Faculty Scholarly Dissemination Grants
Direct association of meaning, sound, and characters through active learning
Department
Modern Languages & Literatures
College
College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
Date Range
2010-2011
Abstract
The panelists hope to present theoretical arguments, as well as empirical evidence, that Chinese pronunciation and literacy is best taught directly, with minimum use of phonetic symbols. Those symbols are meant to be an instrument to facilitate learning at an interim stage. Experience shows, however, that many learners tend to resort to the phonetic symbols as a safety shelter so much that they feel reluctant to move on to learn the words. As a consequence, they often have difficulty with pronunciation and word recognition, even after many years of learning. The active direct learning approach emphasizes the direct association between the sound, meaning, and Chinese characters. The panelists will share their successful experiences and hope to provide enlightening arguments in this regard. It is believed that the teaching approach presented can save much effort and is worth the attention of Chinese teachers as well as developers of teaching materials.
Conference Name
ACTFL 2010 Annual Convention and World Languages Expo
Conference Location
Boston, Mass
ScholarWorks Citation
Smith, Curtis, "Direct association of meaning, sound, and characters through active learning" (2010). Faculty Scholarly Dissemination Grants. 12.
https://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/fsdg/12
