From pedagogical experience to students' expectations: a review of web-based self-learning materials on Chinese practical writing

Leung Sze Ming
Caritas Bianchi College of Careers
Hong Kong SAR, China

With the proliferation of the Internet, web-based teaching has increasingly become an object of study in the field of language education. Although there has been substantial research on the application of technology (e.g. web-pages, computer software, emails, WebCT and blogging) to Chinese language teaching, the literature on web-based self-learning materials, on Chinese practical writing (CPW) in particular, is still very scarce.

Instead of sharing pedagogical experience of teaching CPW from the teachers' perspectives, this paper aims to examine students' perceptions of existing self-learning materials on the Web to provide insights into their expectations for the design of such materials, with special reference to CPW.

This project was conducted in two local sub-degree providers: Caritas Francis Hsu College and Caritas Bianchi College of Careers. Two sets of web-based materials, developed by the Faculty of Education at the University of Hong Kong and the Centre for Language in Education at Hong Kong Institute of Education, were used in the study. The students who participated were asked to study the CPW web-based materials, identify those they preferred and give the main reasons for their preferences. To address these issues, focus group interviews were conducted and student feedback on the materials was collected. The findings from the focus groups were then used to construct a questionnaire which was sent to all participants to verify the focus group findings and explore the relationship between students' backgrounds and their expectations for the topics concerned.

The preliminary results of this project showed a medium level of consistency between the two sets of variables and provided the Chinese language teachers involved with a better understanding of how students' backgrounds relate to their needs and expectations for web-based self-learning materials on CPW.