Secondary schools in the Netherlands have been offering Chinese Language and Culture as an official exam subject for three years now. Studies on Dutch students SLA of Mandarin are very limited in...Show moreSecondary schools in the Netherlands have been offering Chinese Language and Culture as an official exam subject for three years now. Studies on Dutch students SLA of Mandarin are very limited in number, and established literature often studies participants in their twenties with English as their L1. This study aims to look at improvement shown in tonal production by Dutch teenagers aged 13-17 who follow the relatively new Mandarin course in secondary school, to provide deeper insight into SLA of Mandarin by Dutch teenagers, and into the effectiveness of the course. There were two groups of participants: students with four months of experience in Mandarin, and students from the same school with three and a half years of experience. They were asked to produce a selection of both monosyllabic and disyllabic words. Their tones were visualized using Praat, and compared to both the tonal production of native speakers to identify errors. The production of the two different grades was then compared to one another to identify points of improvement. The results showed that female students showed improvement mainly in pitch contour, and to some extent even acquired tonal coarticulation. The male students showed improvement in pitch height, and very little improvement in pitch contour. For both genders the production of tone 3 appeared most difficult, followed by tone 4, then tone 2. Tone 1 was the easiest to produce.Show less
Strokes and stroke order are compulsory elements in order to write Chinese characters by hand in the conventional way. In Chinese education, strokes and stroke order are still very important...Show moreStrokes and stroke order are compulsory elements in order to write Chinese characters by hand in the conventional way. In Chinese education, strokes and stroke order are still very important learning objectives. However, there has never been any consensus about stroke orders. Perhaps more importantly, for daily communication in this digital era, stroke and stroke orders seldom plays any active role in digital input methods. As a reaction to this, in Chinese society there is a fear of “character amnesia”, which means being afraid of losing the ability to write Chinese characters. Observers that are worried about this phenomenon base their worries on the idea that Chinese characters carry a political, historical and cultural “baggage” that the Chinese people should pass on to future generations. As for Dutch students, the necessity for Dutch students to handwrite Chinese characters is even less prominent than for native Chinese speakers. It is always possible for Dutch students to use Pinyin input to type/write Chinese characters on a computer and phone. Furthermore, from the cultural perspective, the role of strokes and stroke order connected to national identity via Chinese characters do not apply to Dutch students. The final level for Dutch secondary school students is A1 or A2, which is quite humble. Character writing is difficult enough, let alone the stroke order, especially since there is still discussion about certain stroke orders in Chinese academic fields. There is limited instruction time for Chinese and it does not provide enough time for Dutch students to master strokes and stroke order. Pragmatically, it is not worth the time to learn it.Show less
The focus of this thesis is on the categorization of handwritten Chinese characters. The main question is, ‘How can handwritten Chinese characters be categorized in order to make unknown characters...Show moreThe focus of this thesis is on the categorization of handwritten Chinese characters. The main question is, ‘How can handwritten Chinese characters be categorized in order to make unknown characters findable?’. Handwritten Chinese characters differ from regular or printed Chinese characters. Learning to read handwritten Chinese is not part of any university curriculum and it is usually not taught in language schools. There are only a few sources that can be used to find the corresponding regular form of an unknown handwritten character. Four sources are reviewed in order to explore and judge various methods. This research is based on the methods used in A Manual of Chinese Running-Hand Writing: Especially as it is Used in Japan written by Groeneveldt and De Saint Aulaire (1861), Dictionnaire des formes cursives des caractères chinois (1909) by Stanislas Millot, Sōsho Daijiten (1936) by Sukeyuki Endō and Chinese cursive script: An introduction to handwriting in Chinese (1958) by Fang-yü Wang. The product of this research will be a set of guidelines of what a user-friendly dictionary would look like.Show less
In this thesis I will conduct research regarding the acquisition of the BA construction among native Dutch second language learners of Mandarin. I will look at the following research question: Are...Show moreIn this thesis I will conduct research regarding the acquisition of the BA construction among native Dutch second language learners of Mandarin. I will look at the following research question: Are native Dutch speaking learners of Mandarin as a second language faster in understanding certain features of the BA structure and in acquiring the BA structure then native English speaking learners of Mandarin? This question is suggested by the fact that English is an SVO language, while Dutch is basically an SOV language. Since the BA construction is an SOV structure, it could be possible that based on their first language, Dutch learners of Mandarin are faster than English learners of Mandarin in acquiring this structure. At the end of my research I expect to be able to show some interesting points regarding this question, which could be a basis for more research on this question.Show less
Abstract: The purpose of this thesis is to analyze the suffixes –er and –zi as encountered in modern Mandarin. What it aims to explore are the semantic and grammatical aspects of these two suffixes...Show moreAbstract: The purpose of this thesis is to analyze the suffixes –er and –zi as encountered in modern Mandarin. What it aims to explore are the semantic and grammatical aspects of these two suffixes. The analyses touch upon questions such as: (1) What kind of word classes can –er and –zi be suffixed to? (2) Do –er and –zi imply diminutive meaning? (3) Is there a difference in meaning when a word allows for both –er and –zi suffixation? These and other questions are investigated with the help of two dictionaries, namely Wei (2005) and Jia (1990), on the basis of which a database of words suffixed with –er and –zi will be created.Show less
