2017 Vol.15, No.2 (issue 30) - Singapore Centre for Chinese Language

1. The Relationship between Text Types and Task Difficulty in Chinese L2 Teaching

peiyee.cheng@sccl.sg (Cheng Pei Yee) — Tue, 19 Dec 2017 13:41:03 +0800

On the basis of Child’s (1987) text typology, this study explores how text types influence cognitive complexity, task difficulty and L2 learner’s performance. 15 English speaking learners of L2 Chinese participated in the study. They were asked to complete two monologue tasks in Chinese. Task One was to produce instructive texts and Task Two evaluative texts. The findings of the study indicate that learners performed better, in terms of fluency, accuracy and complexity, when producing instructive texts than
evaluative texts. Accuracy and complexity were not significantly influenced by text types, but fluency was found to be significantly associated with text types.

Keywords: text typology, task difficulty, cognitive complexity

5. Chinese Language Learning Difficulties in Singapore Students: An Investigation of Primary Five and Secondary Three Students

peiyee.cheng@sccl.sg (Cheng Pei Yee) — Tue, 19 Dec 2017 06:07:31 +0800

Understanding students’ difficulties in learning Chinese helps teachers to better implement educational reforms. This paper aims to investigate Chinese learning difficulties from the students’ perspective in Singapore. Eighty Primary Five and 109 Secondary Three students participated in this study. Open-ended questions in a questionnaire were used to investigate students’ learning difficulties in the four language skills, namely listening, speaking, reading and writing. After that, researchers used a double-blind coding approach to categorise students’ learning difficulties and described the data collected. The results showed that both Primary Five and Secondary Three students faced problems with vocabulary, in aspects of listening, speaking, reading and writing. The problems transitioned from word level to discourse level with the increase of age.

Keywords: learning difficulties, students’ perspective, Singapore Chinese, Chinese learning difficulties

4. The Six-step Interactive Approach of Teaching Clauses and Its Application in Oral Chinese Teaching in Singapore

peiyee.cheng@sccl.sg (Cheng Pei Yee) — Tue, 19 Dec 2017 06:04:37 +0800

This paper aims to apply the Six-step Interactive Approach of Teaching Clauses to the teaching of oral Chinese in Singapore. The approach combines the concepts of pivotal clause, communicative competence, communicative approach, IRF model and integrated approach of language teaching. It reinforces the teaching strategies of “read and speak three times” and “learn words with the help of sentence patterns”, as advocated by the Curriculum Planning and Development Division, Ministry of Education, Singapore. The approach, as the name suggests, comprises six steps: recognize the words, learn the clauses, answer questions using the clauses, ask and answer questions using the clauses, role-play using the clauses and communicate using the clauses. With its emphasis on teacher-student interactions, the approach will improve students’ verbal communication ability, and eventually meet the
teaching objectives set by MOE.

Keywords: clause, interactive, communication, teaching oral Chinese, Singapore

3. A Typological Illustration of the Inclination to Use the SVO Order in Singapore Chinese Language

peiyee.cheng@sccl.sg (Cheng Pei Yee) — Tue, 19 Dec 2017 06:02:26 +0800

This study attempts to prove that the SVO order has gained a dominant position in the grammatical evolution in Singapore Chinese language. The theory of the 15 internal relations in the VO-OV order (Dryer, 1992, 2008; Haspelmath, 2005) in linguistic typology as well as other related studies are applied. Taking a historical and geographical point of view, the study also adopts Heine and Kuteva’s (2005) narrowing theory in grammatical replication in language contact. It illustrates that the inclination to use the SVO order in Singapore Chinese language is mainly due to an inheritance of language order from the Southern Chinese dialects and the influence exerted by the SVO order in English and Malay language.

Keywords: Singapore Chinese language, word order parameter, language contact, narrowing

2. A Survey on Chinese Characters Learning Strategies of Malay Students in the Faculty of Engineering at a University in Malaysia

peiyee.cheng@sccl.sg (Cheng Pei Yee) — Tue, 19 Dec 2017 05:58:40 +0800

Many non-Chinese students think that Chinese characters are difficult to recognize and memorize. To help them overcome such difficulties, it is important to identify effective Chinese characters learning strategies. This study aimed to find out the Chinese characters learning strategies used by non-Chinese students, and the correlations between the strategies and Chinese characters acquisition. The research was conducted at a Malaysian university where students are mostly indigenous. 146 engineering students who were learning elementary Mandarin Chinese as an elective course participated. Participants were asked to respond to a set of questionnaire which was adopted from Ma’s (2007) Character Learning Strategies Questionnaire. The results showed that the students used Chinese characters learning strategies at a moderate rate. The most used strategies were memory strategies, followed by strokes learning strategies. Revision strategies were least used. The results also indicated that only character-form learning strategies and inductive learning strategies had significant correlation with students’ Chinese characters acquisition. The findings suggest that teachers should encourage students to use more Chinese-character learning strategies, and employ character-form teaching strategies and inductive teaching strategies in the classroom.

Keywords: Malaysia, Malay, Chinese character learning strategies, Mandarin Chinese, second language, foreign language, learning motivation