Sand, The More Area In The East Malaysia Non-chinese Students Chinese Learning Situation Investigation And Study

In the field of global Chinese language education, Malaysia’s education system has been well known to have a unique edge over many countries with regards to the education of the Mandarin language, particularly at the primary education level.In view of this, a multi-dimensional research is conducted on the Mandarin language education process among primary students of non-Chinese ethnic background, with focus on the geographical area of Malaysia’s eastern state of Sarawak. This research attempts to study the characteristics of the teaching and learning processes of Mandarin as the first language and second language, respectively. It also looks into the education process in the elective Mandarin language classes conducted in the mainstream national primary school where the language is taught from the angle of a second language. The basis of choosing Sarawak as the focal geographical point of this research stems from the fact that the state has the largest number of non-Chinese pupils attending the Chinese stream primary schools compared to the other states nationwide, as well as on the basis that Sarawak is one of the main hubs for the introduction of elective Mandarin language classes in the national primary schools.The first chapter of this paper covers the rationale and motivation behind the research topic, the objective of the research, as well as the glossary. Chapter two clarifies the research methodology, while the third and fourth chapters analyze the characteristics of the teaching and assimilation processes of the Mandarin language education conducted as part of the main syllabus, and as part of the elective syllabus. The final chapter of the paper summarizes the differences in the teaching process of the Mandarin language between the Chinese stream primary schools and the mainstream national primary schools, and highlights the learning behaviour of the non-ethnic Chinese primary students.The subjects of this research are Sarawak’s non-ethnic Chinese primary students and Mandarin language teachers in both the Chinese stream and mainstream national primary schools. The researcher conducted a qualitative research through literature survey, interview and field observation. Besides that, the researcher also distributed questionnaires to60Mandarin language teachers in the Chinese stream primary schools,336non-ethnic Chinese students attending the Chinese stream primary schools,10non-Chinese primary schools teachers and69non-Chinese primary schools non-Chinese pupils to obtain quantitative research data in order to support the research. These respondents are from11Chinese primary schools and6non-Chinese primary schools.For the first time, this research attempts to investigate the overall situation of teaching Chinese language as second language in Chinese primary schools, the teaching level and the acquisition level of the language. The findings show that teaching and learning styles of Chinese language in Chinese primary schools did not assist much in the enhancement of acquisition of the language among non-Chinese primary schools pupils. Quantitative results also show that Chinese primary schools are not ideal learning environment for non-Chinese primary schools pupils to learn Chinese.Mandarin elective class offered by the Malaysian Government in non-Chinese primary schools in recent years to promote Chinese education policy among non-Chinese primary schools pupils is implemented with the hope that it can encourage primary schools pupils from all races to learn Chinese language as second language. This research also focuses on the basic features, teaching and acquisition of Chinese language in Chinese elective class in non-Chinese primary schools. The findings show that teaching and learning of Chinese in non-Chinese primary schools basically fulfill the requirements of the principles of teaching Chinese as second language and but it is not an ideal learning environment for non-Chinese primary schools pupils.Nevertheless, the research also found that elementary school Chinese classes at this stage whether it is in the language policy, curriculum, teaching materials, teacher and classroom teaching, there is still much room for improvement.The data of the research was collected by using questionnaires and analyzed by using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version17.0. The results of the study revealed the significant relationship between the variables and the teachers’perception evaluation of a variety of factors influencing the learning of Chinese language in non-Chinese primary schools and Chinese primary schools.This study investigated the condition, at an overall picture the teaching and learning of Chinese language in Sarawak region, focusing on learning situation of non-Chinese and Chinese primary schools pupils. The researcher hopes that this paper will serve as reference to future researchers from other region in the related field and make contribution to the global Chinese dissemination.