The next steps for teaching characters in CFL: Investigating the effects of four character-teaching methods on beginner learners

This study employs a quasi-experiment design to compare the merits of different CFL teaching approaches in an Irish secondary school. Four groups of beginner learners aged 14-16 were studied for one academic year. Each of four groups was assigned a different teaching approach of focused memorisation (FM), delayed character introduction (DCI), character colour-coding (CCC) or the unity curriculum approach (UC) – which places equal focus on reading, writing, speaking, and listening – for the course of the study.
Two written evaluations were conducted after 14 and 28 weeks of teaching. The current paper reports the participants’ results in their recall and recognition of characters, as well as the use of characters in sentences. Results indicate that the methods of FM and CCC have the potential to aid character composition learning, while the UC approach may assist the students in learning how to use characters in sentences. This paper offers evidence-based opinions on how future CFL curricula for schools might be shaped. This includes the exploration of a new teaching methodology (encompassing the FM, CCC, and UC approaches), increasing the classroom hours to aid the learning of a new writing system, and a specific assessment - testing overall language acquisition as well as character acquisition - to extrinsically motivate learners.
在過去的幾年中，中文外語教學（以下簡稱CFL）在世界範圍內大為普及。儘管漢字被認為是中文學習的主要困難之一，但針對各種教學方法對漢字學習所產生影響的研究依然匱乏。本研究採用準實驗設計，比較了應用於愛爾蘭中學學習者中不同教學方法的優缺點，四組14-16 歲的初學者參與了一個學年的實驗研究。每組分別應用不同的教學方法，分別為專注記憶（FM），延遲漢字學習（DCI），漢字顏色編碼（CCC），以及在學習過程中將關注力均勻分佈給聽說讀寫四個技能的統一課程方法（UC）。然後分別在授課14 周和28 周後進行了書面評估。本文展示了參與者在回憶和識別漢字方面的成效，以及漢字在語句中的運用。結果表明，FM 和CCC 的方法可能會幫助漢字書寫的學習，而UC 的方法可能會幫助學生學習如何在句子中使用漢字。在完成一個學年的課程後，以問卷形式收集的參與者回饋也表明，漢字確實是學習中的難點。本文就未來的漢語外語課程設置提供了基於實證研究的建議，包括對新的教學方法（融合了FM, CCC 和UC）的探索，增加課堂時間以説明學習漢字書寫系統，並利用專門針對整體語言習得和漢字習得的測試來外在激勵學習者。 Copyright © 2022 Department of Chinese Language Studies, The Education University of Hong Kong.