An Exploration Into The Barriers, Difficulties And Possible Solutions For East Asian Students Learning Chinese In Hong Kong

This paper explores the barriers, difficulties and possible solutions for East Asian students learning Chinese in Hong Kong from the viewpoints of social linguistics and applied linguistics. By applying the theories and methods of Teaching Chinese as a Second language (TCSL), this paper summaries the difficulties faced by East Asian students-whose mother tongues are languages built on phonetic letters-when learning a phonemic language like Chinese with characters. By adopting a Contrastive social linguistics approach, this paper analyses the differences in language and culture between East Asian people and local Chinese people. At the same time, this paper also aims to reason out the problems encountered by East Asian students when learning Chinese, and in particular, when learning Chinese pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar.The raw materials of this paper are selected from the study and daily life of East Asian students in Hong Kong. Utilizing applied linguistics theories, this paper emphasizes the analysis of language phenomena and explains the profound in simple terms. First-hand information is gathered from observation, investigation and post-teaching evaluation in teaching Chinese to East Asian students.According to this research, the main obstacle that hinders the integration of East Asian students into the Hong Kong society is their lack of Chinese proficiency, which leads to communication breakdown between local Chinese and the East Asian people.This paper also introduces a tailor-made programme, designed with TCSL teaching methodology, which facilitates East Asian students in learning Chinese-this is one of the key parts in the learning and teaching of TCSL in Hong Kong. In order to help the East Asian students deal with the many problems encountered when learning Chinese as a second language, a number of suggestions for the language policy of ethnic minority, community service and family support are proposed.This is the first comprehensive and systematic linguistic research about the barriers and difficulties in Chinese learning faced by East Asian students in Hong Kong. The intention is to compile and apply these research output in the teaching of Chinese for East Asian students in Hong Kong, so as to help them overcome the language and cultural barriers and integrate into the local community.