This study investigated learning strategies for Chinese character handwriting (CCW) among students of Chinese as a second language (CSL) in Hong Kong international schools. It first developed an inventory for identifying CCW strategies. The data obtained from the international school students showed that the most frequently used learning strategies as those related to the meaning, structure and shape of Chinese characters; the least frequently used strategies were found to be games, calligraphy, and metacognitive strategies. Then, a factor analysis revealed that two dimensions exist for CCW strategies: knowledge-based and indirect, indicating that both linguistic features of Chinese characters and the cognitive process of handwriting influence students’ employment of CCW strategies. Accordingly, suggestions for teaching approaches and improvement were provided. Copyright © 2024 The Education University of Hong Kong. All Rights Reserved.

The two-year longitudinal case study reported in this paper documents a Putonghuaspeaking mainland Chinese undergraduate student's language learning experiences and strategy use in an English-medium university in Hong Kong. Using a sociocultural approach, this paper focuses on three biographical episodes, which recount how the student attempted to create alternative ways of learning and seek new learning opportunities within the learning context, how she came to realise the limitations of her efforts and withdrew from her early active pursuits, and how she followed other mainland Chinese students in memorising words and attached her own meanings to her memorisation efforts. The paper highlights the social, cultural and political aspects of her strategy use and argues that learners' biographical experiences are an important avenue for us to understand learners' strategy use as a complicated phenomenon revealing the interplay between learners' agency and context.
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The paper reports the findings of a study that examined how Chinese university students, with English as a second language, employed listening comprehension strategies. Twenty students enrolling in different full time undergraduate courses in Hong Kong were studied. Their achievement, gender self-ratings of learning ability, and topic familiarity on vocabulary learning strategy use were analyzed.