Chinese Beginners Research Articles

面向华裔学生的“听说+读写”中文教学模式探析——以印尼共同希望语言学院2023级大专班为例

<div><p>Teaching model is one of the key factors to improve teaching quality. In view of the tendency of the current international Chinese teaching model to focus on structure and knowledge, but not on pragmatics and ability, the Chinese Language and Literature College of Jinan University in China has innovated a set of "listening and speaking + reading and writing" Chinese teaching model. This model focuses on the mutual coordination of "listening and speaking" and "reading and writing", aiming to quickly improve students' Chinese communication ability. This model has been first practiced overseas at the Common Hope Language School in Indonesia. This article mainly introduces the model and the teaching steps of the listening and speaking class in this model, and uses the students' actual grades to demonstrate the feasibility of this teaching model. The study shows that after about 6 months of intensive study in this model, students' Chinese listening and speaking ability has made significant progress. This model helps to improve the listening and speaking ability of Chinese beginners in a short period of time.<strong></strong></p></div>

A Corpus-Based Study on Cohesion Development in Writing by EFL Novices

This corpus-based study explored the development of cohesive devices in the writing of Chinese beginner learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) over a three-year span. Quantitative analysis utilizing the Tool for Automatic Analysis of Cohesion (TAACO) was conducted on a longitudinal learner corpus comprising over 500 exam essays. Lexical, syntactic, semantic, and discourse features were examined to identify reliable indices for tracking learners’ progressive mastery of cohesion. Results revealed that pronoun-related features, including pronoun density and repetition, significantly differed across year pairs and robustly predicted writing development. However, most lexical and connective indices showed ambiguous trajectories over time. The findings highlight the vital role of pronouns in building coherence for novice writers and underscore persistent difficulties in acquiring sophisticated content words and their collocations. This study contributes data-driven insights into the nonlinear processes and enduring challenges shaping EFL beginners’ cohesive competence. It demonstrates the value of computational tools and learner corpora in exploring discourse acquisition.

초급 중국인 학습자의 ‘안’, ‘못’ 부정표현 습득 양상 연구

Negation is one of the most fundamental and crucial aspects in Korean language learning. However, Chinese learners often make many errors when learning Korean negation. Due to Chinese and Korean are two totally different languages, Korean is an agglutinative language while Chinese is an isolating language, Chinese learners face difficulties in learning Korean negation. Representative negations in Korean include ‘안’ and ‘못’, while in Chinese, they are represented by ‘不’ and ‘没’. However, the negations in both languages do not correspond completely. Although there are similarities, there are also many differences. Therefore, Chinese learners often make errors in using Korean negations by the influence of their native language.
 This study aims to examine the acquisition and error patterns of negations when Chinese beginners use the negations ‘안’ and ‘못’. Firstly, learners were given tasks at the sentence and discourse levels. Through the analysis of the results, the types of errors made by the learners were examined. According to the results, there are three types of errors: substitution errors between ‘안’ and ‘못’, errors in the use of ‘안’ as a single negation form, and errors related to past tense. The causes of the errors were analyzed, and suggestions for resolving the errors were provided. I hope that this study will contribute to future education on Korean negations.

A Comprehensive Study of Chinese Beginners' Perception of Learning Japanese and Effective Strategies for Teaching Chinese-Japanese Homograph

Japanese-Chinese homographs are an essential topic in Japanese education research. This study focuses on Japanese-Chinese homographs in both the Chinese and Japanese languages. It analyzes the perception of Japanese beginners, learning difficulties, and teaching strategies using data collected from questionnaires. The study finds that as Japanese learning progresses, students gradually improve their understanding of Japanese-Chinese homographs, but misuse still occurs. Students generally perceive learning Japanese-Chinese homographs as challenging and deserving of attention. Regarding teaching strategies, students prefer self-summaries and Japanese-Japanese translations for learning Japanese-Chinese homographs. Based on these findings, the study proposes Japanese teaching and learning suggestions.

Eksplorasi Kebutuhan Pengembangan Buku Saku Deiksis Sosial Bahasa Mandarin bagi Pemelajar Pemula

This article explores the needs of Chinese beginner learners regarding a pocket guide to using Chinese social deixis. The method used is descriptive qualitative with data collection techniques in the form of questionnaires. The questionnaire was distributed through Google Forms to 40 first and second-semester students or the equivalent of CEFR A1 and A2 standards or HSK levels 1 and 2 in the Chinese Language Education Study Program at the State University of Jakarta. The results of this study are 73.1% of students have a non-Chinese background, and 92.9% of students' parents do not speak Chinese, so students can only learn Chinese in the campus environment. 53.8% of students have difficulty translating and interpreting social deixis that appears in texts and dialogues. In Chinese communication, 65.4% of students feel insecure about the accuracy of the greetings they use. 96.6% of students stated that they needed a guidebook for using social deixis by compiling a list of greeting words based on the textbook's chapter order.

巴西汉语初级班学生语法学习偏误分析

巴西汉语初级班学生语法学习偏误分析

An Investigation of Pragmatic Failures in Communication for Chinese Beginners

As Chinese language is increasingly becoming the medium for intercultural communication, Chinese norms and rules when it comes to interaction are significant aspects when learning Chinese. Little studies have examined pragmatic aspects of Chinese learning to understand some of the common failures. To bridge this gap, this study aims to understand the commonalities of pragmatic failures of Chinese beginners with English as their native language. Findings suggest that the pragmatic error rate among Chinese beginners is relatively high in the social field. Additionally, pragmatic failures in communication occur in Euphemism, Command indications and Negative implications more frequently. This means that for beginners of Chinese, pragmatics is more difficult to understand, grasp and acquire. To enable Chinese beginners to be in a position to master pragmatics in language learning, this study has identified the main sources of pragmatic failures and given several recommendations that are useful in learning Chinese language. Among pragmatic failures include the characteristics of pragmatic acquisition, cultural differences, negative pragmatic transfer, and lack of opportunities for practical training. The recommendations have been given in terms of teaching level and learning level.

Developmental Features of Lexical Richness in English Writings by Chinese L3 Beginner Learners.

Lexical richness is considered as one of the most efficient methods for assessing writing proficiency and development. However, the developmental features of lexical richness in L3 writing remain relatively poorly understood compared with that of L2 writings. This study reports a cross-sectional corpus-based study that aims to explore the developmental features of lexical richness in L3 writings by Chinese beginner learners of English from the perspective of the dynamic usage-based approach. Specifically, this study compares samples of English writing by Chinese L3 secondary students (grades 7–12) aged 13–18 across three learning stages in terms of lexical sophistication, lexical diversity and lexical density. The writing samples were collected from the Writing Corpus of Chinese Ethnic Minority Beginner Learners as the Third Language (WCCMBL), and the sample sizes of the three stages remained almost the same. The results revealed that lexical richness was generally low in L3 beginner learners' writing. Specifically, L3 beginner learners used fewer diverse words and lexical words, but used numerous high-frequency words in their writing. Additionally, lexical sophistication and lexical density yielded positive growth across the three learning stages, whereas lexical diversity developed non-linearly. These findings reveal a dynamic development of lexical richness in L3 writings, with each of the three measures developing unevenly. Drawing upon these findings, several suggestions for L3 vocabulary teaching are also proposed.

Developmental Features of Lexical Richness in English Writings by Chinese Beginner Learners.

This paper reports a cross-sectional study that investigates the developmental features in second language writings by Chinese beginner learners of English by using four lexical richness measures—lexical sophistication, lexical variation, lexical density, and lexical errors—from the perspective of the language exposure hypothesis. Specifically, the study compares English compositions written by Chinese students of grade 7, grade 8, and grade 9 in terms of lexical sophistication, lexical variation, lexical density, and lexical errors. The English compositions were sampled from the Writing Corpus of Chinese Beginner Learners of English, and the sample size of the three grades remained almost the same. The analysis revealed that lexical richness in the writing samples of beginner learners is comparatively low, with beginner learners transferring lexical features of the oral register to their second language writings; furthermore, all four measures yielded significant, albeit non-linear and unevenly paced, developments across grade levels. Based on the findings, several suggestions for vocabulary teaching are provided.

A case study of adult autonomy in English-immersed conversations

ABSTRACT This paper reports a case study focusing on naturalistic communication between a Chinese beginning non-native speaker of English (NNS) and an English native speaker (NS). The participants engage informally in a form of tandem learning, with each in turn taking the dominant role in the conversation through teaching the other vocabulary items in their L1 (English and Chinese). The study sheds light on some of the conversational and linguistic features of the autonomous Chinese beginner's construction of English conversation. From the conversational patterns identified, we conclude that: (1) NS-beginner NNS conversation works best when it follows a tight turn-by-turn structure; (2) the beginner's initiation of insertion sequences and overlapping can expand conversation; and (3) both beginner NNS and NS need to make great efforts to complete question-answer adjacency pairs in order to manage the conversation. The study also highlighted how a focus on the beginner's L1 enabled them to take greater control in the conversation, despite their very limited L2 speaking ability. In these sections of NNS-dominant communication, the L2 beginner demonstrated greater language creativity. This study has implications for how NS-NNS communication might be facilitated in English-immersion contexts as well as project implications for autonomous learners and teachers.

행동계약과 쉐도잉이 성인 중국어 입문자 발음 및 말하기 능력에 미치는 효과*

This study aims to exam the research questions of how behavioral contracts and shadowing affect the pronunciation and speaking of adult Chinese beginners. In this study, the researcher conducted interventions on three adults who did not have any experience in learning Chinese. To examine the research questions, the accuracy of Chinese pronunciation and speech of 3 participants were measured and analyzed through the evaluation sheet using the multiple-baseline design across participants, which consist of baseline, intervention, and maintenance 3 stages. To improve Chinese speaking ability, speaking instruction was conducted through behavioral contracts and shadowing, and it was evaluated using Chinese pronunciation and speaking evaluation papers. As a result of the study, the intervention method using the behavioral contract and shadowing improved Chinese pronunciation and speaking ability, and showed a high retention rate in the maintenance test. Even after the experiment, the study participants were using the learned words and phrases in an appropriate situation, and they expressed the expectation that it would be very helpful in studying Chinese in the future as they gained an overall understanding of Chinese. The results demonstrated that the behavior contract and shadowing method had a positive effect on pronunciation and speaking of the adult Chinese beginners.

Chinese Initial Teaching Scheme Designed for Indonesian Beginners

As a part of the primary stage of Chinese phonetic teaching, the importance of Chinese initial teaching is self-evident, as initial pronunciation errors can affect the results of communication. Therefore, when Indonesian students begin to learn Chinese phonetics, they should first master the pronunciation characteristics of Chinese initials. This study has made a deeper exploration based on previous studies. This study aims to propose an initial teaching scheme for Indonesian beginners built on sorting out. Through comparison between the consonant systems in Chinese and Indonesian languages, analysis of the difficulties of Indonesian students' acquisition of Chinese initials, and investigation of the arrangement of initials in the “Scheme of the Chinese Phonetic Alphabet”, this study has designed a Chinese initial teaching scheme for Indonesian Chinese beginners with the purpose of improving the quality of Chinese initial teaching in Indonesia. Literature integration analysis and a qualitative research method were adopted in this study. By integrating existing literature and combining them with the authors’ own research findings, the design of the initial teaching scheme is optimized. The design features of this scheme are mainly reflected in the following aspects: first, arranging Chinese initials from easy to difficult to learn; second, strengthening the teaching and practice of Chinese initials which are different from Indonesian initials and simplifying those of Chinese initials which are identical to Indonesian initials; third, using the Indonesian alphabet or syllables as a guide to bring out Chinese initials. All of these can be regarded as the main results of this study and can be used as reference for further studies.

TONE TEACHING PLAN DESIGNED FOR INDONESIAN CHINESE BEGINNERS

Chinese is a tonal language, and Chinese tones can differentiate meanings of Chinese characters. In contrast, Indonesian is a language without tones, which explains why Indonesians have trouble acquiring tones when beginning to learn Chinese. Having recognized the importance of Chinese tones in teaching Indonesian beginners Chinese, we propose in this article a tone teaching plan designed for Indonesian Chinese beginners based on detailed analysis of previous research. The plan was tested at the Pahoa School in Tangerang District, Jakarta, Indonesia. The participants were 74 middle school students who had never learnt Chinese before. After the experiment, the questionnaires were used to collect data. It was found that this teaching plan was effective. In terms of mono-syllable adjustment, most students can make four tones of Chinese, especially rising tones and falling-rising tones; In terms of bisyllable tone sandhi, most students can master the law of tone change. However, this teaching plan also has some shortcomings. For example, the forms of tone teaching and training are not diversified; the design of the neutral tones teaching is not comprehensive enough; and the distribution of tone teaching items is uneven. These drawbacks can be further improved in future research.

Note-Taking Assisted with Computers—A Practical Method to Build a Connection between Chinese Pinyin & Characters

Chinese beginners often find themselves in struggling for learning complicated Chinese characters (also known as Hanzi), after the acquisition of Chinese pronunciation (Chinese Phonetic Alphabets, also called Pinyin). Actual experience of living and studying in China exposes a fact that people on daily basis are not using Pinyin to assist pronunciation. All means of social media only have Hanzi for people to recognize. The connection between Pinyin and Hanzi is a difficult part to accomplish for Chinese language beginners. Based on several years of teaching experience of Chinese language to speakers of other languages and working memory drill in English-Chinese interpretation, the author explores a practical way to build this connection between Pinyin and Hanzi by taking-notes using computers and mobile phones in class. In alliance with fun language teaching methodologies, i.e., the Audiolingual method, Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) to reassure the memory rehearsal drill in association with imaginary situations. The research experiment results show that this method can stimulate beginners’ learning enthusiasm and arouse their confidence and initiative in the long-run Chinese language learning process and it can facilitate Chinese beginners to better communicate in the fast-changing social media.

초급중국어교재 기사문(祈使句)의 사용현황과 교육방안 연구

The imperative sentence are categorized into five kinds of meaning function; command, suggestion, prohibition, dissuade, request. According to each classification criteria, only 338 sentences were analyzed by extracting only sentences from 22 textbooks of 11 kinds of Chinese beginner textbook series. It was found that 224 sentences were used in the subcategory of the article command, and it was most prominently used at a rate of 65%. The next most requested feature is the request sentence, which is the second most frequently used rate. These command and request sentence accounted for 90% of the inquiries of the articles. The characteristics of the articles in the Chinese beginner textbook series were mainly composed of ‘吧’, which was used to make the command sentences soften. As a result, 58% of the beginner Chinese articles werefound to be the main form of the inquiry with ‘吧’ command and‘请’request. 7% of the dissuade of the inquirer who requested not to do ,and 3% of the suggestions which showed the subjective request andsuggestion of the speaker. As a result, through the beginner’s Chinesetextbooks, it is found that the main functions of the articles are mainlycommand and request functions, and there are other functions to suggestand dissuade.BR The following teaching methods were suggested through the analysis of the use of the texts in the beginner’s Chinese textbooks. First, distinguish between imperative sentence and command sentence, clarify the differences, and do not repeat the errors of imperative sentence and command sentence of the article. Second, the use of the word is diversified with various additions of the marking form through ‘V’ command sentence. Third, it is possible to use the politeness mark of imperative sentence as a courtesy expression. The use of imperative sentence in elementary Chinese textbooks represents the current state of Chinese language textbooks.

“No” — A Case Study in Corrective Feedback in a Secondary Chinese Language Classroom in Australia

Corrective feedback has been studied for decades in classrooms both for children and adults. Among different subjects, language learning, especially second language (L2) learning is one of the significant targets of corrective feedback studies. Compared to English and other European languages, however, Chinese as L2 classroom has get little attention. This paper investigates what types of corrective feedback (CF) a teacher of Chinese working at a secondary school in Melbourne provided to what kinds of errors made by students, and the effectiveness of each CF type. The data was obtained from 2 random lessons and the parts involving CF were transcribed to further analyze. The results suggest that Chinese beginners made more mistakes in pronunciation and vocabulary than in grammar, however, the teacher provided feedback to all of the lexical and grammatical errors, ignoring nearly half of the phonological mistakes. In addition, the overall effectiveness of CF was not satisfactory, especially for elicitations and recasts, which were used the most commonly by the teacher. Some pedagogical implications for Chinese teaching and Chinese teacher training are also provided.

Teaching of Chinese Degree Adverb Synonymous with the Meaning of “very” for Occidental Students at the Beginning Level: A Case Study of Chinese Beginner in Yunnan Normal University

This study focuses on one of the importantand difficult language points in teachingChinese as the second language, synonymousdegree adverbs in modern Chinese language,aiming at the beginning level of occidentalstudents who excessively rely on their mothertongue. The research has been done byobserving a group of typical adverbs with themeaning of “very” in Chinese language, such as"feichang, shifen, hen, ting, ji" in combinationwith ontology and error analysis and classroomtesting. The paper explores the reasons andtypes of errors, and designs the teaching planaccording to the testing results. Comparing thetesting results, it is suggested that comparewith error analysis, language testing combinedwith inductive reasoning is more effective inteaching synonymous degree adverbs in modernChinese language.

Collocation in beginner learner writing: A longitudinal study

Abstract The fact that second-language (L2) learners have problems with collocation is widely attested. However, few studies have investigated the development of L2 collocational knowledge longitudinally. Fewer still have employed more than a handful of participants. In addition, almost all studies to date have looked at advanced learners of English. Other L2 proficiencies and backgrounds have, by and large, been disregarded. The lacuna left by this paucity motivated the present study. Thirty-six Chinese beginner learners of Italian wrote a composition at the beginning (Level 1), in the middle (Level 2), and at the end (Level 3) of an intensive course. A small corpus of L2 Italian was compiled with the aim of investigating N + Adj combinations. Analyses revealed that the number of combinations at the beginning and at the end of the course was comparable; the number of higher frequency items, however, was greater in Level 3 compositions than Level 1 compositions. Importantly, analyses showed an increase in strongly associated collocations in Level 3 writings compared to Level 1 writings. Thus, Level 3 compositions contained not only more higher frequency combinations, but also more strongly associated collocations than did Level 1 compositions. Taken together, the study provides new insights into the development of L2 collocational competence.

A corpus study of most frequently used English verbs by Chinese beginner learners from a conceptual transfer perspective

This paper reports a study that examines the relationship between English word learning and conceptual transfer within the conceptual transfer hypothesis in second language acquisition (SLA). Specifically, the paper identifies the systematic features of the most frequently used English verbs in the extended ICCI sub-corpus of Mainland China by beginner learners of L2 English from a conceptual transfer perspective. The identified systematic features of these most frequently used English verbs are analyzed by means of their collocation, colligation, semantic prosody, and discussed in terms of the conceptual or categorization system. We found that (i) conceptual transfer errors were recurrent and systematic; (ii) these errors were different from those made by the German-speaking beginner learners of L2 English. These findings largely support the hypothesis of conceptual transfer in SLA. Based upon the findings, some suggestions for English learning and teaching are offered.

“It Makes the Whole Learning Experience Better”: Student Feedback on the Use of the Interactive Whiteboard in Learning Chinese at Tertiary Level

The widespread use of interactive whiteboards (IWB) in primary and secondary schools has been well documented, yet there is to date only limited attention to use in tertiary institutions. Macquarie University has installed this technology in many of its teaching spaces in the past few years. This paper reports a case study undertaken in the university’s undergraduate Chinese beginner course, which began to use IWB learning activities in 2009.Our study was undertaken to obtain students’ perceptions of the IWB pedagogy in Chinese language acquisition in general and in particular, of the effectiveness of IWB in the retention of Chinese characters. To many students whose first language is non-logographic, the recognition and retention of characters are the most difficult tasks in learning Chinese. Our findings indicate that the IWB’s affordance to create a variety of visual activities has impacted, most saliently, the retention of characters and syntactical elements. Students also report that the IWB has enhanced the learning experience, reflected in increased motivation and engagement through interaction with this technology. The tertiary students reveal particular learning priorities, in appreciating interaction, intellectual demand and participation, as components of effective learning. The feedback process itself proved to be useful in facilitating critical awareness in both teacher and students, of teaching strategies and learning respectively.