Editorial.

Scrimgeour, Andrew

This issue is the first in a series of special issues focusing on a specific language, or group of languages, that are taught in Australian schools. Chinese has been selected as the first language for a number of reasons. China is Australia's major trading partner and a key player in our ongoing economic development and prosperity, and is also one of the major sources of prospective residents, students and tourists who contribute substantially to our economy and our social makeup. Mandarin Chinese and Cantonese together now make Chinese languages the most widely-spoken languages in Australia after English. It is commonplace to see bilingual signs in Chinese characters and English, not only in airports, but also in retail areas and tourist districts. At international sporting events it is not uncommon to see Australian products being advertised in Chinese to domestic and international audiences.

Despite this relatively rapid rise in the presence and use of Chinese languages in our community, and the presence of Chinese as a second language program in an increasing number of schools, the teaching of Chinese still faces many challenges, and the numbers of non-Chinese background students undertaking Chinese in Year 12 has not risen in line with expectations over the last decade or so. There have, however, been some major initiatives in research, curriculum, and policy for Chinese teaching and learning in schools, including Jane Orton's reports on the current situation in Chinese language education in Australian schools (2008, 2016) and the Student Achievement in Asian Languages Education report (2011) published by the Research Centre for Languages and Cultures at University of South Australia. Also significant is the Australia Curriculum: Chinese (Australian Curriculum and Assessment Authority, 2012), which recognises the diversity and dynamism of the Chinese language speaking community and of learners in our schools by providing dedicated learning pathways for learners of three distinct cohorts: first language learners, background language learners and second language learners.

These research reports and curricula are, however, insufficient to address the day-to-day challenges that teachers of Chinese face in schools. First and foremost among these challenges is the question of how best to teach what is arguably the world's most difficult language to a dynamic and complex cohort of learners. The tonal features of spoken Mandarin (Putonghua), the absence of features such as verb tense and conjugation, and the demands of learning an entirely new orthography with thousands of characters, create an extraordinary burden on both teachers and learners as they engage with these new concepts in the context of a language program that offers just a few hours teaching time per week.

The second major challenge teachers face is how to deliver a program to learners from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds and prior experience in using the language. Textbooks for Chinese are typically designed for second language learners only. There is little available in terms of extension work or differentiation of task or content. Teachers, within their own contexts, need to find ways of supplementing the content to meet the particular needs of student groups at each year level. A related challenge concerns how to deliver a truly intercultural program that respects and responds to learners' own linguistic and cultural backgrounds, when textbooks typically focus only on Chinese language, with few references to Chinese cultural traditions, and which hardly reflect the lived experience of students' peers in Chinese communities around the world. Again, teachers are left to their own devices in determining how to bridge the gap between learners' linguistic and cultural backgrounds and the challenge of Chinese language and its contemporary cultural contexts of use.

Aspects of these challenges are explored from diverse perspectives in this issue. In her introductory article, Orton addresses the key challenges confronting teachers and learners in the Chinese classroom, highlighting some of the features of Chinese that necessitate a more language-specific and learner-centred approach to teacher education, resource development and classroom practice. She highlights in particular the disparate needs of second language and Chinese background learners who find themselves in the same classroom and often undertake the same senior secondary assessment, despite their very different experiences of learning and using Chinese. This creates a distinct disincentive for second language learners to continue their Chinese studies beyond the compulsory years. She notes these difficulties in the context of calls to strengthen Chinese programs and to increase the number of non-background learners completing high school with some proficiency in Chinese. Orton concludes by highlighting some of the positive initiatives that have been taking place in Chinese language teaching, drawing special attention to the raft of new programs designed to address the challenges of learning Chinese by providing more time on task and more substantial content, by linking the learning of Chinese to the content of other learning areas.

Prescott and Zhang build upon Orton's introduction by providing a more detailed account of the variety of immersion or content and language integrated learning (CLIL) models being employed in schools in Victoria. They present a detailed analysis of one example of a program adapted to the particular challenges of teaching Chinese, and the use of Chinese as the medium of instruction in other learning areas. They provide examples of how the challenges of language teaching and enhanced content learning may be integrated in a meaningful way, ensuring substantial gains in language proficiency while also attending to sustained learning in key learning areas addressed through the target language.

Huang and Cordelia draw attention to the significant potential of the Chinese language speaking community as a key resource in enhancing and enriching learners' classroom-based learning experiences of Chinese. They report on a project to bring classroom learners into regular contact with older Chinese speakers in the community, analysing the effect of these intergenerational and intercultural encounters on language learning and the appreciation of Chinese language and culture. At a time when both the policy and practice of Chinese teaching tends to focus on the rise of China as the rationale for Chinese learning, these authors remind us that Chinese is more than a 'foreign' language. As a highly significant language in our community, it is a resource that can be utilised for the benefit of learners' language and cultural understanding. They argue that providing young Australians with the opportunity to understand and appreciate Chinese language and culture as dynamic and significant parts of our own linguistic and cultural landscape should be a core rationale for Chinese language teaching.

I hope you enjoy the focus on Chinese in this issue, and I look forward to providing additional issues with specific language focus in coming volumes.

Andrew Scrimgeour Editor