Filnamn 1.0 Projektplan Teaching Chinese writing system Mall från Tieto PPS (ME16, 3.0.2)

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Kory George
8 years ago
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1 Sida: 1 (6) Projektplan

2 Sida: 2 (6) Innehåll 1 Mål Bakgrund och projektidé Projektmål Plan Beslutspunkter, milstolpar Projektkalkyl Organisation... 6 Utgåvehistorik för dokumentet Utgåva Datum Kommentar Underlag för godkännande, BP3 Basfakta Godkännande Beställare/Projektägare: Elin Holmsten

3 Sida: 3 (6) 1 Mål 1.1 Bakgrund och projektidé This project addresses two closely related issues: one issue concerns the technical difficulties of teaching Chinese characters through web-based education. And the other issue is within fundamental pedagogic research concerning teaching Chinese logographic script (characters) to Swedish and European students. Chinese has been widely recognized as the most difficult languages to study (Xu & Jen, 2005), especially to students from an alphabetical language background such as English (Hadley 2001) and Swedish. Learning the Chinese writing system is considered the most challenging task by our (Swedish) students, simply because students alphabetic language background. Swedish has 29 letters that represent sounds, whereas Chinese writing system is ideographic and therefore lacks mapping to phonology, in other words, Chinese characters represent meanings only. Chinese has a huge number of characters, and student has to know approximately 2500 characters in order to be an average reader (Ministry of, PRC, 2001). For every individual character, students need to learn its meaning and sound separately, as well as remember its structure, composition (various strokes) and produce it in writing. Every Chinese character is considered to occupy a square area visually, and is configured in a certain spatial pattern. In order to produce this character in writing, students must learn its composition in strokes, the correct stroke order (marked in red numbers on the right-hand character in Figure 1) and how to place every stroke properly for writing. Thus a very important component of teaching Chinese to beginner students is that the teacher explains the structure, stroke composition and stroke order of new characters, demonstrate stroke-by-stroke writing to the students, and students discuss with the teacher with their questions and participate in writing exercises. In the traditional classroom, teacher s demonstration and student s practice can be done in the black or white board using a marker pen or chalk; whereas in the virtual classroom, it is difficult to implement these activities properly and effectively. Figure 1. Demonstration of character writing in Adobe Connect classroom (whiteboard+ mouse) (Left) and in campus classroom (white board + marker pen) (Right) In the Chinese distance courses at Högskolan Dalarna, our teachers can only demonstrate character writing and give feedbacks to our students regarding their questions and errors by using a mouse to draw on the whiteboard. Needless to say, drawing with a mouse (Left in Figure 1) is by and large different from writing with a marker pen or a chalk (Right in Figure 1). Therefore, it is often very difficult for the teacher to deliver the crucial information about the new characters, and equally difficult for the student to practice or ask their questions, which is the main source of frustration in the virtual classroom. Thus the first goal of this project is to search for alternative tools or functions that can replace the mouse plus whiteboard in Adobe Connect for teaching Chinese characters.

4 Sida: 4 (6) The second issue is pedagogic, an efficient and effective method of teaching Chinese characters to students who study Chinese as a foreign language as adult and through web-based courses is lacking. Traditionally, students learn each character by repeatedly writing it, up to 100 times in some classrooms (Ministry of, PRC, 2001), and teachers teach in a bottom-up fashion, and put great emphasis on the order and placement of each stroke within a character (Tse et al. 2007). This approach has been widely adopted by Chinese teachers in China and overseas, and many of our students who study Chinese through distance courses have reported that the learning process of Chinese characters is boring and inefficient: it is a disadvantage with adult learners to study by rote learning ability as it declines with age, for one thing; the traditional method of teaching fails to make good use of the modern technology and cannot be implemented properly in our virtual classroom (see discussion above),for the other. Our second goal of this project, therefore, is to explore alternative approaches to teach Chinese characters and develop the most optimized methodologies and tools (first goal) that can take advantage of the technology available at Högskolan Dalarna s web-based education for our Chinese distance courses. 1.2 Projektmål This project is mainly conducted by instructors from the Chinese Program, but technical support from NGL center at Högskolan Dalarna is very important to ensure that the following research objectives are met by the end of Tidpunkt: Resultat: Kostnad: 1. Identify alternative tools, functions or apparatus that can be used on Adobe Connect for both students and teacher to write Chinese characters 2. Identify the most optimal tool after trials and evaluating all alternative tools and functions (objective 1) 3. Propose innovative pedagogic approach for teaching Chinese characters on the basis of interviews with students and Chinese teachers, and search of relevant literature 4. Implement the new pedagogic approach (objective 3) together with the new tool on Adobe Connect (objective 2) among a group of students and evaluate it through survey and interviews 5. Distribute report of this research project that include evaluation results (objective 2 and 4) and make recommendations to all Chinese teachers, complete manuscript for submittal to scientific conferences and journals. 291 tkr

5 Sida: 5 (6) 2 Plan 2.1 Beslutspunkter 1, milstolpar 2 Datum BP 3 MS Beskrivning BP3-4 4 Projektplan fastställs av projektägaren, dvs. akademiledningen MS2 Searching for alternative tools, functions or apparatus that can be used on Adobe Connect for both students and teacher to write Chinese characters April 2013 BP5 5 Projektägare beslutar om fortsättning eller förändring utifrån inlämnad statusrapport (och beslut om att gå in med ansökan om ytterligare medel) MS3 Testing and evaluating all alternative tools and making recommendation to the most optimal tool to students and teachers MS4 Proposing a new pedagogic approach (other than the traditional approach) for teaching characters Sept BP5 Projektägare beslutar om fortsättning eller förändring utifrån inlämnad statusrapport (och beslut om att gå in med ansökan om ytterligare medel) MS5 Implementing the new pedagogic approach among a group of students and evaluating the methodology with survey and interviews Dec BP7 6 Slutrapport lämnas och till projektägaren som fattar beslut om hur resultatet av projektet på bästa sätt förvaltas MS6 Informing all Chinese teachers the outcomes of this research project 2.2 Projektkalkyl Kalkylpost Timmar Kostnad Projektledning 30 22,8 tkr Searching and testing tools on Adobe Connect ,2 tkr Research on teaching pedagogy 60 45,6 tkr Testing innovative teaching pedagogy 80 60,8 tkr 1 Förutbestämt tillfälle när styrgruppen sammanträder och fattar beslut om fortsatt verksamhet. 2 Valt tillstånd/läge i produktionsmodellen för mätning av resultat BP3-4 Beslut om att det finns tillräckligt bra underlag för att ta fram det överenskomna resultatet. Avser överenskommelse om godkännande av förberedelser och starta genomförandet. Alternativt fortsätt/gör om arbetet eller avbryt projektet. Beslutsunderlag är projektplan (enkel) inklusive beskrivning av resultatet 5 BP5 Beslut om att fortsätta eller förändra projektåtagandet 6 BP7 Godkännande av överlämning av ansvaret för resultatet.

6 Sida: 6 (6) Interviewing students and teachers 60 45,6 tkr Equipments 25 tkr Summa: tkr 3 Organisation Roll Namn Tel/E-postadress Styrgrupp Akademin Språk och mediers ledningsgrupp Ulf Magnusson / uma@du.se Projektledning Man Gao / mao@du.se Arbetsgrupp Jia Yan Lung-Lung Hu Tao Yang / jya@du.se / llh@du.se / tjn@du.se

DECISION/BESLUT 2003-09-30

DECISION/BESLUT 2003-09-30 Ärendenr. 23. Sökande/Complainant IT Butikken A/S, Danmark Motpart/Respondent Shoppingsajterna Svenska AB, 556577-2547, Önsvala Gård, 245 93 Staffanstorp Saken/The Matter Alternativt