TY - JOUR T1 - Three approaches to beginning Chinese instruction and their effects on oral development and character recognition AU - Poole, Frederick AU - Sung, Koyin PY - 2015 DA - March DO - 10.32601/ejal.460599 JF - Eurasian Journal of Applied Linguistics JO - EJAL PB - Ece ZEHİR TOPKAYA WT - DergiPark SN - 2149-1135 SP - 59 EP - 75 VL - 1 IS - 1 LA - en AB - Developing Chinese character knowledge is often labor intensive and time consuming. Therefore, there isoften an imbalance between character instruction and training in other language skills due to how muchinstructional time is occupied by learning characters. A few teaching approaches are frequently used inthe classroom to accommodate this problem. This pilot study intended to compare these approaches in anexperimental setting to investigate the effectiveness of them on learners’ oral and character recognitionperformances. This study involved nine first-year learners of Chinese at a university in the UnitedStates. Data collection of this study included the results of character quizzes and oral assessment. Theparticipants and their teachers were also given a survey regarding their perceptions towards each of theinstructional approaches. The findings illustrated that some of the instructional approaches helpeddevelop the participants’ oral skills more rapidly than the rest, while some approaches were moreeffective in aiding the development of character recognition. KW - Chinese language beginners KW - Pinyin KW - character recognition KW - character writing KW - university level CR - Allen, J. R. (2008). Why learning to write Chinese is a waste of time: A modest proposal. Foreign Language Annals, 41(2), 237-251. http://doi.org/dv8m5d CR - Bi, Y., Han, Z., & Zhang, Y. (2009). Reading does not depend on writing, even in Chinese. Neuropsychologia, 47(4), 1193-1199. http://doi.org/dp742w CR - Chung, K. K. (2007). 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