Research On Chinese Listening Obstacles And Strategy Toward Turkish Students On Initial Stage

With the new prominence of the People’s Republic of China on the international stage, Chinese has become one of the languages that students worldwide are competing to master. But due to the specific characteristics of Chinese, foreigners often find studying it as a second language extremely taxing. The factors that make it so demanding, that we can call "learning difficulties," are often universal, which is to say that regardless of their nationality, the great majority of students will encounter the same problems and challenges, such as correctly distinguishing between tones and highly similar pronunciations, confusion about syntactic structure, and obstacles to comprehension engendered by dissimilar cultural backgrounds. Such problems can be approached from a macro point of view, and solutions to them can be explored without the need to take the student’s nationality into consideration.On the other hand, in addition to the obstacles that students of any nationality will encounter when studying Chinese, there are also differences in the problems they will have depending upon their nationality. These problems largely originate in the inappropriate "transfer" of aspects of the speaker’s mother tongue or native culture when communicating in Chinese. For instance, compared to speakers of other languages, students who share the same mother tongue will tend to commit the same errors more frequently.The study of Chinese in Turkey has gradually been emphasized in recent years, and student numbers are rising on a yearly basis. The obstacles to learning that they encounter include both those common to other nationalities and ones specific to Turkish learners. For the present study, the key research topic is problems encountered by Turkish students in developing Chinese aural skills. Using a questionnaire format, a survey has first been carried out to identify the common difficulties in strengthening the listening ability of Turkish students of Chinese; then, using aural skills training theory as a foundation, we have attempted to draft a set of training guidelines to resolve those difficulties.According to this study, the common difficulties in listening ability are exhibited in terms of pronunciation, syntax and culture. To target these problems, a three-pronged approach is taken to strengthen listening skills:mother tongue systematic teaching, training via repeated exercises and emphasis on key points, and instruction in relevant cultural factors. The teaching strategy has been formulated to resolve the kinds of learning difficulties encountered by most students of Chinese, as well as ones specific to learners of a particular nationality.Furthermore, with the help of the contribution represented by this study, Turkish teachers of Chinese will be able to create teaching strategies or even teaching materials that are better suited to nurturing the listening ability of Turkish students, and provide them with shortcuts to learning Chinese and sharpening their aural skills.