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墨尔本华人社区集会抗议维大取消中文课程
据2009年5月6日《澳洲人报》报道，墨尔本华人社区部分成员5月4日在维大Footscary校区举行抗议活动，反对校方取消中文课程。
参加抗议活动的维州华人社区领袖指出，我们需要更多熟悉中文和中国文化的人才，校方的这一决定令人难以置信。
维大校长Elizabeth Harnan为校方这一决定辩护。她说，这是根据学生的要求作出。
Harnan校长表示，维多利亚大学第一优先的是面向我们的社区提供服务，维州是一个多民族和多种语言的社会，超过40%的学生来自非英语背景。
而墨尔本社区人士向校方表示需要英语课程帮助他们通过他们的专业课程学习。过去几年，对我们在提供教学的外语需求较少。
校方一位女发言人说，决定提供强化英语课程是根据对学生的调查结果作出。一些澳洲出生的学生，在获大学录取后，英语能力仍需要改善。
她说，校方取消中文课程，主要是因为人数大幅下降。第一年有36人报读，第三年只有5人在学习。这并不是学生想学的课程。
校长表示决定不开中文课程，不会使哪位学生处于不利地位。想学中文的学生，可到墨尔本大学进修。
至于维多利亚大学为何保留越语课程，校长解释说，越语是墨尔本西区一门重要的语言。
维州的华人社区协会则表示，它将游说联邦和维州政府，要求更改这一决定。中国经济对澳洲变得越来越重要，不应取消中文教育。
Victoria University axes foreign languages for English
May 06, 2009 Article from: The Australian
VICTORIA University has dropped all its language courses except Vietnamese, while intensifying remedial English courses for which students are clamouring.
Members of Melbourne's Chinese community demonstrated yesterday outside the university's Footscray campus against the decision to stop teaching Chinese language.
"We need more and more people familiar with Chinese language and culture, so this move almost beggars belief," said the president of the Victorian chapter of the Chinese Community Council, Stanley Chiang.
Victoria University's Vice-Chancellor, Elizabeth Harman, defended the move, which she said was in response to student demand.
"Victoria University's first priority is to the communities we serve, which are ethnically diverse and multilingual with more than 40 per cent of our students from non-English-speaking backgrounds," she said.
"Our community is telling us that they want English language programs that help them through their courses of study. Over recent years, relatively few of them have expressed a demand for the (foreign) language courses that we have been teaching."
A university spokeswoman said the decision to intensify the teaching of English was based on the results of student surveys. Some Australian-born students were still lacking English proficiency after receiving university places.
Chinese had been axed, she said, substantially because of the dwindling numbers. While 36 were enrolled for the first year, just five were studying the subject in the third year.
"This is not a course that students want to do," the spokeswoman said.
Ms Harman said no student would be disadvantaged as a result of the decision not to teach Chinese.
She said students who wished to study Chinese, and other languages, could undertake those studies at the University of Melbourne, where there would be more places available.
Victoria University is reducing its language courses to a single language, Vietnamese, which Ms Harman said "is an important community language in the west" of Melbourne.
Dr Chiang said the council would lobby federal and state ministers to reverse the decision.
"We understand fully that in these economic times the university might have to rationalise and reconsider where to place their emphasis," he said. "But we would have thought that as China's economy becomes more and more important to us, that Chinese language teaching would be the last thing to cut." |
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北加州札记，Napa Valley (2010-12-21) 车友 
发表于 2009-5-2 00:17
