A Comparison Of Teaching Chinese As Foreign Language To Elementary Students At Two Schools In Thailand

The primary purpose of this research is to observe the teaching method of both Panyotai(???)Waldorf School and Guang Zhong(??)School to gain better understanding of how they teach Chinese in classroom.Second purpose of this research is to analyze and compare the teaching styles from both school then find the strengths and weakness of teaching method from both schools in order to suggest the suitable teaching styles for Chinese teacher to teach students from ages 9-11 years old.The research procedure was divided into two phrases,first phrase was observing teaching styles of teachers through teacher and student interaction in classroom and done informal interview with Chinese teachers.The second phrase of research procedure is participating in classroom by teaching students of both schools myself.The result analyzed by comparing teaching styles from two schools.The research findings were summarized as follows:At Panyotai Waldorf School,teaching styles of Chinese teacher are visual styles,where teachers use drawings,colorful pictures and body movement to help students understanding Chinese.At Guang Zhong School,teaching styles of Chinese teachers are formal authority and direct instruction,where teachers have power among students,teachers instruction students what to do and told student what is right and wrong.Teachers taught Chinese language according to the textbooks.Teaching style that suitable for children age 9-11 are visual styles because visual learning let students enjoy learning Chinese because students got chances to draw pictures,making their own textbooks.Pictures help students remember the characters and its meaning since Chinese characters is image representation or other word logogram.What I gain from this study is to combine pro of two teaching styles visual styles and formal authority styles and adapted in classroom.