1. Prelude
1. 1 Preliminary Research into Learning the Chinese
Language
To commence our research, the native speakers in our group (from the Ningbo
Campus) were asked to recall their experiences of learning Chinese. Their
recollections would help the group to focus their future research on aspects of
the Chinese language key to novice and intermediate learners. Their experiences
would also help unravel any hidden complexities involved in learning their
language, as the majority of the group has never studied Chinese previously.
The extract that follows is taken from documents produced by Zenan and Hanxing,
who are the native speakers in our Group.
From my personal experience of learning Chinese, the first thing is to learn the
alphabets. But there may be some misunderstandings for you that have not
learned Chinese. The alphabets are only used for pronunciation called Pinyin but
it has nothing to do with writing. (It is common that different words can have the
same pronunciation in Chinese).
For all Chinese students
1. At beginning, they learn the Pinyin (alphabets).
2. Learning the words and phases by learning a sentence. (Recognized the
word by the handwriting. Teachers always ask students to copy the words
several times to remember it.)
3. Read the article (to understand quickly, review the words, phrases and
find the phrases that you are not familiar with.
Key Points on the Chinese Language
 Chinese characters and their pronunciation is a many-to-many
relationship, most words were pronounced differently in different dialects
before Mandarin became the official language. Nowadays dialect usually
uses characters purely for their pronunciation in Mandarin.
 Most dictionaries use alphabetical order of their pronunciation, i.e. Pinyin,
although some old or traditional dictionaries use stroke, radical, e.g. some
dictionaries for different fonts in Chinese calligraphy, or even four-corner
method, which is quite common for people in libraries and archives
 The indexing system of Chinese characters has always been a huge issue.
It's difficult to look for characters when you don't know their correct
pronunciation. So an integrated camera search may be a good solution.
 For dictionaries with large inclusion of words also divide the meaning of
same character with same pronunciation into several groups for learner
to understand easier, mostly by each lexical class, which is a concept from
European.
 After the transformation from Classical Chinese to modern Chinese, the
syntax is much more like English, thus this is not a problem for CSL
learners.
The statements produced by both native group members immediately
challenged the way we thought about this project. We felt that in order to be able
to teach novice and intermediate learners, ‘everyday’ Chinese, we would have to
examine which areas of the Chinese language would be most applicable. For
example, we considered the alphabet, and if it would be a necessity if it is only
used for pronunciation. On top of this, we needed to focus on the fundamental
processes our application would need to provide, to help learners grasp this
knowledge. Would for example, a dictionary listing Chinese words be more or
less useful than a Phrasebook and why?
1.2
Targeted Research
Following on from our initial research, we decided to split our informed research
into three keys areas:
1. Existing applications that aim to teach individuals a language (preferably
Chinese)
2. Current individuals learning Chinese
3. Lecturers at the University teaching Chinese