On the Learning of Chinese

On the Learning of ChineseFerence MartonUniversity of Gothenburg, Sweden

Shek Kam TseThe University of Hong Kong, China

and

Wai Ming Cheung (Eds.)The University of Hong Kong, China

Although more people speak Chinese than any other language on Earth, profi ciency in Chinese is largely confi ned to the people who live in or adjacent to the Chinese Mainland and Taiwan, and to the ethnic Chinese inhabitants of the various Chinatowns in countries around the world. Despite its allure, many people fi nd Chinese a hard language to learn, including a considerable number of children who learn it as mother tongue. The basic units of written Chinese are ideographic symbols called characters; and the meaning and pronunciation of each character is determined by the tone attached to it by the speaker. Facing the very large number of Chinese characters and words, it seems impossible for learners, regardless of their native language, to master the language other than via rote memorization. The attempt to facilitate the route to profi ciency in Chinese has understandably attracted the attention of numerous psycholinguistic researchers and educators.

Using the Theory of Variation as the primary learning framework, the authors of this book conducted a number of large-scale and robustly-designed studies to investigate the relationship between the learning and teaching of Chinese, mostly among native speakers. However we believe that the results are applicable to the learning of Chinese as a second language. Studies into ways of understanding the phonological and orthographical acquisition of characters are reported; ways of helping learners come to terms with reading Chinese, a textual language that does not always correspond word-for word with the spoken discourse, are explained; and the implications of the evidence for Chinese curriculum and syllabus design are pointedly addressed by the contributors. The authors believe that there are effective ways to become skilled in Chinese and that learning Chinese can be pleasurable and interesting. They provide empirical evidence for educators, parents, policymakers and readers interested in Chinese language education. They also illuminate the path to the mastery of Chinese in schools and how Chinese should be taught in todays world.

S e n s e P u b l i s h e r s DIVS

S e n s e P u b l i s h e r s

Ference Marton, Shek Kam

Tse and Wai M

ing Cheung (Eds.)

On the Learning of Chinese

Ference Marton, Shek Kam Tse and Wai Ming Cheung (Eds.)

On the Learning of Chinese

On the Learning of Chinese Edited By Ference Marton University of Gothenburg, Sweden Shek Kam Tse Wai Ming Cheung The University of Hong Kong, China

SENSE PUBLISHERS ROTTERDAM/BOSTON/TAIPEI

A C.I.P. record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN: 978-94-6091-267-2 (paperback) ISBN: 978-94-6091-268-9 (hardback) ISBN: 978-94-6091-269-6 (e-book) Published by: Sense Publishers, P.O. Box 21858, 3001 AW Rotterdam, The Netherlands http://www.sensepublishers.com Printed on acid-free paper Cover description: The small boy is playing a game of word acquisition. The cards on the table are Chinese words but they are also components that can combine to form many more Chinese characters. All Rights Reserved 2010 Sense Publishers No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher, with the exception of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Figures ........................................................................................................ vii Preface..................................................................................................................... ix 1. Chinese and the Learning of Chinese .................................................................. 1

Shek Kam Tse and Wai Ming Cheung 2. Chinese Pedagogy and a Pedagogy for Learning Chinese................................... 9

Pakey Pui Man Chik and Ference Marton 3. Learning Tones .................................................................................................. 31

Wing Wah Ki, Ference Marton and Ming Fai Pang 4. Orthographic Awareness ................................................................................... 53

Ho Cheong Lam 5. Learning Characters........................................................................................... 75

Shek Kam Tse, Ference Marton, Wing Wah Ki and Elizabeth Ka Yee Loh 6. Learning Words ............................................................................................... 103

Pakey Pui Man Chik, Allen Leung and Ference Marton 7. Learning to Read and Write Better .................................................................. 123

Shek Kam Tse, Ference Marton, Elizabeth Ka Yee Loh and Pakey Pui Man Chik

8. Soaring across the Sky like a Heavenly Horse: Enhancing Creativity in

Chinese Writing............................................................................................... 147 Wai Ming Cheung, Ference Marton and Shek Kam Tse

9. Enhancing Creativity in Chinese Teaching...................................................... 163

How Chung Lee, Ference Marton and Shek Kam Tse Epilogue ............................................................................................................... 177 Ference Marton Notes on Contributors .......................................................................................... 183

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LIST OF FIGURES

3.1 Experiencing 3 different sets of words ..................................................... 37 3.2 The 9 words identification Exercise ......................................................... 39 3.3 The 4 types of situations in the 3-words matching exercise ..................... 42 3.4 Interface of the Post-test ........................................................................... 43 3.5 (a) A dimension of variation experienced among different words................. 49 3.5 (b) Variation and invariance of aspects among the learning instances........... 49 4.1 Hierarchical analysis of the characters maa1 mother, sik1

the sound of raining and ziu3 to shine ............................................ 55 4.2 Fifteen typical configurations of the characters........................................ 55 4.3 Analysis of semantic-phonetic characters maa1 mother and

sik1 the sound of raining ........................................................................ 56 4.4 The experience of reading an unknown character .................................... 57 4.5 Discrimination of characters with and without a mouth ................... 68 4.6 Part of the response of a child to the above discrimination exercise ........ 68 4.7 Discernment of mouth from the characters ....................................... 68 5.1 Other examples of spatial configurations of Chinese characters .............. 76 5.2 Pictorial origins of morphological components: fish, mouth, foot

and water .................................................................................................. 85 5.3 An alternative to the traditional dictation task.......................................... 88 6.1 An illustration of the part-whole relationships shown in lesson 2A ....... 110 6.2 Different aspects being held in focus and structured in lesson 2B ......... 113 7.1 The hierarchical structure of the project curriculum............................... 130 8.1 Total scores of the Chinese creative writing scale for the target and

comparison group participants................................................................ 153 8.2 Total scores of the Williams Scale for the target group participant........ 153 8.3 Total scores of the Chinese creative writing scale of Class A and

Class D participants ................................................................................ 154 8.4 Total scores of the Williams Scale of Class A and Class D

participants ............................................................................................. 154 8.5 The sequential structure of lesson 3D in learning study 4 ...................... 156 8.6 The part-whole relationship of lesson 3A in learning study 4 ................ 157

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SHEK KAM TSE

PREFACE

Increased interest in China from those outside has led to a corresponding interest in the study of Chinese. Spoken by one-fifth of the worlds population, Chinese is one of the official languages of the United Nations and the most widely used language in the world.

Notwithstanding its popularity, Chinese is often considered as one of the most difficult languages to learn by many language learners. Two major difficulties often perplex learners: (1) the basic writing units of Chinese are semantic-phonetic com-pounds called characters, and each of them has its own meaning and pronunciation; and (2) word meanings of homophones in Chinese are distinguished specifically by lexical tones. Due to the very large number of Chinese characters and words, it seems impossible for learners, regardless of their native languages, to master the language by rote memorization. The acquisition and processing of the Chinese language, thus, have provided interesting fields of study in psycholinguistic research.

Although orig