Word-processor or pencil-and-paper? A comparison of students' writing in Chinese as a foreign language

Abstract

A study is reported of the performance and attainment of 32 students from overseas studying elementary Chinese as a foreign language (CFL) in a Chinese university. With an AB-BA design, they were asked to use two forms of writing media to present two essays: one a word-processed essay entitled “My Favourite Female” and the other a conventional hand-written essay entitled “My Favourite Male”. The essays were marked by experienced Chinese language experts and the learners’ impression of using each type of writing medium was gathered via questionnaires and interviews. Inferential statistics showed that the students performed significantly better when using a word-processor, and they thought that completing writing tasks using pencil-and-paper and word-processors were markedly different. Most of them felt that their work was more professional when produced on a word-processor. A small number of students considered that writing by hand in Chinese was aesthetically pleasing, but they appreciated the convenience of writing in words spelled and written correctly by the computer. Inter-marker consistency was more homogeneous for essays written on the computer. In conclusion, word-processors are suggested as the preferred writing medium for beginning learners of CFL.

Keywords:

• word processing
• handwriting
• essays
• foreign language
• Chinese

Acknowledgements

The authors are very grateful to the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments on an earlier version of this paper. The remaining errors are solely our responsibility. We also thank Professor Wei Hong from Purdue University for her constructive advice and suggestions on the final version of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Yu Zhu

Dr. Yu Zhu received his PhD in foreign language education from Purdue University. He is now an associate professor at the Overseas Education College of Xiamen University in China. He also serves as the executive editor of the Quarterly Journal of Chinese Studies (ISSN 2224-2716), an international academic journal indexed by ProQuest. His research interests include computer assisted teaching and learning of Chinese as a second language and assessment of Chinese proficiency for foreign and native language learners.

Shiu-Kee Mark Shum

Dr Shiu-Kee Shum received his PhD from The University of Melbourne. He is now an associate professor of Chinese language education at The University of Hong Kong. He has over 80 publications, including books, book chapters, and research papers. He serves as the head of the division of Chinese language and literature of the faculty of education, as well as the deputy director of the ‘Centre for the Advancement of Chinese Language Education and Research’ of The University of Hong Kong. His areas of expertise are: Chinese language education; Systemic Functional Linguistics and its application to teaching, text analysis, teaching of Chinese writing, and assessment of composition.

Shek-Kam Brian Tse

Professor Tse Shek Kam is the director of the ‘Centre for the Advancement of Chinese Language Education and Research’ of The University of Hong Kong. He has been providing consultancy service to a number of organizations, including Chinese Education Centre of the Netherlands Government, Ministry of Education, Singapore, Education Bureau of the Hong Kong Government and the Education and Youth Affairs Bureau of Macao Government. He is a national research coordinator of the Hong Kong element of progress in international reading literacy study (PIRLS). His research interests include the teaching and learning of reading and spoken literacy, the learning and teaching of Chinese as first and second language, early childhood Chinese language education, bi-lingual reading, computer assisted language learning and ways of assessing and monitoring language learning. He has published more than 30 books, 90 book chapters, and 90 research articles.

Jinghui Jack Liu

Dr Jinghui Liu earned his PhD in foreign language education from Purdue University. He teaches courses on mandarin language, international business, and cultural studies. He also directs the summer language intensive program (SLIP), a California state university consortium program (Summer 2012∼ Present). Dr Liu received the Wang faculty fellow award ($10,000) for conducting business language research at Shanghai JiaoTong University from 2010–2011. He received numerous awards from CSUF including outstanding faculty award in scholarly creativity, and outstanding faculty award in collaborative teaching and outstanding service-learning instructor award. He also served as a reviewer for international conferences and academic publishers such as Yale University Press.