Journal Articles
Linguistic variation in Chinese characters: Knowledge essential for teachers
- Linguistic variation in Chinese characters: Knowledge essential for teachers
- Electronic Journal of Foreign Language Teaching, 17(0), 489-504, 2020
- Centre for Language Studies of the National University of Singapore
- 2020
-
- Hong Kong
-
- 1997.7 onwards
-
- Post-Secondary Education
- “Hong Kong and Taiwan adopt the same standard of traditional Chinese characters.” “Characters are pronounced only in those ways specified in the dictionary.” These are some simplistic notions that teachers commonly hold about the standard of correctness of characters. But if we closely examine the actual usage of characters in everyday practice, there exists subtle variants of the characters. This paper reports on the results of our project to identify linguistic variation in characters for raising teachers’ awareness in a teacher education course. Our project focused on those characters in the curriculum and, by gathering multiple sources of data, endeavored to find out what categories of variation existed in these characters. Two such categories of variation, namely, variation in written form and variation in stroke order, are explained in full detail. These results have practical implications to teaching since problems often arise when children adopt a variant of characters different from that of the teachers. Knowledge about possible variants of characters is thus necessary for teachers to appropriately respond to the children. Multiple standards, which teachers should interpret as helpful references rather than dogmatic rules, are recommended. We conclude the paper with suggestions for future research on practical linguistic knowledge for teachers. Copyright © 2020 Centre for Language Studies, National University of Singapore
-
- English
- Journal Articles
-
- 02199874
- https://bibliography.lib.eduhk.hk/bibs/b09650d4
- 2021-06-15
Recent Journal Articles
Mathematical ability at a very young age: The contributions of relationship quality with parents and teachers via children's language and literacy abilitiesJournal Articles
Making sense of interdisciplinary general education curriculum design: Case study of common core curriculum at the University of Hong KongJournal Articles
Making the importance of libraries and librarians visible: An international online library skills initiative in response to COVIDJournal Articles
International perspectives on teacher induction: A systematic reviewJournal Articles
Investigating career-related teacher support for Chinese secondary school students in Hong KongJournal Articles
International education 'here' and 'there': Geographies, materialities and differentiated mobilities within UK degreesJournal Articles
Instructional practices and students' reading performance: A comparative study of 10 top performing regions in PISA 2018Journal Articles
Intercultural education and sports: Teaching kabaddi in a multicultural setting in Hong KongJournal Articles