Learning and Teaching Strategies

Teachers should pay attention to the following learning and teaching strategies in accordance with the Chinese language learning context of NCS students:

5.3.1 Listening and Speaking

Most of the NCS students start learning Chinese language from listening and speaking. Schools are advised to plan and adjust teaching content with reference to this learning sequence.

Students usually go through the silent stage and imitation stage in second language learning. During this period, students absorb vocabulary, imitate idiomatic expressions and develop language sense through listening, but their language expression may not be complete, so teachers should tolerate and accept it. It is suggested that teachers provide language demonstration to students to create

opportunities for them to listen more, and introduce properly some Chinese words or sentence patterns to help students master common Chinese expressions.

When students have used Chinese for a longer time, they will simplify the structure or meaning of the second language and step into the inter-language stage.

Teachers should not force students to use complete sentences at this stage, but should provide more good demonstration for them to consolidate their Chinese expression.

Not only do students learn Chinese language for communication, but also for the acquisition of other knowledge. It is therefore not suitable to stay at the level of daily communication only. Instead, teachers should help them enhance their academic language proficiency and construct knowledge for continuous improvement.

5.3.2 Character Learning

Character learning is the key to reading and writing. For learning of these two areas, it is suggested that reading and writing of Chinese characters be separated.

The structure of Chinese characters is special and difficult to write for NCS students, while recognising and reading of characters are relatively easier. By separating the learning of reading and writing Chinese characters, it helps students to accumulate vocabulary, develop reading skills earlier, strengthen the input of vocabulary and ideas and build up a solid foundation of language and thinking.

NCS students are advised to first learn basic Chinese characters that are frequently used with strong word building functions. For example, “口” and “言”

are individual characters that can form different words. They are also radicals that can form different characters. Characters they formed are easy to recognise: words with “口” as the radical are usually related to movement of the mouth; while words with “言” as the radical are usually related to speaking. By selecting this kind of characters for learning, students can further enrich their vocabulary to enhance learning effectiveness. (Please refer to Appendix XVII.)

5.3.3 Character Writing

Writing Chinese characters is a barrier for NCS students in Chinese language learning. NCS learners in general lack the concept of strokes and components.

Since they do not know the structure and grapheme of Chinese characters, very likely they see characters as pictures. To learn writing Chinese characters, students should first understand the structures such as stroke or stroke order. It is important for students to grasp the concept of component grouping. With the basic skills obtained, students may use the ideographic function of Chinese characters to integrate character recognising, writing and memorising. (For radicals and components of Chinese characters, please refer to Appendix II.)

Writing is the foundation of Chinese language learning, but it is not the only objective. Neither should it be made an obstruction to Chinese language learning.

While learning to write Chinese characters, NCS students should at the same time continue their learning in listening, speaking, reading and culture etc. The accumulation, consolidation and exploration in language learning as well as Chinese character writing are complementary, which makes the learning content rich and diversified.

5.3.4 Reading

Reading is an essential part of language learning, which is also an effective way to enhance one’s academic language proficiency. NCS students need to read at any of the learning stages. Simple readings with less vocabulary and daily-life topics are more suitable for beginners. When students have acquired a certain amount of vocabulary, teachers may increase the reading amount gradually to expand their reading scope. The content of readings has to be educational at any stage. For example, reading materials for secondary students who start learning Chinese language should be selected according to students’ vocabulary accumulation. The wording of the readings should be simple, while the content should conform to students’ mental development. Classical poetry, idioms and famous quotations of limited words and rich meaning are ideal for language learning. These offer students meaning and fun in reading, so that they can learn the language in pleasant and natural circumstances.

Since reading is a kind of effective learning input, materials adopted should be healthy, consistent with students’ mental development and should meet the multicultural needs of NCS students.

5.3.5 Writing

The main difficulty that NCS students encounter in writing is that their limited accumulation of language materials is not sufficient for them to express their rich thinking and feelings. This usually makes people misunderstand their writing ability. As a matter of fact, the number of characters a student knows does not affect his/ her creative thinking. As long as there is an appropriate learning strategy for them, both NCS students and other local students can write beautiful articles. For example, primary students may start their imagination from objects or incidents in their daily life and use simple vocabulary to write poetry to express their feelings.

Given the problem of insufficient language material accumulation, it would be a good idea to integrate the teaching of writing and reading, and the teaching of writing should be arranged after that of reading. Teachers may inspire and guide students to write through the input of reading to cultivate students’ reading skills.

Teachers may allow students to start learning to write from imitation such as to write with sentence patterns provided. When students are familiar with more Chinese modes of expression, teachers may guide students to think and exercise their creativity progressively, and add their own content in writing, which facilitates independent writing at the final stage.

5.3.6 Create Rich Language Environment

The use of varied and appropriate teaching strategies and the creation of a rich language environment are beneficial to the enhancement of NCS students’

interest and motivation in learning Chinese. When students adapt to the language environment, they will voice their opinions more actively and answer teachers’

questions enthusiastically. After lessons, NCS students usually borrow books from the library actively and join Chinese calligraphy competitions and recitation contests,

bringing Chinese language learning into their daily-life.

5.3.7 Peer Learning

NCS students’ immersed learning and participation in activities together with other local students are obviously helpful to the development of their listening and speaking skills. As reflected by the experience of some schools, some NCS students are able to adapt to Chinese Language lessons after half a year or more of immersed learning, and can answer questions in Chinese.

In the initial stage of Chinese language learning, NCS students can mainly write simple sentences. Through immersed learning together with other local students and peer learning, NCS students will greatly enrich their vocabularies, and gradually increase the number of words in writing. For example, two NCS students of different nationalities who could neither speak Cantonese nor recognise Chinese characters and were not able to communicate in English were enrolled in the same school. The school arranged for them to have lessons together with other local students to learn to communicate in Cantonese in a rich Chinese language environment. After learning Chinese for a year, they were both able to speak fluent Cantonese and write orderly compositions of about 100 words for the part on “writing with pictures and vocabularies provided” in the examination.

5.3.8 Continuous Assessment, Timely Quality Feedback

Through formative and summative assessments, teachers can adjust their teaching strategies according to NCS students’ needs at different stages, in order to allow continuous improvement among NCS students in learning Chinese Language.

As shown in the assessment result, some NCS students, having learnt Chinese for seven months, have obviously increased their vocabulary and attained the expected learning outcome.