Teacher Competency:Knowledge and Skills

The ability to speak a standard native speaker Chinese(e.g.，Beijing accent)has been widely sought in the hiring process，production of audio-lingual and now digital language resources.On occasions，it is being self-promoted by classroom Chinese language teachers.Anecdotes in the staff common room were exchanged from time to time about a better desired level of the language proficiency expected of Australian teachers of Chinese，particularly their linguistic and culture knowledge.

On the other end of the spectrum，native Chinese language teachers were not taken too seriously by their students and their teaching colleagues occasionally，for not being able to manage the classroom or adopt a teaching pedagogy believed to be more effective or suitable for the local context of teaching and learning.Often，both groups of native-speaker Chinese language teachers and non-native-speaker Australian teachers of Chinese felt frustrated as each complained about the other in his or her inability in certain aspects of teaching and learning.The native-speaker group were generally believed to be unable to create a more student-centred language classroom to engage students.Whereas，the non-native-speaker group were claimed to offer a washed down language program with the aim to more entertain students than teach properly the target language.In a more strategic staffing arrangement，many schools，especially independent schools，which have languages on offer in their curriculum，would employ a native-speaker Chinese teacher aide to assist the non-native speaker teacher of Chinese to ensure quality language teaching.