Understanding the Chinese writing processes and creativity of non-native Chinese speaking (NNCS) students in Hong Kong primary schools

Abstract

The number of non-native Chinese speakers in Hong Kong has increased rapidly in recent decades. Chinese is the dominant language in Hong Kong, and the second language for many non-native Chinese speaking (NNCS) students in Hong Kong, many of whom receive education alongside local students whose mother tongue is Chinese in Hong Kong schools. As many schools in Hong Kong use Chinese as their main medium of instruction, learning Chinese is important for NNCS students if they are to receive an education, access further development and employment, and integrate into Hong Kong society. However, teachers and NNCS students face many challenges related to teaching and learning Chinese, more so in terms of writing than of listening to, speaking, and reading Chinese. Learning to write Chinese is a difficult process, one involving planning, drafting, revising, and editing stages. It is necessary to understand NNCS students’ Chinese writing process to identify their difficulties in Chinese writing and explore more effective strategies for helping them. This thesis reports on two studies. Study One aimed to understand teaching practices and difficulties in the process of learning Chinese writing of NNCS students from the perspectives of teachers and curriculum developers. In Study One, three focus group interviews of two types were conducted with 10 frontline teachers teaching Chinese language and six curriculum developers, focusing on the writing process. Results showed that NNCS students face many challenges in terms of environmental, operational, and internal factors in learning Chinese writing. They often have problems understanding the writing task, generating enough ideas for writing, transforming ideas into Chinese words, and writing the correct Chinese characters down on paper. In addition, traditional teaching methods used in writing lessons may not meet NNCS students’ needs in multi-cultural classrooms, due to their various cultural backgrounds and different language abilities, thus, the necessity to explore more effective teaching strategies to help NNCS students learn Chinese writing. A small-scale intervention was conducted in Study Two with three NNCS student cases from Grade Three, using a creative writing strategy called guided fantasy. This study aimed at understanding students’ Chinese writing difficulties, processes, and creativity through pre- and post-tests of writing, lessons, teacher meetings, teaching plans, and students’ image capture sheets. The effectiveness of such an intervention examined students’ creative writing performance and their processes in the writing lessons. This study showed that guided fantasy was effective at enhancing Chinese creative writing performance for the NNCS students and helped them solve the problem of generating in the writing process. This study advances writing studies by looking into the Chinese language writing difficulties, processes, and creativity of NNCS students in a multi-cultural environment in Hong Kong primary schools. It may also contribute to writing process theories for and provide insights to educationalists on the practice of teaching and learning Chinese writing for multicultural learners.

Key words: Writing process, Creativity, Chinese writing, NNCS students