Investigating the Influence of Different L2 Proficiency Measures on Research Results

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The impact of motivation, anxiety and learning strategies on the achievement of foreign language proficiency has been widely acknowledged in the context of traditional offline classroom settings. However, this issue has not been extensively documented in relation to online learning, which has become the predominant form of language learning during the period of the COVID-19 pandemic. The current study was conducted to investigate the relative prediction of motivation, anxiety and learning strategies for second language achievement among 90 Thai adult learners of Chinese as a foreign language (CFL) who took online Chinese courses. The participants completed a questionnaire dealing with motivation, anxiety, learning strategies, and their Chinese proficiency was measured by self-report and a Chinese vocabulary size test. A series of hierarchical regression analyses revealed two major findings. First, anxiety emerged as the most stable factor for the participants' CFL achievement, followed by learning strategies and motivation. Second, motivation, anxiety and learning strategies only significantly predicted the participants' self-rated Chinese language proficiency, but not their performance on the Chinese vocabulary size test. The overall results indicate the relative importance of motivation, anxiety and learning strategies to Chinese language learning in the online environment and suggest different measures of CFL achievement may lead to different research findings. The general findings were of theoretical and pedagogical significance for understanding and addressing individual differences factors in online language learning.

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 95%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The roles of motivation, anxiety and learning strategies in online Chinese learning among Thai learners of Chinese as a foreign language

Zhang

Sukjairungwattana

et al. 2022

Self Cite

“…Among the participants, there were 16 males, with an average age of 24.18 years ( SD = 2.50) and 16 females, with an average age of 24 ( SD = 2.48). Because Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi (HSK) is a standardized international Chinese proficiency test for non-native speakers ( Zhang, 2018 , 2021 ; Zhang et al, 2020 ), this study placed learners into either a high-proficiency group or a low-proficiency group based on their HSK grades. Sixteen high-proficiency learners had achieved HSK-5 ( n = 8) or HSK-6 ( n = 8) and had studied Chinese for about 3 or 4 years.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Influence of Form-Focused Instruction on the L2 Chinese Oral Production of Korean Native Speakers

Chen

2022

Form-focused instruction (FFI) can help second language (L2) learners notice the forms of language, which is conducive to the acquisition of linguistic forms. Two types of FFIs had been proposed, including focus-on-formS (FonFs) and focus-on-form (FonF). Previously, studies on FFI in L2 classroom teaching have focused mainly on the influence of two types of FFIs on the L2 acquisition of grammar and vocabulary. The influence of FonFs and FonF on L2 oral production, however, has been addressed less often. The advantages and disadvantages of different teaching methods in FonFs and FonF have not been well investigated. On the basis of Schmidt’s noticing hypothesis, VanPatten’s input processing hypothesis, and Long’s interactive hypothesis, we investigated the effects of teaching goals, teaching steps, and interactive activities in FonFs and FonF on the complexity, accuracy, and fluency of 32 native Korean speakers’ L2 Chinese oral production. We found that FFI significantly improved the performance of L2 Chinese oral production, although different FFIs had different effects on complexity, accuracy, and fluency. FonF and FonFs could improve both complexity and accuracy, whereas FonF also significantly improved fluency, which was not observed in FonFs. Furthermore, we found that the level of L2 proficiency could modulate the interaction between instruction methods and learning outcomes. For low-proficiency learners, FonF was more helpful for the improvement of fluency. For high-proficiency learners, FonFs was more helpful for the improvement of accuracy. These results demonstrated that teachers should pay attention to the interaction between specific teaching conditions with different L2 proficiency and learning outcomes when implementing FFI. The findings of this study have important implications for the design of procedures and interactive activities of L2 spoken Chinese teaching.

“…Among the 15 heritage participants in our study who took the HSK, the mean HSK score was 267.5 (range: 211-288) of a total score of 300, indicating participants' high level of Chinese proficiency. According to Zhang et al (2020), the HSK yields the most consistent and reliable results with the largest effect size to examine a student's Chinese proficiency level, compared to a self-report measure of years of instruction in Chinese, a reading comprehension test, and a Chinese character recognition test in their study. All participants were undergraduate or graduate students at a University in Shanghai, right-handed according to self-report, with no reading disabilities and with normal or correct-to-normal vision.…”

Section: Participantsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Investigating Heritage Language Processing: Meaning Composition in Chinese Classifier-Noun Phrasal Contexts

Hong

et al. 2021

The aim of the present study was to investigate how Chinese-Malay bilingual speakers with Chinese as heritage language process semantic congruency effects in Chinese and how their brain activities compare to those of monolingual Chinese speakers using electroencephalography (EEG) recordings. To this end, semantic congruencies were manipulated in Chinese classifier-noun phrases, resulting in four conditions: (i) a strongly constraining/high-cloze, plausible (SP) condition, (ii) a weakly constraining/low-cloze, plausible (WP) condition, (iii) a strongly constraining/implausible (SI) condition, and (iv) a weakly constraining/implausible (WI) condition. The analysis of EEG data focused on two event-related potential components, i.e., the N400, which is known for its sensitivity to semantic fit of a target word to its context, and a post-N400 late positive complex (LPC), which is linked to semantic integration after prediction violations and retrospective, evaluative processes. We found similar N400/LPC effects in response to the manipulations of semantic congruency in the mono- and bilingual groups, with a gradient N400 pattern (WI/SI > WP > SP), a larger frontal LPC in response to WP compared to SP, SI, and WI, as well as larger centro-parietal LPCs in response to WP compared to SI and WI, and a larger centro-parietal LPC for SP compared to SI. These results suggest that, in terms of event-related potential (ERP) data, Chinese-Malay early bilingual speakers predict and integrate upcoming semantic information in Chinese classifier-noun phrase to the same extent as monolingual Chinese speakers. However, the global field power (GFP) data showed significant differences between SP and WP in the N400 and LPC time windows in bilinguals, whereas no such effects were observed in monolinguals. This finding was interpreted as showing that bilinguals differ from their monolingual peers in terms of global field power intensity of the brain by processing plausible classifier-noun pairs with different congruency effects.