Modeling the relationships among teacher instruction, learner belief, and learning strategies in Chinese character learning by alphabetic learners

Abstract

With the increasing research on self-regulated learning of English as a foreign language, scant attention has been devoted to investigating Chinese as a foreign language (CFL). To partially address this issue, we investigated self-regulated Chinese character learning by alphabetic learners. Using structural equation modeling, we constructed a model of the relationship among teachers’ instructions, learners’ beliefs, and learning strategies based on a survey of 202 CFL learners. The model indicated that teachers’ instructions directly and positively affect learners’ beliefs and learning strategies. However, learners’ beliefs cannot predict what strategies they adopt in character learning. The findings of this study shed light on the effective teaching of Chinese characters to CFL learners. We suggest that in addition to shape-related and pronunciation-related instructions, CFL learners should be provided with more meaning-related instructions and that Chinese character typing should be introduced to facilitate the learners’ use of effective strategies in self-regulated character learning.