Learner Categories
School systems will be discussed in this section where the focus will be on issues arising from typical classification of students into either“foreign language learners”or“second language learners”.At the tertiary level，the impact of increasing numbers of“background speakers”on curriculum will also be looked at.Background speakers are a term used by Australian teachers of languages for a particular category of students and in this case it means both Australian-born speakers of Chinese and international students on temporary study visas，though in proficiency terms these two groups are quite different.
Discussions of the complexity of language education across several spheres of LPP activity can be seen in many terms used to describe the different types of learners，settings，methods and motivations for which these learners choose to or their parents ask them to study Chinese.The vocabulary of language in education planning therefore signals the kinds of issues and challenges that educators are faced with and engage in debate.Chinese teaching in Australia constantly categorises learners，some of the main salient features in the Australian context include:
(1)citizenship status:local or international;temporary，itinerant or permanent;
(2)national background:(European)Australian;PRC Chinese;non-PRC Chinese(e.g.Malaysian and Singaporean);non-Chinese Asian;non-Australian European or North American;and Asian Australian;
(3)ethnic background:European-Australian，Asian，Chinese-Australian;Chinese;other-Australian;
(4)language skills:passive(or receptive)knowledge of Modern Standard Chinese(MSC)or active knowledge of MSC;passive or active knowledge of characters and tones;passive or active knowledge of other Chinese dialects;monolingual English speakers;bilingual speakers of non-Chinese languages plus English.
The complex identity formations and sociolinguistics that the above classifications imply in diverse ways interact with the learners’acquisition of Chinese，their motivations and interests，and their purposes for learning Chinese.Categories by nature are fairly loosely defined.For efficiency，the focus of discussion here is restricted to the learners of Chinese in the three main groups that teachers and education administrators typically identify:second language learners，background speakers and native speakers.
Second language learners are those students who commence Chinese study without any prior knowledge of any Chinese dialect.Most of these learners were born in Australia and the majority of them speak English as their first language，though some have home backgrounds and skills in other languages.Mostly second language learners are completely beginners in relation to Chinese，having no prior experience in learning the language.
Background speakers are those who speak some dialect or variety of Chinese at home，such as Cantonese or Shanghaiese(they happen to be two Chinese dialects other than Mandarin with the largest groups of speakers in Australia).An unknown proportion of these learners has some familiarity with Chinese characters but there are no reliable statistics of the number nor of their level of proficiency.
International mother-tongue speaking students are typically learners of Chinese origin or those who speak MSC f luently，and local students who are fully proficient in Chinese，sometimes referred to as“native speakers”.