Chinese oral language abilities of primary six non-native Chinese learners in Hong Kong

Abstract

In recent years, more and more attention from the education sector in Hong Kong has been drawn to the issue of enhancing the Chinese language abilities for non-native Chinese learners. A premise for devising effective pedagogy for this group of students would be the understanding of their language abilities. However, an in-depth investigation of their Chinese language performance is yet to be conducted.

This study poses an examination on the oral narrative abilities among students who are non-native speakers of Chinese (NNS students). The target students came from Primary Six, and their native-speaking peers (NS students) were also invited. Twelve NNS students and six NS students from four primary schools were selected to conduct an individual storytelling task, and the NNS students were further divided into the higher-ability group (NNS-High) and the lower-ability group (NNS-Low). The study utilised the wordless storybook “Frog, where are you?” to elicit students’ oral language production. Analysis of students’ oral performance was conducted at both macrostructural and microstructural levels. In narrative macrostructure, students’ abilities were examined from the perspectives of event connection, plot structure and character by utilising the Narrative Scoring Scheme. Narrative microstructure, on the other hand, looked into students’ general language production, word-level performance and clause-level performance. A 28-item coding scheme representing 28 concepts was developed for the microstructural investigation.

Comparisons were made between NS and NNS students, and further among NS, NNS-High and NNS-Low groups. Both quantitative and qualitative investigations were conducted. Results in macrostructural analysis revealed that NNS-High students could narrate a connected and complete story when compared with NS students, for no statistically significant difference was identified in Narrative Scoring Scheme. In terms of microstructural performance, they were found competent in utilising different words in their stories, except for some specialised Participant-related concepts when compared with NS students. For NNS-Low students, they were able to make a good connection of the events, but more efforts were needed in enriching the plot and characters in macrostructure. In narrative microstructure, NNS-Low students needed to be equipped with more vocabulary in Process-related concepts when compared with the higher-ability NNS students.

The study has unearthed the gap among Primary Six NNS-Low, NNS-High and NS students’ oral abilities in narrative quality and word use. A “developmental” picture of vocabulary learning could be depicted, with Process-related concepts as the stepping stone to become higher-ability language learners, and specialised Participant-related concepts as the lifting gear to become native-like speakers. Findings have thus informed teachers that in vocabulary instruction, NNS-Low students may need to learn more words related to Process, while NNS-High students need to further develop word use in some specialised Participant-related concepts. Results also suggested that a division of NNS students into different ability groups is necessary for a detailed investigation, otherwise the differences between NNS-Low and NNS-High groups could not be revealed. Moreover, the analytical framework for examining oral narrative abilities comprising macrostructural and microstructural analysis could be a reference for and applied to future investigation into NNS students’ oral language abilities.