Attitudes toward Hanzi production ability among Chinese teachers and learners

Yuan-Yu Karen Morgan, Purdue University

Abstract

Writing Chinese characters (Hanzi) from memory has been considered the most difficult aspect in acquiring Chinese for second/foreign language learners. In recent years, with the advancement and wide availability of Chinese typing, it has been advocated to replace the traditional pen-and-paper approach with keyboarding to bypass the Hanzi writing hurdle to increase teaching and learning efficiency. By using two separate web surveys, one for the instructors and the other for the students, this study aims to investigate Chinese teachers' and learners' attitudes toward Hanzi production ability and whether Chinese keyboarding should replace the traditional handwriting approach. The respondents were asked to indicate their agreement on a six-point Likert scale. The instructors were randomly sampled, but the students were recruited by requesting the instructors to forward the survey to their students. In the end, there were 117 instructors' and 398 students' surveys completed for analysis. The different opinions of the respondents (within the group as well as between the groups) were analyzed by cross tabulations and the significance was determined by Chi-square tests. The results indicated most of the instructors and students had strong support for Hanzi production ability and moderate support for using computer typing. However, their support for Hanzi production ability decreased as they were asked about the importance of this ability compared with speaking, listening and reading skills. The majority of the respondents also believed both handwriting Hanzi and computer typing should be stressed in the Chinese curriculum. The results of the statistical analysis indicated that instructors' support for Hanzi production ability mostly depended on whether their programs focus on speaking/listening or Hanzi writing; whereas different students' opinions were mostly related to their length of study instead of their majors or prior Hanzi learning experiences. Generally the instructors agreed more strongly than the students about the Hanzi writing difficulty. Yet they believed this ability would help students prepare for higher levels and students should practice writing Hanzi by following the stroke order, but keep the repeated writing to a minimum. On the other hand, the instructors also believed typing should be introduced early and used often, but disagreed with the students about what type of assignments should be typed. Based on the results, it is recommended students' oral production should be required before Hanzi production. Chinese programs should strive to understand the needs of their students first, and then determine the proportion of handwriting and typing—to design a balanced curriculum.

Degree

Ph.D.

Advisors

Wei, Purdue University.

Subject Area

Foreign language education

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