Challenges in Encouraging a More Balanced Student ...

Challenges in Encouraging a More Balanced Student Demography

The previously mentioned federal and Victorian studies and policies on Chinese Language school programs(Sturak and Naughten，2010;Orton，2008;2016;Minister for Education，2017)all point out the strong presence of native Chinese speakers(international students)and home speaker learners(Australian born or Chinese decadences born and grow up in non-Chinese speaking counties)in Chinese language programs at Victorian schools.This situation has been discovered since the early 2000s，prior to the operation of NALSSP.However，to Australia’s national interest，both federal and state governments seek to develop the number of L2 learners and their proficiency level in Chinese.Therefore，the provision of LCS is expected to encourage more L2 learners without Chinese background to study Chinese at Year 11 and Year 12.

The frequent reasons that drive students to choose a language subject are cultural connection，the level of difficulty and potential benefit in the job market(Lo Bianco and Slaughter，2009;Orton，2016).Therefore，the strong bond of Australia-China relationship and economic connection certainly has created an advantageous environment to achieve this goal.Both government authorities and education researchers(Orton，2008;Lo Bianco and Slaughter，2009;Sturak and Naughten，2010;Chen，2015;Minister for Education，2017)have acknowledged the economic significance of promoting school-level Chinese program and expect the new course can contribute to fostering students’longterm learning aspiration and increasing the employability of school graduates in markets where has strong presence of Chinese community.

However，the inherent difficulty of learning Chinese is a strong demerit point that hinders a lot of students choosing Chinese at Year 11 and Year 12.Chinese has long had a reputation for being difficult for English speakers to master(Moore et al.，1992)，and in the 2016 report，most non-background students dropped Chinese occurred at Year 12，even in the longest running programs across the country(Orton，2016).