A study of Chinese teaching as a foreign language at Radford College in Australia

• Main Author: 陳柔均
• Other Authors: 丁威仁
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2015
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/de7rgs

碩士 === 國立新竹教育大學 === 中國語文學系碩士班 === 104 === Abstract Australia is a nation of immigrants. Immigrant families cover the country far and wide and these families often use multiple languages. In 2012, the Australian government released the“Australia in the Asian Century White Paper,”which described Asia as having the dominant role in international economics and politics. This portrayed the importance of Australia capitalizing on opportunities in Asia. Consequently, Asia-related research and study began to become more important in school curriculums. When the frequency of trade between China and Australia increased, so did the importance put on learning Chinese language in Australian schools. The Australian government has begun focusing on relevant courses that will help the next generation of Australian students grow into a more Asia-oriented world. An example of this more Asia-oriented study is present at Radford College. Radford College is both a primary and a secondary school. Chinese language courses are mandatory for primary students. For secondary students, Chinese language courses are an elective. In the primary school, students are exposed to Chinese language courses for up to fifty minutes a week. In order to improve students’ motivations towards learning Chinese and increase their interest, teachers try to use various teaching methods through multimedia, songs, games, and more. Teachers emphasize the diversity and necessary autonomy in Chinese language learning. Unfortunately, the teachers’ attempts to make the classroom more “interesting” impeded upon the students’ ability to improve their Chinese. Often, in the primary school, students did not develop Chinese language vocabularies that excelled compared to the ones they began the semester with. After a semester, the Chinese students in Radford College’s primary school could not complete a satisfactory sentence when speaking Chinese. Due to this teaching style in Radford College’s primary school, when entering secondary school the students were forced to adjust to self-learning. They also had a lack of knowledge about Chinese radicals by the secondary stage (which are commonly regarded as the building blocks of Chinese language and characters), which forced the secondary school teachers to spend much class time teaching students the basic components of Chinese. Parents have an optimistic attitude toward Chinese language courses when the students are in primary school, but wonder why their students cannot join the advanced curriculum when graduating to the secondary school. This situation reflects the fact that certain changes need to be done to Redford College’s Chinese curriculum in order to both satisfy the Australian government’s emphasis on proficient Asian studies students and to provide students with the best tools for their own self-improvement. Otherwise, the students’ Chinese capabilities will suffer, and the future generation of Australians will not have the necessary capabilities to handle an Asian-dominated international environment. In the primary school, students are only exposed to Chinese for fifty minutes each week. The Radford College primary school’s Chinese teacher attempts to expose the students to Chinese language contextualization, but the time allotted to Chinese learning and this method prove to be grossly inefficient. In the primary school, classroom time is not utilized competently, and the Chinese language students’ comprehensive development is stagnated. In the secondary school, students are able to choose Chinese language courses as an elective. There are three courses each week for a total of three hours per week dedicated to Chinese language learning. The students in the secondary school are highly motivated and have clear learning objectives, which leads to positive learning outcomes, student attitudes, and parental support. In this situation, the teacher clearly has a target when constructing and conveying the lesson. The learning environment in the secondary school is relatively rigorous—in Radford College’s primary school, the teacher values student participation alone. However, in the secondary setting, students were required to complete listening, speaking, reading and writing benchmarks. Thus, for the high school students, self-learning standards were set very high. Key words: teaching Chinese, second language, Australia, Chinese language education, Radford College