University Chinese

The problems and complications of categorisation become acute at University level.Typically，in tertiary language studies，Chinese departments think of their enrolled students as belonging to one of four categories:beginning learners，post-secondary learners，background learners and native speakers.

Beginning learners，as the term suggests，have not had any experience in learning Chinese.Some of them may have learned some language(s)other than English in their previous schooling，but at university they are commencing Chinese from the very beginning.Unlike their peers pursuing advanced language studies，involving culture，inter-cultural，or area studies of some kind，beginning learners usually start from the pronunciation system and orthography of Chinese，and engage in basic skills acquisition.

Post-secondary learners are those who have studied Chinese in their secondary schooling and have their final school year grades included in the scores for entry into university courses.

Background learners refer to students with some reasonable level of verbal f luency in a Chinese dialect or variety with varying degrees of mastery of written Chinese.

Native speakers are made up of enrolled native Chinese-speaking students in Chinese degree courses or Chinese electives in Australian universities.These students may have different citizenships，nationalities and economic statuses，and all of these factors have an impact on their relationship with the Chinese language and their purposes of studying Chinese，as well as an impact on learners in other categories.Up to the beginning of 2020，native-speaking Chinese students had been growing in numbers.

This section focuses on three issues in teaching of Chinese at universities:①challenges arising from grouping different types of learners in the classroom;②offering of intensive in-country Chinese programs and different models;and③how the needs of international students from Chinese backgrounds can be satisfied.