Making Chinese learnable for beginning second language learners?

Making Chinese learnable for beginning second-language learners in English speaking countries is a fragile undertaking. Major pedagogical problems confront Chinese language teaching and learning. Teachers from China lack the necessary education for making Chinese learnable for many students, and in particular lack the knowledge for researching improvements to their own teaching. Consequently, teachers of Chinese can make learners feel the language is impossible to learn. In part, these pedagogical problems may be redressed through innovations in teacher-researcher education. Singh and Ballantyne report on a project which engages teacher-researchers from China in making Chinese learnable for monolingual English speaking primary and secondary school students.