Researching Chinese Language Education

The culmination of more than a decade of research, this compelling volume offers a fresh approach for applying functional linguistics to assess student performance, to inform the teaching and learning of Chinese and to design curriculum and teaching materials. Documenting authentic systemic functional linguistics (SFL) studies in researching and teaching Chinese as a first or second language, this research is set in the multilingual settings of Hong Kong and Australia. The experiences of SFL and genre teaching in English have been well demonstrated as valid, viable and practical in different contexts; however this volume covers the relatively new domain of research into the applications of SFL to the teaching of Chinese. Using SFL as the research framework, the authors cover three major areas in Chinese language education: effective pedagogies, curriculum and material design, and text analysis. Covering major local curriculum reforms and the rapid growth of International Baccalaureate programmes worldwide, this book will be of interest to linguists, language teachers and teacher educators and those involved in the teaching and learning of Chinese around the world.

This book offers an in-depth exploration of the unique landscape of Chinese language learning and teaching in Canada. It is the first to highlight the distinctive features of Chinese language education in the country and to introduce the Canadian approach to teaching and researching Chinese language, termed the "Canadian school of Chinese education." This approach, largely unfamiliar to the global academic community, is illuminated in this book, filling a critical gap in the literature and providing a platform for Canadian voices and perspectives in the field. The book delves into original and under-investigated areas, addressing important issues in Chinese teaching and learning that require more sophisticated research approaches due to advancements in our understanding and the discovery of complex Chinese learner populations. Structured into four sections, the book offers an overview of Chinese language education in Canada, examines comparisons of learning conditions, explores interactive dynamics and communication strategies, and delves into social and cultural dimensions. This book will be invaluable to researchers, instructors, advanced-level undergraduate students, and graduate students in the field of Chinese language learning and teaching.

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 5 continents.

This volume offers a timely collection of original research papers on the various features and issues surrounding Chinese English, one of the varieties in World Englishes with a large and increasing number of learners and users. The five sections entitled ‘Researching Chinese English Pronunciation’, ‘Researching Chinese English Lexis, Grammar and Pragmatics’, ‘Researching Perceptions, Attitudes and Reactions towards Chinese English’, ‘Researching Cultural Conceptualizations and Identities in Chinese English’, and ‘Chinese Scholarship on Chinese English’, bring together three generations of Chinese and overseas researchers, both established and emerging, who offer lively dialogues on the current research, development and future of Chinese English. The introductory chapter by the editors on the state-of-the-art of researching Chinese English, and a concluding chapter by a leading researcher in World Englishes on the future directions for researching Chinese English make this an essential title for those who wish to gain insights on Chinese English.

Linguistic research and language teaching have generally been viewed as two separate types of academic endeavor. While linguists have been preoccupied with pattern finding and theory building, language teachers often encounter issues that are not readily addressed by theoretical linguistic research. This collection, with eleven papers touching upon a wide range of issues, stands out as one of the rare concerted efforts toward a meaningful integration of the two endeavors. Subject matters include tone, stress, word structure, grammatical categories (e.g. classifiers), syntactic structures (including argument structure), discourse particles, implicit and explicit knowledge, conversational repair, and learner corpus. With a diverse range of theoretical orientations, this collection serves to showcase some of the productive ways to create synergy between Chinese linguistic research and language education.

This collection brings together a series of empirical studies on topics surrounding classrooms of Chinese as a second language (L2) by drawing on a range of theoretical frameworks, methodological strategies, and pedagogical perspectives. Over the past two decades, research on classroom-based second language acquisition (SLA) has emerged and expanded as one of the most important sub-domains in the general field of SLA. In Chinese SLA, however, scarce attention has been devoted to this line of research. With chapters written by scholars in the field of SLA—many of whom are experienced in classroom teaching, teacher education, or program administration in Chinese as a second language—this book helps disentangle the complicated relationships among linguistic targets, pedagogical conditions, assessment tools, learner individual differences, and teacher variables that exist in the so-called "black-box" classrooms of L2 Chinese.

This collection focuses on Chinese learners with original data sets using innovative research methods. It investigates Chinese learners' learning and language skills, perceptions and particularly the processes of reciprocal intercultural adaptations in a wide international context of Australia, Canada, China, Hong Kong, New Zealand and the UK.

Teaching and Researching Chinese Second Language Listening focuses on Chinese L2 listening with theory and pedagogy at its heart. The objectives of the book are to recount the development of Chinese L2 listening pedagogy, to synthesize research on Chinese L2 listening, and to propose a Chinese L2 listening approach. This book is the first to bridge the gap between Chinese L2 and general L2 listening and develop a much-needed systematic teaching approach to Chinese listening based on research findings in L2 listening, the unique features of the Chinese language, and the distinctive characteristics of the Chinese L2 learner population. This book grounds Chinese L2 teaching in solid theories of L2 acquisition and teaching. The research-informed and evidence-based Chinese L2 teaching approach proposed in the book seeks to move beyond the traditional product-oriented approach to integrate form-, meaning-, process-, and learner-focused listening. This book also discusses Chinese L2 listening from learners’ perspectives: heritage versus non-heritage learners and motivation. These are presented together with theory and teaching practice. The book is aimed at researchers, in-service teachers and students taking upper-level undergraduate courses and postgraduate courses for programs in Chinese applied linguistics and teaching Chinese as a second language (TCSL). Chinese listening studies to date have mostly been published in the Chinese language, which severely limits their readership. This book is therefore written in English to fill the gap in current scholarship. Due to a large number of Chinese learners and the consequential booming programs in TCSL and CIE (Chinese international education), it is important to dedicate a book specifically to Chinese listening.