Educational Research AY2016/2017

Chinese characters pose one of the difficulties in learning Chinese as a second language. Lower primary school students in Singapore find it difficult to learn, memorize and write Chinese characters. Thus, learning Chinese characters is a prevalence problem in Singapore. The teaching of character recognition and writing becomes more challenging for teachers. In order to arouse students’ interest in learning Chinese character, teachers need to use special pedagogical approach and assessment practice to cultivate their interest in Chinese language. This paper is divided into 5 parts. The first part introduces the language background in Singapore. The next part explains the related research of Chinese character learning strategy followed by Methodology. The fourth part is findings and discussion. It states the reasons for learning difficulties of Chinese characters for lower primary school students with explanations; discusses the preferred pedagogy approach and assessment practice from students; proposes suggestions and improvement strategies. The final part briefly summarizes the main points as a conclusion.