A Study On The Chinese Character Acquisition And Teaching In Confucius Institute At The University Of Botswana

Since it was established in2009，Confucius Institute at the University ofBotswana (CIUB) has attracted a great number of Chinese language learners indifferent age spans and career backgrounds. They have great passion in learningChinese. Through CIUB teachers’ efforts in the last ifve years, the Chinese teachinghas got great achievements in Botswana. However, compared with other aspects ofthe language teaching, character teaching is relatively poor and just sprouting. In viewof the current Chinese teaching，more attention and efforts should be paid in Chinesecharacters. Thus, it is urgent that character teaching be standardized.Since no specific articles are available and no researchers have touched this fieldof the character acquisition and teaching at CIUB for the time being，the author wouldlike to conduct a study on this subject. Based on the previous research results and herown Chinese character teaching experience, the author devised questionnaires for theteachers and students at CIUB. According to the statistics and analyses, the authorproposes some teaching suggestions for improving the Chinese character teaching.The thesis consists of four parts:Chapter1: the preface to clarify the research background, literature review,research purpose and methodology.Chapter2: Chinese character teaching situation analysis of Confucius Institute atthe University of Botswana. We know the situation of Chinese character teaching inCIUB through questionnaires. The first part is about the Chinese character teaching experience of teachers in CIUB. The second part is about the strategies and methodsused by teachers when teaching Chinese characters.Chapter3: Chinese character acquisition situation analysis of Confucius Instituteat the University of Botswana. Based on the questionnaires from level1to level12students at CIUB, the author investigated and analyzed their feeling of learningChinese characters, the strategies they used and the opinion of Chinese characterteaching.Chapter4: the specific ideas and suggestions for teaching Chinese characters ofstudents at CIUB, According to the questionnaire results, the author proposed severalteaching suggestions, such as, to set Chinese character classes, to focus on strokeorder teaching and use copy methods properly.