The Impact Of Multimedia On Teaching Chinese Characters

In this thesis, based on two years experience of teaching Chinese as a second language in the U.S.A., the author uses first-hand material to discuss the bottleneck problem of teaching Chinese characters to foreigners. With the rapid development of science and technology today, multimedia materials have become very popular teaching tools and are also used widely in teaching Chinese characters to foreigners. Based upon actual experiences in teaching beginning learners, this thesis will study how the use of multimedia impacts the reading and memory retention period of beginning learners, in comparison with traditional teaching methods. This thesis includes eight parts:PartⅠdiscusses the current trends in combining Chinese characters and multimedia application. At the initial stage, as teachers, we need to think about the following questions: why should we use multimedia; is it based on useful pedagogical theory; how to use it effectively to maximize its advantages; how to manage the relationship between traditional Chinese teaching and multimedia teaching; as well as how to address issues of content vs. form in multimedia. These significance of this thesis lies in these questions.PartⅡdiscusses five aspects of Chinese characters from five areas which make characters difficult for foreigners to learn and the limitations of traditional methods for teaching Chinese characters, including uninspiring teaching methods, shallow content, lack of attention to student autonomy, etc.PartⅢdefines the meaning of multimedia teaching and it also discusses the difference between traditional teaching and current multimedia teaching.PartⅣis divided into three sections: theory, learners, and multimedia. The chapter examines the advantages and effectiveness of using multimedia for teaching Chinese characters, in terms of these three aspects. The theory section includes psychological stimulus theory; constructivist theory; second language acquisition theory. The section on learners looks at the characteristics and typical errors of beginners, as well as the learning goals of multimedia instruction. The multimedia section illustrates the necessity of using multimedia in learning Chinese characters.PartⅤdescribes an experiement, based upon the findings in PartⅣ, with quantitative analysis, which demonstrates the advantages of using multimedia to teach three types of Chinese characters—pictographic, indirect symbols, and associative compounds—with improved results in long-term memory retention, in comparison with traditional instruction methods.PartⅥanalyzes the advantages that multimedia can offer learners but also identifies the problems inherent in using this type of material. It is critical to correctly manage the relationships among multimedia and teachers and students; multimedia and traditional teaching methods; multimedia and printed text and so on.PartⅦsuggest ways teachers and students may use multimedia to study characters more effectively.PartⅧis a summary of the full text. In this section, it is pointed out that we need to apply multimedia to Chinese characters objectively, in order to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of instruction in Chinese characters.