The Efforts of State Government

Victoria proclaims the value of all languages and has introduced a number of initiatives for all language courses，including Chinese.It has been one of the earliest states that recognised the significance of Asian literacy and implemented state-level efforts to promote school-level Asian language programs，and studies and reports(Orton，2008;Lo Bianco and Slaughter，2009;Sturak and Naughten，2010;Chen，2015)have actively discussed the situation and recommendations of promoting Asian language education since the introduction of NALSSP.In 2008，Melbourne Declaration further strengthened the importance of developing Asian literacy in Australia and promised the provision of quality Asian language programs as parts of compulsory school curriculum in all school year through NALSSP.

To achieve the goal of building an Asia-literate Australia for the national economic and politic interests，both the Federal and Victorian governments’focus on developing a large number of young Australians with high-level proficiency as well as cultural awareness in Asian languages，especially those four targeted languages.Therefore，funds flow to supporting and developing innovative school-level Asian language programs，curriculum and professional development for Asian languages and studies，teacher development on delivering high-level language teaching in conjunction with cultural awareness.

In the past years，there have been four significant Chinese-specific initiatives in Victoria.Therefore，despite a downturn in learner numbers，it has still close to 50 percent more students taking a language in Year 12 than the national average and more than half the total learners of Chinese in the country(Orton，2016).Between 2009 and 2015，the Department of Early Childhood Development(now DET)supported the Chinese Teacher Training Centre(CTTC)which support professional development and produced research into programs and practices of teaching Chinese in Victoria and created tailored resources to promote sound pedagogy and provide students with more independent opportunities to use the language.At the end of 2012 Victoria introduced mandatory teaching of a language in all schools and this resulted in a massive increase in primary Chinese programs statewide.Victoria’s Languages Policy of 2012 stated that bilingual and immersion teaching of languages would be promoted;two primary Chinese bilingual schools have operated for more than 20 years;in 2014，a government secondary school set up a bilingual program involving 12 hours a week of Science，Social Studies and Chinese Language Development taught in Chinese，whose target students were those graduating from one of the primary bilingual programs.A fourth innovation has been a$13.1 million program run by the international section of the DET，which was set up to send 1 500 Year 9 students from partnering schools to China for six weeks over a period of five years.

As the latest implementation influenced by decades of efforts，the newly created VCE Chinese LCS is expected to be an effective addition to Australian and Victorian’s Asian language promotion scheme.The state government is not hesitated to expect this course can yield a large number of L2 graduates with high-level proficiency in Chinese and strong competencies in employment opportunities in China-related industries.The rationale of LCSstudy design also promises to strengthen students’communication skills in Modern Standard Chinese with high-level cultural awareness and prepares them for further study and employment opportunities in China-related industries.The creation of VCE Chinese LCSseems in line with the advocacies of federal and state government.Therefore，it is worth to study the effect of this introduction after two years operation.