet, in fact, with its organized body of trained and registered teachers, its developed, integrated curricula, resources and assessment procedures K-12, and its nationally networked programs of professional development, Chinese volunteer aids, sister schools and in-country sojourns, in the teaching and learning of Chinese in schools, comparatively, Australia is clearly miles ahead of both the UK and the US – for the time being.

The list of aspirations and imperatives to develop Chinese, and the list of obstacles and laments about developing it well, coming from the US and UK suggest the huge potential for mutual benefit if we were to gather, distil and share what Australia knows about the teaching and learning of Chinese in schools and the training of Chinese teachers. But to do that we  would need to do some fast, rigorous work – our own teaching still leads to a 94 per cent drop out rate among classroom learners, which is hardly export quality! The key to reducing that is better teacher education; more time on task than other languages, as Chinese requires; and above all, finding the way to ensure that, as a right, all students accepted into senior year Chinese have a rich educational course to follow, and examinations in which all the diligent and able can anticipate being highly successful.