Teaching and Learning with Different Scripts: Cross-cultural Conflict in a Chinese Late Immersion Classroom

This paper reports some of the results of a study conducted with learners of Chinese who were involved in a late immersion programme in a graduate school of education in Australia. Four learners acted as key informants for the project. The aim of the project was to explore in depth the learners' experiences of learning Chinese in an immersion setting. The learners and their teachers faced many problems during the time they were involved with this project- these problems can be described as being those involved in learning to 'do school' with/in a different script. The challenge of learning to read and write in a different script- a character-based language- was one of the challenges faced by the learners. However, both learners and teachers were faced with the challenge of coming to grips with a different script for what was meant by learning and teaching a language in a classroom.