A Survey Analysis On Chinese Characters Errors In Cameroon's High Schools

In recent years,as the "Chinese fever" has increasingly intensified globally,Cameroon's non-Chinese,cultural-circle students' interest in Chinese learning has greatly risen.Chinese characters are an important part of Chinese learning.French and English are the official languages of Cameroon,both of which belong to the phonetic alphabet system and are very different from Chinese characters which belong to the ideographic system.Therefore,according to Cameroonian students,the study of Chinese characters is one of the most difficult features of their Chinese learning.The purpose of this research is to investigate and analyze the common errors produced by Cameroonian middle school Chinese learners when they write Chinese characters,and to also understand the types of errors which are being observed,and the causes behind the production of these errors.This research used Jacques de Bernon Bilingual College for its case study.It is a middle school in Maroua city which is highly representative of the Chinese learning population in the city.130questionnaires were printed and distributed.Of these questionnaires,102 were successfully collected.This research sought to uncover information on the basic situation of Chinese characters' usage,the interest of students in the study of Chinese characters,Chinese characters' strokes,writing Chinese characters according to their pinyin or radicals,and other aspects of investigation and study.Moreover,biased errors from students' writing corpus were also collected and evaluated.Hereafter,in order to better understand the teaching of Chinese characters in Cameroon middle schools,an interview had been developed and given to 10 Cameroonian teachers.Through observations made during my internship and the feedback received from the surveys and the interviews,we found out that the biased errors made by this middle school's Chinese learners in writing Chinese characters was mainly focused on three aspects:biased errors in writing Chinese strokes,biased errors in the composition of Chinese radicals and the confusion of sound homonyms.The main reason for these biased errors is the lack of knowledge about the composition of Chinese characters,the combination of components and homophonic distinctions.In order to solve the practical problems face with teaching Chinese characters in secondary schools,this research proposes several solutions,hoping that they will be provisional in assisting educators with the teaching of Chinese characters in Cameroonian middle schools.