On March 30, 2023, the UCD Irish Institute for Chinese Studies (IICS) held a public lecture and the 51st Confucius PhD Student Forum was successfully held. An expert in language education, Andrew Scrimgeour, Adjunct Research Fellow at the University of South Australia, gave a lecture entitled "Demystifying the Chinese Writing System: What is it that Learners Need to Know?". The lecture was hosted by Caitríona Osborne, Assistant Professor at IICS, and was held simultaneously via hybrid methods, where nearly 100 students and teachers attended.
The lecture focused on teaching Chinese characters, a difficult and important aspect of international Chinese language teaching. First, Prof. Andrews emphasized the importance of writing Chinese characters from the perspective of cognitive development and visual processing, and pointed out that the teaching of Chinese characters should take advantage of learners' existing knowledge and experience. For example, educators can provide learners with meta-linguistic explanations of the letters that make up English vocabulary, and help them use their existing knowledge to develop their perception and literacy of the Chinese writing system, thus promoting their self-motivated learning and assisting them in gradually building up long-term language learning habits and awareness.
Second, focusing on the Chinese character system itself, Prof. Andrews introduced the rationale for Chinese character system starting with the strokes, stroke order, monograms, and syncretic characters. He also showed the reliability of the larger proportion of semantic components in syncretic characters and their participation in ideograms with data. Based on this, Prof. Andrews argued that the current structure of the Chinese teaching, a second language curriculum, fails to address the specificity of the Chinese character system itself. Besides, teaching materials and activities does not consider Chinese character literacy as a unique learning task, resulting in an incongruous relationship between literacy as a starting point and the ultimate communicative goal.
Afterwards, through some examples of Chinese characters, such as 青 and 馨, Prof. Andrews and the audience analyzed the composition of individual characters and the interactions between different parts. He stated that it is necessary to help learners build up a perceptual understanding of Chinese characters through independent graphic units, and that learners need to consciously "spell" the sequence and meaning of Chinese characters in order to convert them into long-term memory for language learning. Therefore, he emphasized that Chinese character education should focus on developing learners' perceptions of the character system and the necessary comparisons with the English writing system to guide students' transfer of relevant experiences, thus facilitating learners' conscious exploration and understanding of the Chinese character stroke system and construction system with meta-linguistic monitoring.
Finally, Prof. Andrews pointed out the problems in Chinese character teaching and had a heated discussion with the audience. After the lecture, President Liming Wang presented Prof. Andrews with an honorary certificate and a souvenir on behalf of the college.
Watch (opens in a new window)here
都柏林大学中国研究院举办第51届孔子博士论坛
2023年3月30日，都柏林大学中国研究院公共讲座暨第51届孔子博士论坛成功举办。来自南澳大学（University of South Australia）的客座研究员（Adjunct Research Fellow）、语言教育专家安德鲁·斯克林杰（Andrew Scrimgeour）做了题为“揭秘中文书写系统：学习者需要知道的是什么？”的主题讲座。本次讲座由都柏林大学中国研究院助理教授Caitríona Osborne主持，以线上线下相结合的方式进行，近百名师生出席了本次论坛。
讲座围绕国际中文教学的难点和重点——汉字教学展开。首先，安德鲁教授从认知发展和视觉处理的角度强调了手写汉字的重要性，同时指出在汉字教学中应注重利用学习者已有的知识和经验，如为学习者提供构成英语词汇的字母进行元语言解释，帮助学习者利用已有的认识去发展对中文书写系统的感知和识记能力，从而能够更加自主地学习汉字，并逐步建立起长期的语言学习习惯和意识。
其次，聚焦汉字系统本身，从构字的笔画、笔顺、独体字和合体字开始，安德鲁教授介绍了汉字系统自身存在的理据性，并用数据展示出语义部件在合体字中的较大比例和参与表意的可靠性。基于此，安德鲁教授认为目前汉语作为第二语言课程结构中存在未能解决汉字系统本身特殊性的问题，教材和教学活动没有将汉字读写能力视为一个独特的学习任务，从而造成作为起点的识字和最终的交际目标之间存在着不协调的关系。
之后，通过一些具体的汉字示例，如“青”、“馨”等，安德鲁教授和现场观众一起分析了个别汉字的构成和各部分之间的相互作用关系，指出通过独立的图形单元去帮助学习者建立起对汉字的感性认识是十分必要的，学习者需要有意识地“拼写”汉字的构字序列和意义才能转换为语言学习的长期记忆。因此，他强调汉字教学应该专注培养学习者对汉字系统的感知，以及与英语书写系统进行必要的对比，引导学生进行相关经验的迁移，从而促进学习者利用元语言监控对汉字笔画系统、构造系统的有意识探索和理解。
最后，安德鲁教授指出了目前中文汉字教学中存在的问题并与现场观众进行了热烈的讨论。讲座结束后，王黎明院长代表学院向安德鲁教授颁发了荣誉证书并赠送了纪念品。