The Study of Errors in Writing Chinese Alphabets of Chinese Minor Students in the Faculty of Liberal Arts, Princess of Naradhiwas University

Abstract

The study of errors in writing Chinese alphabets of Chinese minor students in the faculty of Liberal Arts, Princess of Naradhiwas University aims 1) to examine the errors in writing Chinese alphabets of Chinese minor students; 2) to analyze problems and causes of the errors in writing Chinese alphabets of Chinese minor students. The sample participants include 27 Chinese minor students enrolling in 11-034-239 Intermediate Chinese 1 course, selected by purposive sampling. The data was gathered from Chinese alphabet writing exercises and was analyzed using statistics, percentage.
From the findings, it was discovered that the errors in writing Chinese alphabets of Chinese minor students consisted of 2 issues: 1) the issue about lines in Chinese alphabets, where the issues which were found the most frequently were missing lines in Chinese alphabets, writing incorrect lines by either writing too many or too few lines, and writing lines with too much space in between, respectively, and 2) the issue about writing incorrect Chinese alphabets, including writing similar-looking alphabets, writing non-exist alphabets, and writing alphabets with similar sound instead of what was intended, respectively. The study also identified that the errors and the causes of errors came from the fact that there are many lines in each Chinese alphabet, and the majority of Chinese minor students had no fundamental knowledge of Chinese. In addition, in Chinese, there are so many alphabets that make it difficult to remember, and there are some alphabets which sound identical while the meaning and the lines in the characters are different which lead to confusion.