Abstract Summary
This study will investigate the Chinese character learning of students with alphabetic writing system language backgrounds via a nation-wide investigation, which furthers the assist in understanding language learning strategies in this context as opposed to reviewing studies of learning English and other European languages as a second or foreign language.
Abstract :
Chinese language teaching around the world is a relatively new phenomenon when compared to the traditional practice of teaching European languages. Despite its recent entry into language study options, Chinese language education around the world has boomed from the start of the 21st century. However, previous studies into Chinese character learning suggest that the learning of Chinese characters is a key but difficult facet of Chinese language acquisition.
Although research on Chinese characters learning is becoming a field that is increasingly relevant, it remains a topic that few have yet ventured into. Moreover, among the limited existing studies, researchers have mainly focused on an analysis of Chinese characters and the teaching strategies employed. The learner perspective has been generally ignored. Furthermore, to date there has been no nation-wide research on the strategies, or comparative studies among English-speaking Chinese learners.
In view of this, this study will investigate the Chinese character learning of students who study Chinese in higher education with alphabetic writing system language backgrounds with the latest framework. To more specific, the purpose of this study is to investigate learner’s strategic learning in the process of Chinese character learning.
To do so, the researcher is conducting a nation-wide investigation of Chinese learners. By using statistical methods, psycholinguistic approaches and education theories, the study explores learners’ learning strategies and self-regulation to learning Chinese characters. Based on this, this study broadens the understanding of how strategic learning affects the results of Chinese learning. In addition, as self-regulation is seen as important notions in terms of recent theoretical developments in applied linguistics this study also makes a significant contribution to not only the study of Chinese character learning, but also has implications for theory as applied to other languages.
