Understanding Learning of Chinese Characters for International Students in China

摘要

This research paper has attempted to present the learning perfor-mance of Chinese characters for foreign students. Two consecutive experiments were conducted in order to attain our objectives. A number of participants were subjected to a short lecture using two different methods, "learning with mne-monic" and "learning with radical". This lecture was followed by a test to assess the effectiveness of the learning. Despite the time and resource constraints that could not allow the possibility of having more than two experiments, two preliminary findings could be concluded: Firstly, learning curve of Chinese is positively related to interest. That is, it was showed that interest of learning Chinese as a factor affected the learning rate of Chinese characters among foreign students. Secondly, teaching method was demonstrated to affect the learning rate. For instance, participants performed better in mnemonic class than in radical class. Limitations and future research were discussed in this research.