VCAA changes to VCE Chinese

[Tasmania Jones]

VCAA was proposing changes to Chinese to encourage more non-Chinese background students to study it.
I'm not sure what VCAA has decided to do yet but from other information it appears that they intend to modify the requirements for Chinese SL like this:

A student is NOT eligible for Chinese Second Language if they:

• have had more than 200 hours’ study of the language at the secondary level (or the equivalent); or
• regularly use the language for sustained communication outside the classroom, including, but not limited to, the home.

I don't think they have decided what to do yet, but I hope they don't implement this changes. I intend to do Units 3/4 next year, so will this affect me? Or are the changes to be implemented for 2015 or later?

See these resources for more information:
http://www.vcaa.vic.edu.au/Documents/vce/vceconsult/Strengthening_Chinese_language_provision_in_senior_secondary_schooling.pdf
http://www.theage.com.au/national/education/home-chat-cause-for-rethink-on-school-mandarin-eligibility-20131016-2vmzn.html

VCAA website seems down right now though 

EDIT: fixed list formatting

[datfatcat]

I don't think you will be affected

"Chinese Second Language
Accreditation period - Units 1-4: 2008-2016" ~From VCAA.  Normally when they want to change something, they do it after the accreditation period (ie 2017 in this case).

A student is NOT eligible for Chinese Second Language if they:

• regularly use the language for sustained communication outside the classroom, including, but not limited to, the home.

I wonder how they would know 

[Tasmania Jones]

I don't think you will be affected

"Chinese Second Language
Accreditation period - Units 1-4: 2008-2016" ~From VCAA.  Normally when they want to change something, they do it after the accreditation period (ie 2017 in this case).

I wonder how they would know 

Yes, and also what do they mean by "regularly use"? My mother is Chinese but my father is not so we mostly speak English at home, although my mother sometimes talks to me in Chinese. I also speak Chinese with my grandparents. The report also mentions that

It is not consistent with current legislation to prohibit students from enrolment in areas of study on account of their birthplace or their parents’ birthplace


And, say a student learns Chinese from years 7-10 for about 2 hours per week for 40 weeks
2x40x4=320 hours! So I'm not sure how the 200 hour rule will work.

Thanks for the reassurance; I thought it would be a bit late to make the changes next year 

[BigAl]

I don't think you will be affected

"Chinese Second Language
Accreditation period - Units 1-4: 2008-2016" ~From VCAA.  Normally when they want to change something, they do it after the accreditation period (ie 2017 in this case).

I wonder how they would know 

I have an Uyghur friend.. He fluently speaks Chinese..he was going to do Chinese as a second language but they didn't let him do it. I think they are testing your language level before commencing the unit...but I did turkish as a second language although it is my first language...shame on me that I got 35

[datfatcat]

He fluently speaks Chinese..he was going to do Chinese as a second language but they didn't let him do it.

According to current requirements, just speaking chinese fluently is not really a valid reason for them to reject you doing second language.  He must have met other requirements, such as living in china for more than x years (i think it is 3?  I cannot remember)

[Tasmania Jones]

Yeah, the current requirements to do CSL are:

A student is NOT eligible for Chinese Second Language if they have had either: 12 months or more education in a school where Chinese is the medium of instruction, or three years (36 months) or more residence in any of the VCAA-nominated countries or regions (the nominated countries and regions are China, Taiwan, Hong Kong or Macau).

[datfatcat]

Yeah, the current requirements to do CSL are:

A student is NOT eligible for Chinese Second Language if they have had either: 12 months or more education in a school where Chinese is the medium of instruction, or three years (36 months) or more residence in any of the VCAA-nominated countries or regions (the nominated countries and regions are China, Taiwan, Hong Kong or Macau).

Haha glad to know.  I didn't do chinese, so i am quite happy with my knowledge of the requirements

[TrueTears]

Back in my days, the boundary between SLA and SL was very vague... e.g, there were some really fluent people, who had schooling in China, but still managed to do SL (VCE chinese politics ftw!).

[psyxwar]

Back in my days, the boundary between SLA and SL was very vague... e.g, there were some really fluent people, who had schooling in China, but still managed to do SL (VCE chinese politics ftw!).

This is still the case today.

[TrueTears]

lol not surprising at all ey

[lzxnl]

I think some of the proposals are outrageous.

A VET subject!? Half the cohort wouldn't bother with that because of the lack of aggregate boosting.
Discriminating based on ability? PFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFTTTTTTTTTTT. Are you kidding me. Are you REALLY kidding me. You're telling me, that I have to do some of English AND have it counted in my primary four, despite not speaking it at home, but that people who speak Chinese at home should be disadvantaged? What sort of stupid half-twisted logic is this? So we're being disadvantaged by the fact that we speak Chinese at home, and that we study it earlier? Well go have a cry VCAA, because penalising students from being good at Chinese is preposterous. If anything, if you want to make it easier for non-Chinese background students, acknowledge the fact that people with a Chinese background can speak a second language well! The only bit about the entire document that made remote sense was pushing up the scaling in SLA. However, seriously, another Chinese division is in order. The gap between SL and SLA is ridiculous.

Besides, good luck identifying who has spoken Chinese at home. If you disadvantage education in a subject, people will feign stupidity to pass your interview or whatever test you have. What on earth do you plan on achieving from that?

And I thought the maths and sciences were bad. This is racism.

http://www.vcaa.vic.edu.au/Documents/vce/vceconsult/Strengthening_Chinese_language_provision_in_senior_secondary_schooling.pdf

I quote: The VCAA has received many requests for this option from schools offering VCE CSL to non-background learners. They generally request that no student with any Chinese background be permitted to enrol in CSL.

See my original point about English and Chinese. Where the heck is the logic in that? If Chinese is our second language, what do you want us to enrol in? JUST because our parents are Chinese, doesn't mean we have to be any good at Chinese. Some of us here aren't actually any good at all in Chinese! By that logic, we should be able to all enrol in ESL then, because we're of "Chinese background" and presumably cannot be expected to cope with competing against Australians in English. Is that going to work? No.

VCAA never ceases to disappoint me.

[LazyZombie]

It is a tough problem, the current system is bad, but I'm not too sure if theres a better way of splitting the subject up. The line between SL, SLA and first language is vague and quite stupid. (And allowing people to do ESL and SLA together wtf?)
But its true, any person at the moment with a non-chinese background who wants to do VCE chinese is at a huge disadvantage. Maybe look to at overseas curriculum designs? IB? Do they do it any better?

[zhen]

 Yeah, wish they thought of it sooner, because if they did I wouldn't be feeling so overwhelmed this year!  After all, when you're not exposed to mandarin at home, it's really hard to compete against mandarin-speaking peers, but I learnt that the hard way.

[vox nihili]

It's interesting that they would only focus on doing this with Chinese. Most likely, of course, because there are a large number of students who feel they are being disadvantage by taking Chinese SL because of the number of native speakers taking it. A lot of LOTE subjects are dominated by native speakers, though. At my school we had students take Macedonian, Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian through VSL and all of them got relatively mediocre scores despite all being native speakers themselves. It makes the process particularly frustrating for students who may like to take one of those languages, or the many others that experience the same thing. Very tricky to get right and without being too simplistic about it. Having Chinese heritage does not constitute a legitimate reason to prevent someone from taking that subject. Having it as an active language at home though, I daresay does.

[Tasmania Jones]

*part of quote removed*
Having Chinese heritage does not constitute a legitimate reason to prevent someone from taking that subject. Having it as an active language at home though, I daresay does.

I completely agree that heritage should have nothing to do with it. Some people I know with a Chinese background can hardly put a sentence together in Mandarin and are hopeless at writing. But how would VCAA know if it is an active language spoken at home, and to what extent? As TT already stated, some people supposed to be doing SLA have slipped through the gaps. This would be even harder to measure.

I daresay that work ethic does play a part too in Chinese background students getting high marks for CSL.