Abstract
Australia is a multicultural and multilingual country, with more than 685,000 people using Chinese at home. Home language maintenance and development (HLM&D) has thus become an important issue in Australia. This chapter statistically analyses Australian Census data to illustrate the use of different varieties of Chinese language among the Chinese-Australian community as well as a significant shift towards English. In contrast to this linguistic complexity, the Australian Curriculum mandates the teaching of Modern Standard Chinese (MSC) and emphasises teaching Chinese as an economic resource. The curriculum, therefore, does not accurately reflect the state of Chinese in the Chinese-Australian community and is not designed to facilitate HLM&D. This chapter argues for a move away from the economic rationale for teaching Chinese, increasing teachers’ knowledge of the complexity of Chinese students’ linguistic backgrounds, and incorporation of other varieties of Chinese into the curriculum to help address language shift in the Chinese-Australian community.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | Rethinking the Asian Language Learning Paradigm in Australia |
| Editors | Kayoko Hashimoto |
| Place of Publication | Cham, Switzerland |
| Publisher | Springer-Nature and Palgrave-Macmillan |
| Chapter | 3 |
| Pages | 45-71 |
| Number of pages | 27 |
| ISBN (Electronic) | 978-3-031-74149-4 |
| ISBN (Print) | 978-3-031-74148-7 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 2024 |
Keywords
- Home language maintenance and development
- Language shift
- Chinese language
- Chinese community
- Australian Census
- Australian curriculum