It’s fantastic to see NSW Chinese teachers starting to share and help each other. It’s about time to connect all Chinese teachers, whether they are teaching in public or private schools, in secondary or primary schools, from universities or community schools, we are all in the same boat, especially at this time, when the “Australia in the Asian Century” White Paper has just been published last October and the “National Curriculum: Languages-Chinese” is on the consultation stage. The more we work together, the stronger our voice will be.
In her famous report, Chinese Language Education in Australian Schools (2008), Jane Orton, identified the “intercultural difficulties as a significant problem in the quality of program delivery by L1 teachers”. She means that some native teachers do not know “how to relate to Australian school learners, colleagues and parents”. On the other hand, she also mentioned that L2 teachers’ “language proficiency level in almost all areas was often not at the desired level in phonological aspects, grammatical correctness and extent of vocabulary and characters”. I believe this is a fair and realistic assessment and it reminds me a saying that I heard years ago - you cannot be a master teacher until you are a master learner.
Executives of NSW CLTA have decided to keep initiating and organising PD for our members this year. These workshops will be run by experienced teachers and the venues will be chosen by presenters/organisers. Each workshop or meeting will be about 2 hours and the number of participants will be limited depending on the venue. Another round may be considered if there is a demand.
Actually, CLTA’s first mini-workshop has just taken place last Thursday (21/03/2013). The topic has been “Teaching HSC Chinese Beginners Stage 6 Course”. About 27 teachers participated in this mini-workshop. Ideas, experiences, resources and strategies have been shared and discussed. I hope this would be the start of more interaction and exchange processes. Although we were talking about HSC Chinese Beginners, I believe we should be able to apply the resources and strategies to other L2 learners or Beginners of other levels. As I have promised, I will upload my resources in my blog. You are always welcomed to access and download them.
1. Important words appeared in past HSC Chinese Beginners papers
2. Questions appeared in past HSC Chinese Beginners papers
