Gender differences in Vietnamese university students’ motivation and strategies of Chinese character writing

Background: Both motivation and strategies contribute to students’ language attainment (Csizér and Dörnyei, 2005; Wen, 2018). Despite previously identified gender differences in L2 learning motivation or strategy studies (Green and Oxford, 1995; Csizér and Dörnyei, 2005), little has been done in assessing gender differences in motivation and strategies of Chinese character writing. As Chinese character is fundamental to Chinese reading and writing, L2 learning should include CSL/CCW and investigations gender differences should also be expanded to this field.

Research objectives: The purpose of this study was to 1) investigate gender differences in both CCW motivation and strategies among CSL Vietnamese Students, and 2) to test the consistency of correlation patterns between the two groups of students.

Research methods and preliminary findings: Based on a recently-validated inventory to assess Approach to Learning of university students’ CCW (ALI-CCW, Ye, Yang, and Liang, 2020), we investigated students’ approach to learning CCW which incorporates both motivation and strategy of CCW. Participants were 339 CSL students from four Vietnam universities. There are 5% male students.

The results of ALI-CCW showed that surface motivation negatively correlated with female students’ CCW strategies (both F1 and F2). Deep motivation was significantly correlated with both F1 (Indirect Strategy) and F2 (Knowledge-based Strategy) in the two groups. However, male students’ deep motivation of CCW has stronger correlation with both strategies as compared to female 39 students. The results implied that male students are more motivated in terms of intrinsic interests than female students in CCW. Despite female-dominant phenomenon of CSL in Vietnam in real situations, gender differences of motivation and strategies of CCW should not be neglected. On the contrary, the results call for focused instructional practices/interventions to promote female students' deep motivation of CCW. Copyright © 2020 International Conference on Gender, Language and Education.