Abstract
In Australia, both Aboriginal languages and Chinese are the oldest but still alive languages taught as first and second languages in the Australian Curriculum. Although the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are supposed to be the “First Nation” in Australia, in fact, their languages are spoken dialects and languages without their own writing system. In the late 1830s, when the Bible was first translated into Aboriginal language through Latin symbols, the Aboriginal writing system was established. Basically, the existing Aboriginal writing system is only the English orthography based upon 26 alphabets and 3 vowels transcribing the sound of the Aboriginal languages without meaning. The major concerns of learning Aboriginal languages as a second language are to better understand local Aboriginal language and culture as well as why it plays such a big part in their lives in the country. In contrast, Chinese is a system of complete logographs consisting of a huge number of pictograms. Most of the non-English speaking students from kindergarten to L12 prefer to study Chinese mainly due to the fact that China is supposed to be the second largest economy in the world aiming at economic exploration and the huge market owing the population of 14 billion. However, when they learn Chinese-as-second-language, they find out that it is “too foreign” and “too difficult” as the hardest language to learn in the world. This paper investigates the writing systems and as-a second-language education of Aboriginal Languages and Chinese in Australian Curriculum from a contrastive approach.
Author Information
Diana Po Lan Sham, Hong Kong Chinese Institute of Engineers, Hong Kong SAR
Paper Information
Conference: ACE2023
Stream: Foreign Languages Education & Applied Linguistics (including ESL/TESL/TEFL)
This paper is part of the ACE2023 Conference Proceedings (View)
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To cite this article:
Sham D. (2024) A Contrastive Study Between Aboriginal Languages & Chinese: From the Writing System to the Second Language Teaching in the Framework of Australian Curriculum ISSN: 2186-5892 The Asian Conference on Education 2023: Official Conference Proceedings https://doi.org/10.22492/issn.2186-5892.2024.27
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.22492/issn.2186-5892.2024.27
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