Classroom Action Research Project

1. Classroom Action Research Project TITLE: THE ROLE OF CHINESE WORD CARD PLAYING IN MANDARIN LEARNING By Xu Hong

2. . • Research question: What is the effect of Chinese word play cards on grade 7 students’ abilities to learn and memorize Chinese words? What are the visual effects of the cards if the cards embody pictures, English meanings, Chinese phonetic guidance, and Chinese characters.

3. The goal of the project: Find an effective way to teach American students Chinese vocabulary in a fun way, integrating language learning with 5 “Cs” (Communication, culture, connection, comparison, community.” (ACTFL Performance Guideline sets 5c’s for K-12 foreign language learners, with communication as the first one)

4. Thinking of Goal of language learning (5c’s) The mainstream current literature on the subject suggests the main goal of language teaching as to equip our students with the ability to communicate in the target language.

5. The benefits to using Chinese play cards aiming at promoting communicative language learning through card tasks and games can be summarizedas • meaning is primary; • there is a learning task or review task of some sorts. • the activity has some relationship to real-world (food, fruit, color, nature, family members), some cards involve useful sentence pattern, such “I like …...” • task is integrated with games • task performance can be assessed in terms of the outcome (*quotes from Skehan, 1998, p. 95).

6. Peter Skehan is an influential educator in Second Languge Acquisition. He is also the leading figure promoting cognitive approach of language learning and task- based instructions. His philosophy has been widely recognized by ELT (English Language Teaching) teachers in China. In this action research project, I try to adopt his language teaching ideology into American foreign language classroom, with Chinese as a foreign language.

7. Description of the research activity outline : 1. Pre activity : I lead the students to recognize 10 new words ( same category, eg. fruits). I use big teaching flash cards and projector to do instruction. (Time frame 10-15 minutes) 2. Then, Students will get 2-3 inches (Width, length) small play cards to play with these new words. (Time frame: 20 minutes for card play activity)

8. Rules of the card games: • Every 2 students form a pair. They will get these 10 word cards they have just learned. First they need to together figure out these words between themselves. They need to know the pronunciation, meaning, most of all, they need to work on remember the Chinese words without looking at the cards. • Each student will have 5 cards in his or her hands. Then similar to playing card game, they need to win the card from their partners’ hands during the little game. I give students suggestions as how to set up rules for winning:

9. Winning At a certain time, the student who has more cards in his hands is regarded as the winner between the two. The students can also shuffle the cards between different rounds or they can create their own rules to make it more difficult (Eg: Just showing the picture to get the words out, or just show the character to get the correct words, etc)

10. Data collection method After game checking/testing • At the end of 20 minutes, data will be collected by testing individual pair to see how many words they remember ( I give English, they answer in Chinese. They can not see any cards or have any reference). I will record how many Chinese words they remember accurately. Eventually, I will calculate the average number (No. of Words *per pair).

11. Data • Following are 4 days observation，resulting from using different combinations of variables: Picture image; Pinyin (Chinese phonetic pronunciation guidance); Chinese character.

12. Group A Data Table A.1 Date: Oct. 5, 2010 Table A.2 Date: Oct. 6, 2010

13. Group A Data Table A.3 Date: Oct. 7, 2010 Table A.4 Date: Oct. 8, 2010

14. Group B data Table B.1 Date: Oct 5, 2010 Table B.2 Date: Oct 6, 2010

15. Group B data Table B.3 Date: Oct 7, 2010 Table B.4 Date: Oct 8, 2010

16. Data analysis and study • I put all 8 pairs four days results together, especially each pair can compare its own word learning results with different variables.

17. Group A data comparison and analysis Table A.5 ( I hr. 7th grade, data collect on Oct. 5,6,7,8, 2010) *4 (prompts): Picture image; Pinyin; English translation; Chinese character. Eng-Ch refers to English to Chinese interpretation Ch-Eng refers to Chinese to English interpretation

18. From the relevant figures above, we conclude that: • In all four days experiment, 7 groups (87.5%) Chinese-English task is doing better than English-Chinese. only 1 pair ( pair7) is English-Chinese slightly better • Average learning rate with different variables: (number of words/per pair) 4 prompts: Eng-Ch 7.125/per Ch-English 8.125/per 3 pro.(no picture): Eng-Ch 6.625/per Ch-Eng 7/per 3 pro.(no pinyin): Eng-Ch 7/per Ch-English 8/per 3 pro.(no characters): Eng-Ch 7.125/per Ch-Eng 7.875/per

19. i. Average learning rate highest 4 prompts: 8.125/per (Chinese-English) • ii. Average learning rate lowest 3 prompts (no picture) 6.625/per (English-Chinese).

20. Group B data comparison and analysis Table B.5 （2 hr. 7th grade, data collect on Oct. 5,6,7,8, 2010) 4 (prompts): Picture image; Pinyin; English translation; Chinese character

21. Group B relevant statistic We learn the average learning rate with different variables as follows: (number of words/per pair) 4 prompts: Eng-Ch 6.85/per Ch-English 8/per 3 pro.(no picture): Eng-Ch 6.71/per Ch-Eng 7.85/per 3 pro.(no pinyin): Eng-Ch 6,42/per Ch-English 8/per 3 pro.(no characters) Eng-Ch 7.14/per Ch-Eng7.87/per See (average learning) line figure below:

22. Research Conclusion • Both hr. students learning level is much higher when there are 4 prompts on the play cards (Except hr. 2 Eng-Ch) Hypothesis: the students are not trying as hard as they need to, 2nd hr students are mentally tired already when they come in for my class. • Chinese-English interpretation is obviously better than English-Chinese Hypothesis: when learning new words, students can somewhat guess out the English meaning if they already what 10 words are. But it’s very hard to verbalize out the correct Chinese words when they are only given English • When the Variable Picture image is missing, the learning ability has seen obvious declining. Hypothesis: at this age, students are still quite visual learners, they need picture to engage active learning. • When Variable Pinyin is missing, it has higher impact on students learning ability then when the Characters are missing.

23. Survey Questions (to students) • 1. Do you like playing Chinese words cards? • 2. Do you think the cards are helping you to remember the words more efficiently than the regular text book script words? • 3. Do you think it’s a more fun way of learning than other regular learning activities. • 4. Do you want to join making Chinese word play cards? • 5. What kind of words (theme) do you like to learn

24. I collect all 30 questionnaires back, and record the following relevant figures: 1. Choice A (like) 25 B 5 C none 2. Choice A (more efficient) 20 B 7 C none 3. Choice A ( more fun) 23 B 7 C none 4. Choice A (want to join making card) 26 B 4 C none 5. Choice A (food, color) 14B 6 C 5

25. Research evidence has proven that Chinese words card play is a fun and effective way of learning Chinese words. • Key notes: • Using card games for 6-8 grade students when they are learning Chinese vocabulary and simple sentence pattern is effective for the children Teacher need to further Adapting play card to suit my teaching purpose and learning styles Success tips: Be Creative , Make meaningful learning happen, Make simple cards playing a professional look by setting up basic bottom guide lines for students

26. Research evidence has proven that Chinese words card play is a fun and effective way of learning Chinese words. • Key notes: • Using card games for 6-8 grade students when they are learning Chinese vocabulary and simple sentence pattern is effective for the children • Teacher need to further Adapting play card to suit my teaching purpose and learning styles • Success tips: Be Creative , Make meaningful learning happen, Make simple cards playing a professional look by setting up basic bottom guide lines for students

27. Chinese words Sample Cards mother mā mɑ 妈 妈 father bà bɑ爸 爸 younger brother dì di 弟弟

28. REFERENCE AND WORKS CITED Peter Skehan. A cognitive approach to language learning Oxford University Press, 1998 Long, M.H. (1981). Input, interaction, and second language acquisition. In H. Winitz (Ed.), Native language and foreign language acquisition (Vol 379, pp. 259-278). New York:Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. Mauer, J. (1997, September). Presentation, practice, production in the EFL classroom. The Language Teacher, 21(9). Retrieved from February 12, 2006, Nguyen Thi Thanh Huyen & Khuat Thi Thu Nga. (2003, December). Learning vocabulary through games. Asian EFL Journal, 5(4). Asselin, M. (2003). Assessment Issues and Recommendations. Teacher Librarian Lamphere Schools Chinese Program

29. The End of Xu Hong’s presentation Thank you for viewing !