Acting Locally

Action Research: EffectivelyEmbedding the Foundationsof the Chinese Language

Foundations of Chinese

•Chinese Character Spacing

No spacing

top

left

top

right

bottom

left

bottom

right

Foundations of Chinese

•Radicals

Foundations ofChinese• Basic Strokes & Stroke Order

Foundations ofChinese• Pinyin

Foundations ofChinese• Tones

Action Research

Problem

01

Goal

02

Context

03

What I did

04

Results

05

What I learned

06

Future Issues

07

Problem

• Too many learners tendto get into the habit ofdisregarding tones,correct pronunciation ofcertain sounds of pinyin,stroke order etc almostentirely

• Students tend to not takeon board ways of learningMandarin which actuallymakes it easier for them

Goal

• To ensure students maintain good habits when learning Chinese across all four skills

• To ensure that students apply thenecessary learning strategies to learnChinese effectively

Context

Grade: Year 12

Class Size: 8

(originally11)

Context

Level:

•Ab-initio

•Mostly do a European language as an A-Level

•Two learners had studied Chinese previously for a limited period

Context

• Course offered as part of the Radley College Curriculum Extension Programme (CEP).

• All students are studying towards the HSK Level 1 qualification and a Chinese Cultural Awareness Certificate (CCAC) thus cultural knowledge is a key part of the course.

Course: Chinese Studies

• Discover China 1

• HSK 1 Standard Course

Textbook

What I Did

Teaching split into four schemes

Oral language (speaking)

Comprehension (listening and reading) Writing

Cultural Knowledge

Spent concentrated time on covering the foundations of Chinese in the initial phase followed by regular revisitation in the units that

followed.

Results

What I learned

• Dovetail the foundations ofChinese with functional languageto enable meaningful learning

What I learnedHave students do exercises where knowing the meanings ofradicals and individual characters is critical for the successful

completion of a task

What I learned

• Don’t teach learningstrategies (e.g.Chineasy,mnemonics etc) as adistinct one-off,incorporate theminto the overallSOW as an ongoingtheme.

What I learned

Make sure that any characters/radicals studentsare learning to write follow a scaffolded

programme of study and are not selectedrandomly.

In the early stages, only select a fewcharacters/radicals for students to learn to

write so that they get used to writingChinese characters properly.

Future Issues

Growth mindset a requirement

for both teacher and student.

1

Plan SOWs around a number of

complementaryschemes not just one, particularly

for writing.

2

Foundations of Chinese needs to be

dovetailed into functional language

throughout the course and

continually revisited.

3