Making Chinese learnable from perspectives of Australian beginning learners : through lesson preparation, materials and teaching strategies

Abstract

This study concentrates on exploring how to make Chinese learnable for beginning learners in Australia, due to the proliferation of Chinese that attracts an increasing number of people who show intention of learning in the future. Specifically, it offers an investigation into the analysis of three aspects that including lesson preparation through design and materials, teaching strategies and teacher-researcher's professional learning. This thesis aims to answer the following three research questions: How to prepare learner-centred lessons and choose appropriate teaching/learning materials to stimulate beginning learners to learn Chinese? What teaching/learning strategies are acceptable to beginning learners to learn Chinese? How can beginning bilingual volunteer teacher-researchers from China improve their skills in lesson preparation and teaching/learning strategies? Concerns about challenges of teaching around materials and strategies, even the intrinsic difficulties of Chinese itself that impede the development of Chinese learning, questions have to be raised to gain further research insights on how to overcome these difficulties and improve Chinese education. First, before starting lesson preparation, learners' background information needed to be clarified. Then, the way to design a lesson and the sequence of arranging activities affect students' learning and engagement. Several principles of dealing with materials to fit different learners were introduced, as the lack of appropriate materials has been an issue for teachers. Various teaching strategies were adopted specifically for beginning learners, such as using L1, L2 similarities, English as communication tool and facilitator-oriented interaction strategy. Besides, how to develop professional learning as bilingual beginning volunteer teacher was described. Case study was the main research strategy in this study combining the data from interviews and classroom observation with teachers, the questionnaire with students and reflective journals from the teacher herself in order to increase the reliability. For this research project, beginning learners were stimulated to learn Chinese and achieve slight success. Furthermore, possible ideas of improving teaching materials and using strategies were proved to be feasible. Finally, bilingual beginning volunteer teachers made progress in teaching Chinese and learning to develop as a TCFL teacher-researcher.

Date of Award	2014
Original language	English