Table of Contents
1 Introduction 1
1.1 Research Background1
1.2 Relevant Literature Reviews1
2 Questionnaires and Survey Methods..3
2.1 Questionnaires3
2.2 Survey Respondents and Methods.4
3 Learning Situations and Influencing Factors.. 5
3.1 Internal Factors.5
3.2 The Influencing Factor of the Family. 6
3.3 The Influencing Factor of Schools, Teachers and Classmates7
3.4 Other Influencing Factors8
4 Quantitative Analysis on the External Influencing Factors8
4.1 Influence of Single Factors8
4.2 Influence of Multiple Factors10
Conclusion 13
Appendix15
Acknowledgements19
Bibliography20
1 Introduction 1.1 Research Background With the expansion of China’s opening-up, an increasing number of foreign elites are pouring into China, including language teachers, senior cooperation managers and advanced researchers, and a large number of them are intended to stay for a relative long time. (According to the National Statistics Bureau in the 2010 national census, 250,434 international people live in China for at least five years.) The most pressing issue these elites have to deal with is their children’s education.
On the one hand, they are not willing to send children to international schools that are expensive and lack of discipline. On the other hand, learning Chinese can be not only useful but also necessary to integrate into the Chinese society. However, at present there is no special Chinese education applied to international children, so their learning of the Chinese language is disadvantaged in many ways. This paper tries to identify the major factors influencing the mastery of Chinese by international children and makes feasible suggestions to improve their Chinese studying, through a questionnaire aimed at foreign children. 1.2 Relevant Literature Reviews Domestic papers often concentrate on one specific area that influences the study result of the Chinese-learning of international children, thus lacking an overall analysis. For example, in terms of learning attitude, expert find that the learning attitude and motivation of international students have positive correlation with their language learning ability(Li Zheng’en, 2011: 13-14). Regarding connotation, some believe that the interest of international children in learning Chinese directly influences their learning effects, so teachers should adopt methods such as organizing study groups, playing games, etc. to reinforce the second language acquisition of international children above 6 years old(Wang Lin, 2010: 20-22). It also emphasizes that the language-learning attitude of parents also has certain positive correlation with children’s learning attitude (Jin Zhenhe, 2009: 35-37).