Abstract

Learning business Chinese through digital materials has become an inevitable tendency with the growth of the internet and impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite the increasing research-based publications and practices relating to Chinese language textbooks, there is a dearth of assessment indicators weight systems constructed by alternative research tools and statistical methods to evaluate the quality of the growing digital business Chinese materials. To the best of our knowledge, no literature review has been published on using the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) method to construct the assessment indicators of digital business Chinese materials. Therefore, this study aims to fill this gap by reviewing the existing, but limited, literature and providing recommendations for developing a checklist—based on the assessment indicators weight system—to evaluate digital business Chinese materials. The preliminary PC2U (Production, Content, Use, and Usefulness) assessment indicators are constructed based on the current research on business Chinese, CLTML, and relevant assessment indicators. In addition, the analysis hierarchy process (AHP) is used to construct the weight system. The results show that it is crucial to prioritize the access of digital business Chinese content. Of the three criteria in the content dimension, learning needs and credibility are equally important, and both are more important than data update. The assessment indicators are not only beneficial to fill the knowledge gap on business Chinese research, but also helpful for publishers and teachers to compile and select high quality digital business Chinese materials.

Highlights

  • Learning business Chinese through digital materials has become an inevitable tendency with the growth of the internet and impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Scarpetta and Quintini (2020) indicated that the COVID-19 crisis has resulted in a significant increase in digital learning by adults, and much of the training that had started as face-toface learning in classroom environments is being pursued online

  • Despite the increasing research-based publications and practices relating to Chinese language textbooks, including Chinese language for business purposes, there is a dearth of assessment indicators weight systems constructed by alternative research tools and statistical methods to evaluate the quality of the growing digital business Chinese materials

  • This study utilized the analysis hierarchy process (AHP) to construct the weight system for the PC2U assessment indicators, including four dimensions, 11 criteria, and 63 indicators, which were based on the current research on business Chinese, cognitive load theory of multimedia learning (CLTML), and relevant assessment indicators

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Summary

Introduction

Learning business Chinese through digital materials has become an inevitable tendency with the growth of the internet and impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Scarpetta and Quintini (2020) indicated that the COVID-19 crisis has resulted in a significant increase in digital learning by adults, and much of the training that had started as face-toface learning in classroom environments is being pursued online. The digital context of business Chinese language learning has prompted the need for featured, hacker-resistant, authentic, reusable, and useful digital materials for online learning, in-person courses, or at-home learning These features and functions are crucial for those who are non-native Chinese speaking businessmen/women (NNCSB)—as self-directed adult learners—to learn business Chinese by digital materials “whose subject matter is communicative interaction which includes a business-cultural aspect.”. These features and functions require distinguishing such materials from their paper versions. After comparing existing business Chinese textbooks with similar book titles in Chinese, such as rendering business either as commerce into 商業 (shāngyè) or 經貿 (jīngmào), or as business in use into 商用 (shāngyòng)/商務(shāngwù), and digital versions, including “Business Chinese” online, “Far East Business Chinese” (遠東商務漢語/Yuǎndōng shāngwù hànyǔ)

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