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