Connecting Australian students' prior knowledge with their foreign language learning : a beginning Mandarin teacher's exploration of strategies through language transfer

Abstract

With the growing influence of China on the world economy, the learning of its official language, Mandarin, has become increasingly important in Australia. However, Mandarin is regarded as a difficult language for speakers of an Indo-European language, given the fact that it belongs to a different language system. To make Mandarin learnable and lower the cost of learning Mandarin for students in the Western Sydney Region (WSR) schools, this research explores the impact of language transfer on Australian non-Chinese-background students' Mandarin learning from the perspective of a beginning teacher. A qualitative case study was conducted in a local school in the WSR. Data were collected from observation of the teacher researcher's own Mandarin classes and her reflective journals. The data shed light upon how language transfer influences Mandarin learning in the perspectives of phonology, morph-syntax, and pragmatics. The major finding of the research is when the implementation of language transfer was constructed on teachers' correct subject matter knowledge and students' prior knowledge, the outcome of the learning experience was likely to be satisfactory. Otherwise, it led to students' confusion and frustration. The conclusion of the research mainly includes two parts. First, the effectiveness of language transfer largely depends on teachers' understanding of the learner and the subject matter. Second, including both Mandarin and English in teachers' talk contributes to a TL-input rich and accessible learning experience.

Date of Award	2014
Original language	English