The writing of Chinese characters by non Chinese students in a Hong Kong primary school = 香港非華語小學生中文書寫研究

Abstract

The teaching of the Chinese language to Non-Chinese students born or living in Hong Kong has become a highly controversial and contentious issue in recent years. Many Non-Chinese students face daunting communication difficulties in their transition from kindergarten to Primary 1 classes in Hong Kong, especially in learning how to read and write in the Chinese language. In Hong Kong kindergarten classes, the chief language emphases are on listening to and speaking Chinese, the learning of how to read and write in Chinese characters being left until children are in Primary 1. The chief foci of the present research are (a) the development of handwriting competence of Hong Kong Non-Chinese Primary school students, and (b) factors affecting the development of the handwriting competence of Hong Kong Non Chinese primary school students. The research was longitudinal over an 18 months period and focused on the development of handwriting competence in Chinese characters for 43 Non-Chinese Primary One students in a Hong Kong primary school. Three mental lexicon writing assessments were carried out during the research period. The Chinese characters written by the research subjects were analyzed and characteristics of the handwriting were categorized. Factors affecting the development of Chinese character writing of non-Chinese students, including their preschool learning experience, their perception of Chinese Language learning and the support for Chinese language learning were also examined. The research analyses showed that, after 18 months, the number of the written Chinese characters competence and the percentage of correctness written Chinese characters were notably raised at the end of Primary 2. The Non-Chinese students could cope with the structure of the Chinese characters as well as the combination of word components. However, the numbers of strokes used to distinguish similar word components and homophones were difficult for some Primary 2, Non-Chinese students. On the other hand, having preschool learning experience, a love of learning the Chinese Language and having family and school to support the learning of Chinese were markedly favorable for Non-Chinese students’ in the development of Chinese character writing competence.

The contributions of this research filled the research gap of the Chinese Characters writing development of Learning Chinese as Second language. The development and favourable factors of Chinese characters writing of Non Chinese Students had been shown, which could be served as a reference for curriculum adjustment to enhance the Chinese language competency of Non Chinese Students in Hong Kong primary school.