Emergent writing of Chinese Characters by Pre-schoolers in Hong Kong

Abstract

Should pre-schoolers start learning how to write Chinese characters? This has been a controversial topic among the public and education circle in mainland China and Hong Kong. In the 60’s and 70’s, as writing was part of the requirement for Primary One admission tests, kindergartens had to start preparing children by drilling them into practicing writing. This was a painful experience for many pre-schoolers as their cognitive development at that age were not ready to differentiate and identify character structure and character stroke sequence. Many of them lost interest in learning Chinese characters, although some of them did pick up this required skill from mere drilling. This practice has been discouraged by the Education Bureau of Hong Kong Government. However, some kindergarten teachers and parents still keep this practice. This study will focus on free writing and drawing for preschoolers, and attempts to investigate if children are able to write characters during free writing and drawing sessions, through participant observation and case studies. The study will also make comparisons between what preschoolers write during free writing and drawing when there is no pressure and the conventional characters they would write during normal lessons. At the tender age of 3 to 4, children are not able to follow through the conventional learning process of characters writing. Hence if they can also practice emergent writing where they are allowed to form emergent characters or even drawings during free writing, this can help them to recognize the characters though the stroke sequence or even the characters written may not be precise by conventional standards. This interim stage of learning has found to be important for reading and beneficial for preschoolers to write conventional characters better at a later stage.