Conceptions of Chinese Language in the Australian Curriculum and the Reality of Chinese Language Use in the Chinese-Australian Community

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.