Authors

Austin Gasiecki, Georgia Southern UniversityFollow
Zuotang Zhang, Georgia Southern UniversityFollow

Learning Chinese Vocabulary: Understanding Students' Perspectives

Abstract

This study used a survey to investigate self-study and university-enrolled Chinese learners’ habits in studying Chinese vocabulary in order to determine what study methods influence a.) learners’ confidence in learning Chinese vocabulary and b.) what aspects of Chinese vocabulary they consider easy or difficult. We were particularly interested in seeing what the data had to say about students’ attitudes towards characters and the written language, given that the field of Chinese language pedagogy is known for a stronger focus on the written language as opposed to the spoken language. We found that aspects of Chinese vocabulary associated with the spoken language were routinely perceived as easier than the written language. We found that incorporating usage of an electronic dictionary, learning to read fictional material, and watching movies and television into the program of study were the three largest factors positively affecting confidence in learning vocabulary, and that students’ trends in these study methods indicated a greater focus on the spoken language the further they progressed along in their learning. This study invites questions for further research on how to teach Chinese vocabulary as a holistic part of the language and on whether and how vocabulary practice should focus less on writing and more on speaking as students progress in their learning.

Bio Note

Austin Gasiecki is pursuing a double major in Anthropology and in World Languages and Cultures with a concentration in Chinese Studies, and will graduate from Georgia Southern University in Fall 2023.

Dr. Zuotang Zhang is a Chinese lecturer at Georgia Southern University. His research interests are broad in language, culture (Chinese folk practice) and education.

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

Erratum

The following errors were identified and corrected in Learning Chinese Vocabulary: Understanding Students’ Perspectives by Austin Gasiecki and Zuotang Zhang. On page 1, “commonly-cited” was corrected to “commonly cited.” On page 2 in the sentence “This idea of distinction between spoken and written Chinese goes all the way back to the Jesuits’ “pioneering reports” and is found expressed in the works of Francis Bacon,” the phrase “goes all the way back to the Jesuits’ “pioneering reports” and” was removed. On page 3, in the phrase “said to have the ‘fire’ radical,” ‘fire’ was corrected to ‘person.’ On page 4, “studies by Tunçel (2575) and Alam et al. (141) show” was corrected to “Tunçel (2575) and Alam et al. (141-42) state”. On page 10, in the phrase “were all of the type”, “all” was changed to “predominantly.” On page 13, ‘Character Fetishization’ was corrected to “Character Fetishization” to reflect format of original title in reference list. Several in-text citation page numbers were also changed to correctly reflect the references or added where they were left out. Capitalization of the last name “Mcdonald” was corrected throughout to “McDonald.”

Recommended Citation

Gasiecki, Austin and Zhang, Zuotang (2024) "Learning Chinese Vocabulary: Understanding Students' Perspectives," The Coastal Review: An Online Peer-reviewed Journal: Vol. 14: Iss. 1, Article 1.
DOI: 10.20429/cr.2024.140101
Available at: https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/thecoastalreview/vol14/iss1/1