2019 Vol.17, No.1 (issue 33) - Singapore Centre for Chinese Language

5. The Use of Literary Texts to Hone Character Description Skills of Secondary Students Learning Chinese as a Second Language: The “Illustration-Imitation-Writing” Model

peiyee.cheng@sccl.sg (Cheng Pei Yee) — Fri, 28 Jun 2019 03:02:53 +0800

This study proposed a teaching model of “Illustration-Imitation-Writing” and conducted an eight-month teaching research on its effectiveness using literacy texts. Secondary 3 Students in the Normal (Academic) stream from a government school were taken as research subjects. The study adopted the quasi-experimental design of pre-and-posttest. Result show that the model is effective in improving students’ character description skills and is a good practice for teaching Chinese as a second language.

Keywords: “Illustration-Imitation-Writing” model, literary texts, character description skills, teaching Chinese as a second language

4. Concept-Oriented Teaching: A Case Study of Its Influences on High-Level Reading Comprehension

peiyee.cheng@sccl.sg (Cheng Pei Yee) — Fri, 28 Jun 2019 03:00:58 +0800

The International Baccalaureate accentuates the cultivation of students’ conceptual understanding, thinking skills and application abilities. In recent years, scholars have put forward different frameworks for the assessment of students’ cognitive abilities in order to have a better understanding of their reading abilities. Although it has been proved that concept-oriented teaching has its advantages, there are few studies exploring the influence of concept-oriented teaching on students’ Chinese language reading comprehension. This paper seeks to explore whether concept-oriented teaching helps to cultivate reading comprehension abilities of IB students. The participants of this study were 11 grade eight (high level) students from an international school in Hong Kong. Research methods including pre- and post-test, interview, questionnaire and classroom observation were used for analysis. The results show that conceptoriented teaching helped to enhance students’ deep cognition and create personal new knowledge. Students also favoured this teaching method as it improved their reading abilities. The paper ends with feasible teaching suggestions.

Keywords: teaching Chinese as a foreign language, concept-oriented teaching, high-level reading comprehension, international middle school, case study

3. An Analysis Method to Improve Chinese Vocabulary Teaching

peiyee.cheng@sccl.sg (Cheng Pei Yee) — Fri, 28 Jun 2019 02:58:55 +0800

Vocabulary teaching is essential in the teaching of Chinese language, either as a first or second language. This study employed systematic functional linguistics to analyse teaching discourses collected from two classes, and explored ways to improve the effectiveness of vocabulary teaching. The teacher-participants used a total of 206 teaching discourses in the classroom to explain 27 target words. The schematic structure, transitivity and conjunction were first analyzed, and subsequently further analyzed together with students’ involvement rate. It has been found that the classroom discourse of vocabulary teaching shares the features of expository discourse, being brief and concise. It thus recommends that teachers should adapt their teaching to students’ level of understanding in order to identify the appropriate core of vocabulary teaching for the class. To facilitate students’ knowledge absorption, they should use more enhancing clauses for explanation, and classify the words by themes so that words in the same categories can be explained at the same time.

Keywords: vocabulary teaching, classroom teaching discourse, schematic structure, transitivity, conjunction

2. Professional Competency of Chinese Language Teachers from Chinese Primary Schools in Malaysia: An Investigation in Sentul, Kuala Lumpur

peiyee.cheng@sccl.sg (Cheng Pei Yee) — Fri, 28 Jun 2019 02:55:01 +0800

Teachers’ professional competency hinges on their attitude, knowledge and teaching skill, and underlies the effectiveness of teaching. This paper aims to explore: (1) How competent are Chinese language teachers from Chinese Primary School in Malaysia? (2) What are the problems faced by these teachers and how to solve the problems? A total of 116 Chinese language teachers from 7 Chinese primary schools in Sentul, Kuala Lumpur were investigated through questionnaire survey. The findings indicate that there is still room for improvement in teachers’ professional competency. It is thus suggested that educational authorities, training institutions, schools and teachers should collaborate to enhance the professional competency of Chinese language teachers in Malaysia.

Keywords: Malaysia, Chinese primary school, Chinese language teacher, professional competency

1. An Evaluation of Chinese Language Teacher Training in Southeast Asia: from the Constructivist Perspective of Teacher Professional Development

peiyee.cheng@sccl.sg (Cheng Pei Yee) — Fri, 28 Jun 2019 02:52:14 +0800

Training for overseas Chinese language (CL) teachers is facing new challenges. In order to improve the effectiveness of training and facilitate teachers’ professional development, it is important to investigate the current situation and understand the problems encountered in the training of CL teachers. This paper analyzes the insufficiency in CL teacher training in Southeast Asian in terms of training design, content and methods of training based on semi-structural case studies of eight young and mid-aged CL teachers from Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia and Myanmar. It proceeds to summarize the features of constructivist approach of teacher training and discusses its implications for CL teacher training in Southeast Asia. The findings will help teacher trainers to gain an in-depth understanding of the current situation and training needs of front-line CL teachers, advance the educational reform, and facilitate CL teachers’ professional development.

Keywords: Chinese language teacher training, teacher professional development, constructivism