Developing Writing Competence In L2 Chinese Classrooms

This edited volume focuses on writing Chinese as a second language (L2). It provides readers with cutting-edge empirical research and insightful teaching methods and strategies for effectively developing L2 writing competence in L2 Chinese classroom contexts. The themes encompass heritage versus foreign language writers, individual versus collaborative writing, writing as process versus writing as product, writing-focused intervention and written corrective feedback in L2 Chinese classrooms, as well as online writing instruction during and beyond the pandemic. In addition to providing meaningful and innovative contributions for graduate students and researchers who wish to further explore learners’ writing development in L2 Chinese, each chapter offers practical, detailed and insightful pedagogical recommendations to assist language teachers and educators, graduate students and research scholars in making well-informed decisions on writing instruction in L2 Chinese and to facilitate the implementation of writing-focused activities within classrooms.

Written by experienced teachers and thoroughly trialled with non-native students of Chinese, this much-needed text helps students to write coherently, clearly and appropriately in a variety of contexts.

Assessing Learners’ Competence in L2 Chinese is the first book intended to answer the question on whether existing standardised and classroom-based assessments can reflect learners’ competence in L2 Chinese. The Chinese language has enjoyed increasing global popularity amongst second/foreign language learners and has become one of the major modern languages for school and university curricula. However, to many teachers and researchers, it has been difficult to answer with confidence whether the existing standardised and classroom tests can reflect learners’ competence in L2 Chinese. This book defines and redefines the constructs for assessing L2 Chinese competence that have been overlooked or misplaced because of the unique features of the Chinese language. The book provides theoretical backgrounds and practical methodologies for assessing competence in L2 Chinese trainees and experienced teachers of Chinese as a second language. It will provide invaluable guidelines and ready-made workshop materials for postgraduate teacher training programmes. Researchers and academics will find innovative frameworks on the subject for further studies and debates.

English writing is acknowledged as an essential skill for critical thinking, learning, and expression, and most EFL learners find themselves struggling when writing in English due to a lack of writing skills, content knowledge, writing strategies, intrinsic motivation, and fluency development practice. This edited volume, covering innovative approaches such as e-learning, strategy-based instruction, metacognitive training, a minimal grammar approach, writing assessment, and a genre-based approach, aims to innovate writing instruction in Chinese speaking regions, which has traditionally been characterized by rigid, teacher-centered, test-oriented approaches. We aim for this edited volume to provide theoretical underpinnings as well as contemporary practical advice related to EFL writing instruction for Chinese speakers.

This book investigates inherent, structural differences in the Chinese and English writing systems which predispose learners from childhood to develop specific literacy-learning strategies, which can impair later efforts at learning foreign language literacy if the foreign language script varies significantly from the native language script. It compares educational practices and philosophies in Chinese and English-speaking classrooms, and examines the psychological underpinnings of these literacy learning strategies. This book presents psychometric testing of adult reading strategy defaults and examines case study data, revealing that Chinese students are susceptible to misapplying Chinese character-level processing strategies to English word identification tasks, which decreases reading efficiency, and ultimately can lead to learning failure. Finally, a new educational framework is proposed for teaching beginning language-specific word identification and literacy-learning skills to learners whose first language script varies significantly from that of the target language.

While assessment and feedback tend to be treated separately in the L2 writing literature, this book brings together these two essential topics and examines how effective classroom assessment and feedback can provide a solid foundation for the successful teaching and learning of writing. Drawing upon current educational and L2 writing theories and research, the book is the first to address writing assessment and feedback in L2 primary and secondary classrooms, providing a comprehensive, up-to-date review of key issues, such as assessment for learning, assessment as learning, teacher feedback, peer feedback, portfolio assessment, and technology enhanced classroom writing assessment and feedback. The book concludes with a chapter on classroom assessment literacy for L2 writing teachers, outlines its critical components and underscores the importance of teachers undertaking continuing professional development to enhance their classroom assessment literacy. Written in an accessible style, the book provides a practical and valuable resource for L2 writing teachers to promote student writing, and for teacher educators to deliver effective classroom writing assessment and feedback training. Though the target audience is school teachers, L2 writing instructors in any context will benefit from the thorough and useful treatment of classroom assessment and feedback in the book.

This work investigates the development of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners’ generic competence in reading, writing and translation within the particular Chinese classroom context. It provides a new perspective for the current teaching and research in reading, writing, translation within the EFL contexts and offers an insightful framework for pedagogical applications in language learning and teaching. Its findings will be extremely valuable not only in local situations, but also more generally in a wider regional and global context as well. The book employs a series of research tools, including pre-research and post-research questionnaires, pre-test and post-test of reading/writing/translation, multi-faceted writing portfolios (including reflection reports), textual analysis and in-depth interviews. It involves 209 participants from a primary university in Wuhan, among whom 171 are undergraduates and 38 are postgraduates. ​And it draws on the analysis of such varied multi-sourced data both qualitatively and quantitatively. Genre-based teaching is playing a critical role in initiating EFL learners into the discourse community of the target language. Developing EFL learners’ generic competence is viewed as the ultimate goal in the process of teaching and learning. This monograph effectively demonstrates that like genre-based English for Specific Purposes (ESP) pedagogies, it is also possible to take advantage of already acquired genre knowledge for use in EFL learning contexts. It offers an impressive view of the direction in which genre-based applications are likely to take in the coming years.

Over the past four decades, learning Chinese as a second language has transformed from individual small-scale endeavors to organized mass studies worldwide. In a fast-changing world, the field of L2 Chinese language education is confronted by unprecedented challenges and opportunities. This book presents recent pedagogical practices, innovations and research in L2 Chinese language education across five continents. Bringing together a diverse range of leading researchers and educators, it showcases the latest knowledge, teaching-led research, innovative curriculum design and pedagogical practice in a variety of instructional contexts. Through a mix of overview chapters, empirical studies and critical discussions, the book addresses four key themes – formal instruction; language education technology; curriculum development; and critical overviews– and reflects the latest challenges and coping strategies for teaching and learning Chinese in an increasingly digital world. It will be essential reading for researchers, teachers and students of Chinese as a second language, as well as curriculum developers and textbook writers.