An evaluation of the effectiveness of a Chinese character learning software on Chinese character retention for English speaking background learners of Chinese Dr Felicia Zhang University of Canberra, Australia
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Abstract: This paper describes the results of a project that evaluates the effectiveness of the Chinese character learning software Skritter to enhance student learning for English speaking background learners. English speaking learners from an Australian university are the participants in this project. These learners consisted of absolute beginners and intermediate learners who have already acquired around 500 characters through their previous study.
The study was conducted over 14 teaching weeks with 4 face-to-face contact hours per week. In the project, students with IPhones or I pads and PCs were encouraged to use the Skritter program on a daily basis. Their progress in character acquisition was tested through midsemester and end semester exams. Participating students’ Skritter usage information such as usage patterns was also correlated with test and exam results. For ethical reasons, it is impossible to establish a genuine control group. Therefore, pseudo control groups are established using test and examination marks for the same university subjects in previous years. Data from 2012 pseudo control group was used to compare with data collected from the 2013 group of students. Apart from quantitative, correlational data, qualitative data was also collected through an end of semester survey to gauge the strategies students might have used in learning Chinese characters.
Introduction Students who participated in this project were English speaking total beginners of Mandarin Chinese as a foreign language. At the beginning level of learning a L2, pedagogical scaffolding is essential. This is because learners from a first language background which is distant (e.g. English speakers learning Mandarin) from the target language would inevitably select what they are familiar with if no pedagogical scaffolding is provided. In the case of English learners of a tonal language, in learning to speak, they would choose to concentrate on consonants and vowels rather than tones. Consequently, from the teaching point of view,
at this stage, it is important to choose learning material carefully so that the salient features of the language are made more prominent for L2 learners to select aurally first through their perception. This way, L2 learners will select what is deemed relevant by native speakers in target language communities.
Triggers for this project Observations of zero beginning students’ learning behaviour in 2012 brought out the fact that mobile devices such as IPhones, I pads, and Android phones were becoming increasingly prevalent in classrooms. The researcher noticed that many students did not come to class with printed notes nor computers. They only came with IPhones or I pads. During class, rather than writing down the notes and concentrate on the lecture, they strained to read from the tiny screens of their mobile devices. They no longer write down what they perceived any more in English. The result of adopting such learning strategy meant that they performed extremely badly in recognising and writing characters as well as in oral tests. Poor performance in oral tests was due to relying on Google translate to write their conversations rather than constructing the conversations themselves. They could, however, still demonstrate a similar level of competence in listening. This could be attributed to the fact that learning through the Somatically-Enhanced Approach, students still had to mobilise their own bodies in the process of learning.
This disturbing turn of events in 2012 caused the author to question the role of mobile devices in Chinese learning especially with respect to the acquisition of Chinese characters. Clearly in the mobile age, we cannot keep mobile devices out. So if we can’t beat them, we need to join them.
Literature Review In this section, I would first evaluate some past research in how zero English beginners learn Chinese in a SEA classroom based on data collected from 2001 to 2003(F. Z. Zhang, 2006). Findings of a study which evaluated SEA to teach Mandarin prosody strongly suggested that SEA influenced the acquisition of Mandarin prosody and tones of the group of students taught by SEA. Acoustically, after 30 hours of face-to-face training, students’ voice quality changed profoundly when speaking Mandarin compared to when they spoke English, their
mother tongue. In other words, when speaking Mandarin, they spoke with a higher average mean fundamental frequency (F0) with wider pitch range (measured by the average mean F0 SD) and were capable of raising the maximum of their voice range to accommodate for tones. These students’ performances were then verified by a group of nine native speakers of Mandarin through a perceptual experiment. Results of this experiment confirm that the students taught by SEA performed better than the control group who were not taught by SEA. The level of agreement reached by the nine NSs was very high as indicated by an inter-rater reliability score of 0.92 (F. Zhang, 2012). What did these L2 students do when learning Chinese characters? Qualitative data from these 22 students from 2002 to 2004 showed that all the students involved tended to start the learning process by working on the characters covered each week on their own. They looked up dictionaries and wrote characters on paper. Students in the SEA group used a variety of techniques to try to memorize characters. They did not just write and rewrite the characters as the students in the control group did. Most students in the SEA group made up flash cards and tested themselves as they either prepared or revised the language learned. They utilized audio files on the course dataCD to check their learning. For these students, access to instant feedback through sound files on the unit CD was one of the most facilitative aspects of the learning environment.
Admittedly, these students in 2001 to 2004 did not have mobile devices. The computer and the CD were the two technological tools they could have used to assist their study. Nevertheless, writing physically by hand on paper was still central to their learning process.
Evidence from neuropsychology Cao et al (2012), in a Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging study which investigated the areas on the brain network of reading that writing Chinese characters have suggested that writing using the hand achieves better character retention and facilities better accommodation at both visual form level and mapping level. Hand writing shows that improving the quality of visual-orthographic representation boosts the processes of connecting orthography to semantics and phonology (Cao et al., 2012).
Tan, et al (2012) conducted a study involving number of grade 3 to 5 primary school students. They hypothesised that typing in pinyin may conflict with the typical reading development processes that start with visual-graphic analysis of written characters and that are enhanced by handwriting. Using pinyin to input characters, the visuospatial properties of characters indispensable to Chinese reading are never involved during the typing process. Therefore, if children use the pinyin input method early and frequently, particularly before reading skills have been acquired, their reading development could be slowed. This research confirmed Cao et al’s finding that learning to read Chinese is associated with handwriting. Importantly, Tan et al found that children’s reading scores were negatively correlated with the use of the pinyin input method, with a stronger correlation found at the higher grade: r = −0.347 and p < 10−7 for fourth graders, and r = −0.405 and p < 10−9 for fifth graders. They did not find a significant correlation between pinyin typing time and handwriting time (r = −0.015 and P = 0.805 for grade 4, and r = −0.13 and P = 0.054 for grade 5). Thus, the negative association between pinyin use and reading performance does not appear to be mediated by time spent handwriting. Tan et al purported that ‘pinyin use seems to have its own negative impact on reading, presumably because it interferes with the learning of the visuo-spatial properties of characters’ (Tan et al., 2012). The implications of Tan et al’s study (2012) are significant. Zero beginners of Chinese in a learning Chinese as a foreign language environment are learning in conditions worse than grade 1 primary students in China. L2 students do not have opportunities to test their recognition of characters learned in the environment. UC’s 2012 students’ failure to learn Chinese characters most likely have been caused by them not using their hands to write characters.
Context of the project At this Australian university, students are required to demonstrate a level of competence in listening, speaking, reading and writing in Chinese. At this stage of Mandarin language learning, at the end of the semester which constituted 56 face to face contact hours (divided into 4 face to face hours per week for 14 weeks), zero beginning students should be able to: 1. Demonstrate the ability to perceive tones and then produce the correct tones;
2. Demonstrate the ability to perceive the sounds of Chinese and produce the correct tones and sounds which are characteristics of words; 3. Demonstrate the ability to produce comprehensible Chinese within 56 contact hours on a variety of topics. 4. Demonstrate the ability to recognise around 200 Chinese characters. 5. Demonstrate the ability to write around 200 Chinese characters.
In 2013, there were 21 total beginners. The whole cohort was taught by the Somatically Enhanced Approach in teaching Mandarin using the same teaching material as in previous years. The teaching material included a unit Moodle site containing lecture recordings, unit materials and listening activities. Each student was also provided with a unit dataCD on which the unit texts were in .html. On the .html version of the textbook, each Chinese vocabulary or sentence was linked to an audio file. In the first three weeks, no pinyin was provided for Chinese vocabulary or sentences. From week 4 onwards, L2 students were introduced to the consonant charts of Mandarin Chinese. It is presented as below:
After week 5, pinyin was introduced in lectures and tutorials alongside the steps in SEA. Pinyin was introduced by getting students to suggest the spelling of the sound pronounced by the teacher using the consonants on the chart. It was not provided in the notes. This painstaking step has been instrumental in teaching these L2 students how to match sounds in Mandarin with the pinyin spelling. This seems to have enhanced L2 students’ memory of Chinese vocabulary. Skritter Skritter is a web-based program which also has applications for I pads and IPhones but not for Android devices. In addition, the Skritter program requires Flash. Therefore Skritter cannot be used in devices without flash. The website Skritter.com allows users to study Chinese characters using active recall and a spaced repetition method. The active recall is implemented through an interface where the user is prompted with the definition of a character, and then draws it stroke by stroke onto the screen using a mouse or tablet. Spaced repetition is implemented by a Skritter scheduling algorithm that schedules each user’s reviews based on a rough estimate of average memory retention. Over time, the scheduling
algorithm creates an adjusted model of memory retention for each user, which improves the efficiency of that user’s future study. A user can log in and begin practicing whenever they choose, and for as long as they want. While practicing, the software directs which items the user will study, so that the spaced repetition system can be implemented.
Results Quantitative data based on test results: Table 2: Comparative student performance data in 2012 and 2013 mid semester 1 exams. groups
Number of
Mean
Std. Deviation
students
Statistical significance between the two groups
Listening
1
32
10.76
3.039
Q1-3/15
2
10
9.72
3.732
Listening
1
32
3.36
1.546
S1Q4/5
2
10
2.40
1.049
Listening
1
32
2.266
.962
S1Q5/5
2
10
3.02
1.166
Reading
1
32
1.89
1.039
S2Q1/10
2
10
5.92
3.057
Grammar
1
32
5.28
2.004
S2Q2/10
2
10
7.15
1.717
Translation
1
32
4.94
5.282
S2Q3/20
2
10
7.45
6.162
Writing
1
32
17.41
8.43915
S2Q4/30
2
10
21.02
11.20324
.379
.075
.046*
.000**
.011**
.214
.155
Key: p value is set to p=0.05, *: p < 0.05; **: p
