Universities

The search of documents about CLT through the accessible websites demonstrated a number of facts:①the Commonwealth and States Governments’language policies have provided the general guidelines but have not indicated any specific and concrete principles on how Chinese should be taught in individual universities;②Australian universities have the autonomous power to make a decision on their language curricula in spite of their curricula must be adhering to Australian Qualification Frame(AQF);③The curricula of Chinese language teaching in most participating universities did not address the crucial issue of difference of CHBSand NCBSin their language learning.Let us look closely at these facts:

First of all，the three key Australian national language policies(Möllering，2016)as we mentioned in the previous section only provided general guidance instead of a specific instruction to language teaching like Chinese.Two of them did mention Asian language teaching and Asian literacy but the priority was given to Asian languages in general，in particular，in Australian schools rather than universities.Taking New South Wales as an example，in secondary school level，Australian curriculum identifies three major cohorts of Chinese language learners，which are second language learners whose first language used before they start school and/or the language they use at home is not Chinese.They learn Chinese as an additional，new language;background language learners who may use Chinese at home yet not necessarily exclusively and have varying degrees of knowledge and proficiency in Chinese.This group of learners have a base for literacy development in Chinese;and first language learners who have undertaken at least primary schooling in Chinese.And they have had their primary socialisation as well as initial literacy development in Chinese and use Chinese at home.This division considers the actual situation of students at school level，and its practical value benefits teaching and learning as well as grouping of candidates in High School Certificate.

On the other hand，the internationalisation of higher education leads to an increasingly diversified students who are learning languages including Chinese in Australian universities.In addition，the changing pattern of migration to Australia，in other words，more Asian migrants than European migrants have resulted in the changing population of language learners in Australian universities.The investigation in this study showed that the general enrolment pattern of students learning Chinese in all participating universities are increasing CHBS and decreasing NHBS.Unfortunately，the significance of the driven force of governmental and institutional policies on CLT has not been brought to the forefront yet.

The second，unlike the public-school system，which is fully under the state governments’control，Australian universities have strong autonomous status which is beyond the governments control in spite of the fact that the governments have provided operating funds and other resource to these universities.Each university enjoys an autonomy to make decisions on their language curricula regardless that their curricula should be adhering to Australian Qualification Frame(AQF).In other words，each university in Australia administers in its own way，the investigation on Chinese language teaching demonstrated a strong degree of independence and autonomy in Australian universities.All existing CLT courses in Australian universities are designed，taught，and assessed based on their own strategy and plan.There is a shortage of explicit federal strategic language policies and plans(Kohler，2017)which could improve the current unhealthy situation of mixing CHBSand NCBS in the similar classes of CLT which is a common phenomenon in Australian universities.

Finally，the investigation on the participating universities showed little evidence that their curricula have carefully taken into consideration the diversity of learners of Chinese.Instead，there are many cases in which the international students from Chinese-speaking countries such as China，Malaysia，and Singapore chose the Chinese courses designed mainly for local native English speakers for the sake of getting easy credits.Regardless of course description at some universities to emphasize that the elementary or beginner course is designed for learners with no/little prior knowledge and students with higher level of Chinese language proficiency were dissuaded，it is controversial that there is no standard policy to officially stop the enrolment of those first language learners in second/foreign/additional language courses.As a solution，it becomes a common practice of dividing learners of Chinese into two main groups，namely，non-Chinese background students and Chinese heritage background students.The former includes local English native speaking students and international students from other non-Chinese speaking countries，and the latter cohort consists of Chinese native speakers who were born and have grown up in Chinese speaking countries and Australian-born residents with Chinese family background and have a certain level of Chinese proficiency.The two clusters of students present varied features in various dimensions as we can see from the interviews of their lecturers of CLT.