Comparing Orton’s Recommendations and VCE Chines...
Apart from provisional reasons and factors of teachers and administration，the 2016 Orton report has acknowledged the unique nature of Chinese language and the current situation of student demography are two major discouraging reasons to students.Learning Chinese requires longer studying time and more effort to achieve the same proficiency level of learning a European language.At the same time，“the crushing number of L1 student”and a large number of home speaker learners being assessed as L2 to get a better score are both demerit factors to develop continuing L2 learners in Years 11 and 12.
Following this understanding，one of the six recommendations in the 2016 Orton report suggests to“create an acceptable form of wording that will make Chinese as a Second Language in Years 11 and 12 legally accessible only to classroom learners，thus allowing them the potential to achieve a high score in Year 12 assessment by competing only with genuine L2 learners”(Orton，2016:20).
The introduction of VCE Chinese LCS seems directly address this recommendation.Although this study is designed for students who have already studied Chinese as part of their secondary education for at least 100 hours prior to the commencement of Unit 1，some students with less formal experience will also be able to meet the requirements successfully.The study also follows the standard 200-hour instruction time as other language courses，with each unit normally last over the duration of a semester and involves at least 50 hours of scheduled classroom instruction.
In addition，topics throughout out the 4 units are separated but correlated under two strands①Chinese Language and②Culture and Society in Chinesespeaking communities.Half of the teaching and learning activities use English as the medium language，which concentrate on academic reading and writing.Chinese is also the medium language but focuses on informal oral communication and much short writing practices.The assessment structure also reflects the similar weights of using English and Chinese.In theory，this design，will“better meet the needs of students who are not from a Chinese-speaking background”and can increase the cohort of continuing L2 learners(Minister for Education，2017).
With two years of provision，we do not have sufficient data to confidently conclude if implementing the new VCE Chinese study can rebalance student’demography and foster the cohort of L2 learners.However，there are some indications that can be traced from scrutinising the study design，especially from the underpinning cultural and educational theories.