Raising Orthographic Awareness of Teachers of Chinese
DISCUSSION
The findings of this study furnished some evidence for the application of KAL in CFL teachers’ pedagogical practices and decision-making process. First, novice CFL teachers were, on average, able to identify over 92% of the errors contained in the sample characters, out of which those errors caused by structural variations were 100% recognized. This arguably supports the previous finding that explicit teacher knowledge had a significant effect on the teaching of particular target features (Kinoshita, 2002). Moreover, their well-articulated corrective and preventive strategies showed that once teachers were equipped with KAL, they would actively apply it to their pedagogical systems and formulate their working principles accordingly.
Secondly, the results from the error identification task suggest that the level of task complexity was an affecting factor in teachers’ application of orthographic knowledge. The participants failed to identify those caused by substitutions of graphemically or semantic similar characters. Moreover, they correctly recognized all the errors caused by homophonic substitutions but failed those caused by alliteration or rhyming. They were also able to identify some of the semantic and combined errors but failed to classify them into the correct categories. Instead, most of such errors were grouped in graphemic or phonological categories. The likely reason was that some errors, such as structural and homophonic ones, involved a single level of mental process such as visual or phonetic, while others, such as semantic and combined ones, might involve more than one, such as visual, sound-meaning retrieval, form-sound-meaning mapping, etc. Following this line, one may suggest that the more mental processes a task involves, the more difficult it becomes.
Thirdly, the participants’ articulation in corrective strategies showed that they gave predominant preference to direct correction but minor or minimal attention to indirect correction and peer evaluation respectively. Such choice was apparently not supported by the current L2 teaching methodology nor was it promoted in the pedagogy class. The likely reason was that the novice teachers were driven by the notion that Chinese character writing was the most difficult learning task. To cope with such learning difficulty, they resorted to a more pragmatic approach marked with “tough” treatments such as directly pointing out the errors, explicitly explaining the errors, having the students repeatedly write the correct character, etc.
Fourthly, the think-aloud protocols showed notable individual differences in the depth of error analysis and elaboration of explicit orthographic knowledge. Such findings support Borgs’ (1999) observation that there were varied teacher practices in using explicit grammatical knowledge, which resulted from an interacting range of experiential, cognitive, and contextual factors. In this study, such disparity may also suggest sources in the participants’ prior subject matter training, first language background, and teaching experience. Thirdly, the participants’ articulation in corrective strategies showed that they gave predominant preference to direct correction but minor or minimal attention to indirect correction and peer evaluation respectively. Such choice was apparently not supported by the current L2 teaching methodology nor was it promoted in the pedagogy class. The likely reason was that the novice teachers were driven by the notion that Chinese character writing was the most difficult learning task. To cope with such learning difficulty, they resorted to a more pragmatic approach marked with “tough” treatments such as directly pointing out the errors, explicitly explaining the errors, having the students repeatedly write the correct character, etc. Fourthly, the think-aloud protocols showed notable individual differences in the depth of error analysis and elaboration of explicit orthographic knowledge. Such findings support Borgs’ (1999) observation that there were varied teacher practices in using explicit grammatical knowledge, which resulted from an interacting range of experiential, cognitive, and contextual factors. In this study, such disparity may also suggest sources in the participants’ prior subject matter training, first language background, and teaching experience.
Finally, the results from the classroom observations showed that novice CFL teachers were able to use Chinese orthography knowledge to the full extent in providing and reinforcing information but not so in dealing with real errors. When errors were encountered in classroom teaching, teachers were able to embark on their corrective strategies when certain conditions were met such that there was adequate class time and that the class was operated as pre-planned. However, they were not able to do so if they were under time pressure or affected by divided attention. Such an observation supports Andrews’ (1997) finding that the possession of KAL did not guarantee teachers have the ability to make that knowledge explicit in teaching process, in that many of the teachers’ weaknesses in performance were more related to problems with procedural aspects rather than with the underlying KAL. The present findings may further suggest that novice teachers need knowledge in, besides KAL, common-sense classroom procedural application such as time management, priority setting, feasibility and flexibility in lesson planning, etc.
