ABSTRACT
The challenges for learners of Chinese are well understood: the character based orthography, the tonal nature of the spoken language, the often unfamiliar sounds attached to Pinyin letters, unfamiliar letter clusters in words such as zhéxué and qīzhì, and the differences between English grammar rules and the unfamiliar word order and grammar rules in Chinese. The challenges for novice teachers of Chinese are also significant. Not only are they new to the languages classroom, but they are often learning to familiarise themselves with policies and practices in languages education, and with national or state curriculum frameworks or guidelines that are designed to inform their planning and their teaching. Native speaker teachers may also be unfamiliar with teaching their mother tongue, Chinese, to non-Chinese learners.
