Chinese Language Teaching Research Articles

The Teaching Strategies of International Chinese Language Education Based on the Basic Characteristics of Chinese Characters

With the vigorous development of international Chinese language education and the establishment of Confucius Institutes in various countries, Chinese characters, as an important carrier of Chinese culture, present both challenges and prospects for teaching Chinese abroad in their unique forms and meanings. The purpose of this paper is to explore effective teaching strategies of international Chinese language education based on the basic characteristics of Chinese characters. The paper analyzes the current development of teaching Chinese characters in international Chinese language education. By analyzing the unique structural and semantic features of Chinese characters, the study proposes targeted teaching methods and practical suggestions on the etymology, employing phonetic-meaning integration, and culture of the characters to help learners improve the efficiency of Chinese character learning and understand Chinese culture. The study suggests practical solution for promoting the development of international Chinese language education and cross-cultural dissemination of Chinese language education. This paper underscores the significance of teaching Chinese characters as an integral part of international Chinese education.

Differentiated Instruction by Hong Kong Chinese Language Teachers for Non-Chinese Speaking Students in Mainstream Classrooms: The Roles of Teacher-Student Relationships and Teacher Motivation

Differentiated Instruction by Hong Kong Chinese Language Teachers for Non-Chinese Speaking Students in Mainstream Classrooms: The Roles of Teacher-Student Relationships and Teacher Motivation

Research on the Problems in Chinese Classroom Teaching in Ethnic Regions—Taking Four Primary Schools in Nagqu City as an Example

Classroom teaching is the main channel of Chinese language teaching, which is the process of imparting Chinese knowledge, cultivating Chinese core literacy and abilities through teaching activities in the classroom. By means of interviews and classroom observation, found that in the classroom teaching field, western China’s primary school unified language textbooks have been put into use since the autumn of 2017, and have had problems in teacher teaching, student learning, curriculum nature and classroom culture. Based on this, it is proposed that putting literacy first, emphasizing teaching research, and striving for teaching effectiveness; Promoting student development through mutual aid in lesson observation and situational teaching; Based on text, combining reading and writing to enjoy the beauty of Chinese language; Integrating education into culture, creating an infectious atmosphere, and showcasing the art of teaching, with a view to improving the quality of Chinese education and teaching in western China.

An Overview of the Milestones and Achievements in Chinese Language Education of the 20-Year-Old Hungarian–Chinese Bilingual Primary and Secondary School

The Hungarian–Chinese Bilingual Primary and Secondary School celebrates its 20th anniversary in 2024. The aim of this study is to provide an overview of the changes that the institution has undergone over this period and the major milestones it has reached. The study briefly summarises the organisational structure of Chinese language education at the institution and presents quantifiable results achieved in this field. This includes the year-end assessments of students’ performance in Chinese language classes, data from target language tests conducted by the Hungarian Educational Authority in Grades 6 and 8, and the results of the students’ leaving examinations. Finally, the study presents the further education paths of the school’s graduates, summarised by their chosen higher educational institutions.

A comparative study of narrative strategies for overseas communication in international Chinese language education: based on Confucius Institute and Goethe-Institut

A comparative study of narrative strategies for overseas communication in international Chinese language education: based on Confucius Institute and Goethe-Institut

Dynamic positioning in identity development: Case studies of Chinese university English language teachers

This multiple-case study examines the dynamics of identity among Chinese university teachers of English as a foreign language (EFL) in response to challenges that arise from individual teaching contexts. Grounded in Dialogical Self Theory (DST), the study investigates how these teachers navigate conflicting pedagogies, exercise agency, and negotiate their professional identities. Through in-depth interviews and classroom observations, the findings demonstrate the ways in which participating teachers drew on diverse position repertoires to manage the complexities of their teaching roles. The study identified several key positioning strategies, including the adoption of meta-positions, the creation of third positions, the utilization of promoter positions, the formation of coalitions of positions, and the management of cacophonous positioning. The findings contribute to the growing body of research on language teacher identity, highlighting the dynamic complexity of identity construction. The study offers implications for professional development programs, advocating for opportunities that foster critical reflection on teachers’ multiple I-positions.

Cultural Competence in Chinese Language Education: Discussing the Importance of Cultural Awareness and Sensitivity in Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language

Background and Aim: Cultural competence plays a significant role in successful language education. Studies have shown that culturally sensitive pedagogy enables teachers to connect language to an accurate cultural context, preventing misappropriate language use. This study examined the importance of cultural awareness and sensitivity in teaching Chinese as a foreign language. Materials and Methods: Data was collected using observation, interviews, and systematic reviews of academic journals. The classroom observation was selected because it provides first-hand data about how educators teach the Chinese language. The researchers also observed the impact of cultural awareness on teaching methods and outcomes. Interviews were conducted using open-ended questionnaires to obtain the benefits of cultural awareness and sensitivity in teaching the Chinese language. The systematic review helped in extracting data from the previous studies. The inductive and deductive thematic analyses were conducted based on the guidance from Byram’s intercultural competence framework. Results: The findings showed that cultural awareness and sensitivity are important in teaching the Chinese language because they improve critical cultural awareness, linguistic competency, and the ability of language educators to translate and communicate effectively. The various elements of linguistic competency that teachers demonstrate include comprehension, connotation, convention, and conditioning. Conclusion: Cultural awareness and sensitivity also help language educators empower learners and enhance their capacity to become better intercultural communicators. The paper suggests that Chinese language teachers should make regular visits to China to enhance their cultural awareness. Educators should also try various strategies, including double translation, comparison, and situational settings to integrate cultural awareness into their teachings.

A tale of two languages: charting Chinese parents’ beliefs about and engagement with Chinese and English language learning

ABSTRACT This study investigates Chinese parental beliefs about and engagement with their children’s Chinese and English language learning in Yinchuan, China, utilizing the theory of planned behaviour as an analytical framework and a mixed-methods approach. Quantitative data from 879 parents reveals a strong preference for Chinese language education based on its perceived utility, cultural identity, and socioeconomic returns, contrasting with an ambivalent stance towards English. Qualitative insights highlight the influences of nationalism, anti-Western sentiments, and the COVID-19 pandemic on parental attitudes. These findings underscore the dominance of top-down language policies and societal expectations in shaping parental choices, often leading to contradictions between expressed attitudes and realized engagement. Perceived behavioural control emerges as a critical factor, with parents navigating challenges such as resource limitations, policy instability, and the dynamics of child autonomy. This study offers valuable insights into the evolving landscape of parental involvement and the factors shaping language learning priorities, thus contributing to the growing body of literature on language education in China. These findings can inform language education policies and practices, emphasizing the need for accessible home-based resources, cultural understanding, and open dialogue to support effective and equitable language learning outcomes for Chinese children.

Analyzing The Problems of Chatgpt in Chinese International Education Based on The Classification of Educational Objectives

With the continuous development of generative artificial intelligence technology, ChatGPT has also had a significant impact on the education sector. ChatGPT can assist in the teaching practice of Chinese international education and has shown positive effects in empirical research. However, there is still insufficient research on the challenges and response measures of ChatGPT for the formation of international Chinese language education. Therefore, based on the teaching practice cases of ChatGPT in Chinese international education, this article selects qualitative research methods in methodology, summarizes the current application status and existing problems of ChatGPT in Chinese international education, and provides targeted suggestions in combination with Bloom's educational goal classification method. Research has found that, In the process of assisting Chinese international education, ChatGPT may lead to the subversion of ethical relationships between teachers and students, difficulty in ensuring the accuracy of generative artificial intelligence, or inability to meet the requirements of the artificial intelligence era. Teachers need to further improve their professional qualities, actively promote changes in educational concepts, and avoid technological dependence.

Exploring Positive Emotions and Teaching Effectiveness in Language Education: Insights From the PERMA Model

ABSTRACTPositive emotions play a significant role in facilitating successful language learning by enhancing motivation, engagement, and overall academic achievements. Nonetheless, there remains a paucity of research exploring how language educators perceive and manifest positive emotions in the context of their teaching practices. This study endeavors to fill this gap by exploring the experiences, practices, and beliefs of language educators regarding positive emotions in effective teaching. Additionally, it seeks to elucidate the pedagogical strategies they associate with fostering conducive learning environments through the lens of Seligman's PERMA model. Employing thematic analysis of semi‐structured interviews with 60 Chinese language educators, the study uncovers key positive emotions integral to effective teaching, including passion, trust, joy, and empathy. Despite the prevalence of these positive emotions, teachers reported a diminished sense of meaning and accomplishment when instructing foreign languages in comparison to the engagement and relationship elements outlined in the PERMA model. The findings shed light on a spectrum of teaching strategies embraced by these educators that align with the components of the PERMA model. By illuminating the affective dimension of language teaching, this study not only provides valuable insights into understanding positive emotions, engagement, and relationships in language education but also offers practical implications for integrating PERMA elements into language teaching and learning practices.

Fuzzy Association Rule Mining for Personalized Chinese Language and Literature Teaching from Higher Education

Due to rapid information technology growth, teaching Chinese in higher education has changed, and Chinese literary majors have vigorously evolved. The key teaching difficulties are scalability, individualized teaching, and a lack of resources and methodologies. Research shows individualized education improves topic comprehension, cultural engagement, and learner interest. Fuzzy association rule mining uses fuzzy linguistic values and membership functions to provide more realistic results. Hence, an algorithm, EF-PCL2T, has been proposed to improve personalized Chinese language and literature teaching (PCL2T) using enhanced fuzzy (EF) Apriori association rule mining integrated with the genetic algorithm. Fuzzy Apriori association rule mining identified frequent itemsets with relevant learning patterns and produced applicable association rules from datasets with fuzzy or unclear information, capturing fluctuating itemset importance and providing a flexible representation of relationships to determine student preferences. From fuzzy-related data, a genetic algorithm optimizes skill sets and creates individualized lesson plans considering each student’s competency and preferences for adjusting to personalized teaching tactics. Testing shows that fuzzy enhancement association rule mining for the PCL2T model improves student retention, PET (personalized teaching efficiency), minimal support and confidence update with fuzzy rules, and student involvement compared to other state-of-the-art methods. Students agree that tailored Chinese language and literary instruction is possible. The improvement results show fuzzy rules with minimum confidence levels of 50% to 100%, highly correlated in this model, student retention ratio of 96%, improved assessment grade of various language skills by 40 marks, PTE analysis of 93%, and student involvement ratio of 97%.

Aesthetics and Creativity: A Preliminary Exploration of Modern Poetry Teaching in Primary School Chinese——Taking Ai Qing’s Teaching of “Green” as an Example

Among all literary works, the language of poetry is the most concise, unique, and timeless, and its expression of emotions is particularly rich. Learning poetry can enhance one’s ability to appreciate various literary works. The way to enhance the aesthetic understanding of poetry itself is closely related to quality education in Chinese language teaching. Undoubtedly, it is particularly important for classroom teaching to guide students in creating poetic scenarios, inspiring them to explore the artistic conception of poetry, and guiding them to appreciate the unique expression of poetry. Teaching students the general method of self-reading and self-understanding modern poetry can be seen as a way to make poetry teaching twice the result with half the effort. Based on this, this article takes Ai Qing’s “Green” as an example to explore the teaching path of modern poetry in primary school Chinese for reference.

Innovation and integration: Analysis of research hotspots and frontiers in "Chinese + vocational skills" education—based on bibliometric analysis visualized by citespace

The "Chinese + Vocational Skills" education is a new form of education merging international Chinese education with vocational training. This paradigm has emerged as a focal point in research on international Chinese language education. This article is aimed to effectively dissect the developmental patterns and prevailing research topics on "Chinese + Vocational Skills", by employing CiteSpace, a tool for visualizing scientific data, to analyze pertinent literature spanning the last decade (2013–2023). The analysis offers insights into the overall landscape and evolutionary trajectory of research in this field. The findings therefrom indicate the followings: (1) Research on "Chinese + Vocational Skills" exhibits certain interdisciplinary characteristics, with an overall trend of rapid growth in research literature, but a relatively small volume of high-quality core literature. (2) "International Chinese Language Education", "Vocational Education", "Chinese + Vocational Skills", and the "Belt and Road" are current research hotspots in this field. "Chinese +",Chinese for Specific Purpose, demand analysis, and vocational skills serve as important turning points for research on "Chinese + Vocational Skills". (3) Research topics related to "Chinese + Vocational Skills" mainly concentrate on four aspects: international Chinese language education, vocational education, talent cultivation, as well as regions and countries, yet disparities of research endeavors exist across these fields. (4) The research frontier of the field mainly focuses on international Chinese language education, "Chinese + Vocational Skills", international vocational education on Chinese language in vocational colleges, and internationalization of Chinese language. Addressing contemporary demands, research in "Chinese + Vocational Skills" needs to align with global economic trends, cater to the actual needs for talent with such skills, and further enhance understanding from various perspectives including educational models, national demands, and internationalization efforts, thus fortifying the capacity of "Chinese + Vocational Skills" education to serve the development of industries.

Navigating linguistic ideologies and market dynamics within China’s English language teaching landscape

Abstract This study explores the intricate interplay of linguistic ideologies, market dynamics, and linguistic habitus within the context of English language education in China. Analysis of Chinese English language teachers’ (CELTs) discourse on linguistic insecurity reveals a strong association between accentedness and incompetence, as well as between nativeness and teacher expertise. Despite dissatisfaction with nativeness-oriented criteria prevalent in the field, most CELTs reported experiencing anxiety due to the social stigma surrounding Mandarin-accented English. While certain Inner Circle English varieties are viewed as the most valuable capital, local and other non-Inner Circle varieties are considered the least valuable. Notably, Mandarin-accented English gains higher symbolic value than other perceived nonstandard English varieties beyond the teaching domain. This pricing mechanism within China’s English language teaching (ELT) landscape deviates from the price formation model of world Englishes proposed in previous work, which assigns a greater value to Outer Circle varieties than Expanding Circle varieties. By contextualizing CELTs’ experiences within broader language policies, this study illustrates how national interests, beyond the influence of Inner Circle publishers, intensify native-speakerism in China’s ELT market, thus emphasizing the intricate nature of explaining nuanced pricing patterns in the autonomous market within Expanding Circle contexts.

A Review of Research on Chinese Medium of Instruction

Medium language appears in the process of second language teaching and learning with high frequency, but related researchers have different attitudes towards medium language. By reviewing the relevant literature, sorting out scholars' views on the use of mediated language in Chinese language teaching and the application experiences developed by different views, this paper summarizes the current research results on mediated language in second language teaching, especially in international Chinese language teaching, and looks forward to the future development of international Chinese language education classrooms.

Learning Strategies for Chinese as Foreign Language Learners in College: A Qualitative Study

Embarking on the journey of learning Chinese as a foreign language in college entails grappling with a myriad of distinctive challenges, ranging from navigating its intricate writing system to mastering its tonal pronunciation and unraveling its rich cultural nuances. In this complex landscape of language acquisition, comprehending the nuanced learning strategies wielded by Chinese foreign language learners becomes paramount. These strategies not only illuminate the pathways to effective teaching but also hold the key to enhancing student outcomes. Despite the burgeoning interest in Chinese language education, there exists a conspicuous dearth of qualitative studies delving into the intricacies of learning strategies within college settings. To address this gap, this study adopts a qualitative research paradigm, employing semi-structured interviews as its methodological backbone. Through these interviews, the study endeavors to excavate profound insights into the diverse repertoire of learning strategies embraced by Chinese foreign language learners in the collegiate milieu. At its core, the study's primary objective is twofold: to meticulously explore and rigorously analyze the spectrum of learning strategies woven into the fabric of Chinese foreign language learning at the college level. By peering into the multifaceted approaches employed by students, the study aspires to engender a nuanced comprehension of effective pedagogical methodologies. Moreover, the findings are poised to serve as a compass, guiding the design and implementation of tailored language learning interventions tailored to the unique needs and aspirations of Chinese language learners in college environments.

Elicitation tasks, language contact, and syllable structure in Budai Rukai

Abstract This target paper builds on previous literature in Budai Rukai to develop a nuanced framework for examining the syllable structure and the impact of Chinese language education on speakers’ judgments. It demonstrates new dimensions of overarching corroboration of intonational phonology and is a worthwhile endeavor. In this commentary, I address the issues of elicitation tasks and language contact by illustrating that the syllable structure of Budai Rukai is still undergoing age-related changes and remains to be discussed.

The Study on Sentence Difficulty of the Chinese Components

In recent years, reading comprehension has gradually become a proficiency indicator of interest in lexical and grammar. As sentences are the basic units of discourse structure, sentence difficulty is often applied to the study of text difficulty. Although there have been a number of studies on sentence difficulty, the lack of consistency in the indicators chosen or the discussion of specific grammatical issues have limited the research on sentence difficulty. Therefore, this study adopts a corpus-based approach, using a corpus as an objective and scientific data source. The study utilizes the Digital Platform for Chinese Grammar and the 8000 Chinese Words as important reference sources. Additionally, the CRIE 3.0 is employed to validate the texts and establish sentence difficulty indicators. However, due to the incomplete development of certain indicators in the "Chinese Grammar Digital Platform", the study refers to the Chinese Proficiency Grading Standards for International Chinese Language Education and Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi to establish comprehensive sentence structure and sentence component difficulty indicators. Subsequently, the established difficulty indicators are validated by conducting comparative analyses using corpora as the basis. Native speaker corpora are used as benchmarks, while Mandarin learner corpora are used for comparison, and then validate objectively through the machine learning model. These validation aims to examine the validity and reliability of the selected indicators and establish a calculation method involving " level of grammar * point distribution ratio of grammar " to determine the difficulty indicators for Chinese sentences, Additionally, expert reliability is accessed to ensure the credibility of indicators.

Effective Teaching of Chinese Nationalization from the Perspective of Cultural Differences

As the process of Chinese language internationalization accelerates, the importance of cultural differences in Chinese language teaching is becoming more and more prominent. Based on the perspective of cultural differences, this paper analyzes the cases of Chinese language learners from several countries and proposes that in country-specific Chinese language teaching, we should pay attention to the introduction of cultural background and social etiquette, and create appropriate language environment and cultural experience according to students' cultural background. By flexibly utilizing a variety of teaching materials and methods, we emphasize the cultivation of cross-cultural communicative competence and enhance the effectiveness and adaptability of Chinese language teaching.

English and Putonghua varieties in Hong Kong: language attitudes and identity

ABSTRACT With its growing global visibility and usage, Chinese has evolved into a regional and emerging global lingua franca, spoken by a significant population of L1/L2 speakers. This study expanded world Englishes/English as a lingua franca research to explore language attitudes and identity across diverse English and Chinese varieties. It compared educated stakeholders' (university students/professionals) (N = 1481) attitudes towards different L1/L2 varieties of English and Putonghua/Mandarin in Hong Kong, where both languages play an essential role under its ‘biliterate, trilingual' language policy. Findings derived from the verbal-guise technique suggest a hierarchy exists in the status of these language varieties, with L1 English at the top. A further evaluation of these varieties in the status/solidarity dimension indicates that Hongkongers' identity construction may involve proficient/L1-based English and a Putonghua variety, including Hong Kong Putonghua. Furthermore, the findings underscore the dynamic nature of language attitudes depending on contexts, pointing to a greater acceptance of L2 English and Putonghua/Mandarin varieties in less formal/more interactional L2-L2 communication. They also show a potential relationship between language attitudes and one's working experience/awareness. The paper argues that adopting a pluricentric framework to (re)conceptualise Chinese can provide valuable insights into its role in multilingual societies, identity construction, and Chinese language education.