An Empirical Study On The Teaching Of Beginning Chinese With The Flipped Classroom Pedagogy In An American University

Based on Beginning Chinese Ⅰ and Ⅱ from a private American University,this empirical study was conducted over a period of over two years.By exploring the teaching theories and pedagogical methods of the Flipped Classroom,it examined the relationships between "Effective Teacher" and the effective learning,as well as between"Competitive Students" and the effective learning.This research is mainly divided into two parts.The first part is about the teaching framework of the Flipped Classroom constructed by the researcher based on her pragmatic experiences.It examined how the Flipped Classroom instruction facilitated in teaching and learning for the teachers and the students respectively,how to employ the educational technologies to conduct the checkpoints of the design,reminder,follow-up,testing,discussion,evaluation and sharing,and how to set up an educational classroom for students for an effective learning.It also introduced how to blend the instruction in designing Beginning Chinese curriculums and how the roles should be for both the teacher and the students.The second part mainly discussed the effective teaching of the Flipped Classroom,in which the "Effective Teacher","Competitive Students","Superior Environment","Course Contents" and "Tests&Evaluation Mechanism" were proposed to be the principal constituents.Students’ Semester-Start and Semester-End Surveys were used to evaluate the satisfaction of the teacher,to examine the learning results of the students,and to find out what levels the teacher achieved as an Effective teacher and the students achieved as the Competitive Students.This empirical research also investigated the students’behavioral,attitude and learning result changes at different stages from Semester-Start to Semester-End,and from Beginning Chinese Ⅰ to Beginning Chinese Ⅱ.The Chinese teaching model under this framework is also used to examine students’ achievement and learning outcomes.In addition,through the American teacher questionnaire,the Chinese teachers’ opinions on the Flipped Classroom and the main reason to facilitating the learning effectiveness for students were obtained,which were employed to compare to the data gathered from the students’ questionnaires.From the Semester-Start and Semester-End Surveys,the students had completed the Satisfactory Evaluation toward the teacher who was assessed to be qualified to conduct the Flipped Classroom.The effectiveness of the Flipped Classroom pedagogy for learning Chinese is also discussed here.The research was also intended to find out the relevance of the Beginning Chinese teaching curriculum and the Effective Learning.The results showed that students’ grades have a direct correlation with the quality of Competitive Students and have no direct correlation with other constituents.This indicates that students’ learning motivation and autonomous learning ability are the determinants of their academic performance.However,the statistical results did not comply exactly with those from the survey of the Chinese Teachers in USA and Students’Semester-End Survey that the Effective Teacher is the key factor for facilitating students’Chinese learning.In addition,the more students agree to flip the classroom,the stronger the ability to self-encouragement,and the more flexible to adapt to their own pre-study and homework completion,and hence,the better grades.Students with higher grades have a higher level of assessment of each constituent factor in the Flipped Classroom than those with lower grades.The biggest difference between high achieving and low achieving students is manifested in the qualities of Competitive Students.High-score students have learned Chinese longer,their desire of mastering Chinese in the future is stronger,the time they spent learning Chinese every week is relatively longer,the efforts they put on learning is also greater,and their willingness of minoring in Chinese in the future are also stronger.The study also demonstrates that the impact is getting more obvious towards the last stage as the implementation of the Flipped Classroom takes place over time.This teaching experiment examined the results of the students’ assessment on the composition of the Flipped Classroom.In terms of the assessment of the Effective Teachers,the students gave a very high score in the evaluation of the teacher’s professionalism,teaching efforts on the course contents and the overall teaching.The teaching pace needs the most improvement by the teacher,followed by the clarification of the objectives of the curriculum and organizational capacity of the teaching.In the discussion of Competitive Students,’Students’ weekly study time on Chinese’ is low,"the Desire to master Chinese in the future" and "the Effort to put on learning Chinese"also have room for improvement.In the Course Contents,students were more satisfied with the arrangement of the curriculum.They also felt that the teacher’s website facilitated their learning and the choosing textbooks were also appropriate.However,the most dissatisfaction was that they had to preview the course contents,and complete the homework and testing contents in advance in the Flipped Classroom.In addition,students also felt that the amount of homework and activities arranged by the teacher was excessive and beyond their workload.From the examination of "Superior Environment",students in general liked this course.They felt the class atmosphere was good.They were also satisfied with the teaching and the administrative support.However,compared to the previous addressed factors,the evaluation in the classroom management is not high,which is the part the teacher needs to work on in the future.The "Tests&Evaluation Mechanism" revealed that the students were not in favor of the scoring system.The teacher should strengthen the familiarity of the entire evaluation mechanism,so as to reduce the misunderstanding from the students,and make the scoring more prompt,transparent and open."Competitive Students" is highly correlated with these three variables:"the Effort to put on learning Chinese","the Desire to master Chinese in the future",and "the Duration of learning Chinese before"."Competitive Students" and the following two variables of"Minoring in Chinese" and "Students’ weekly study time on Chinese" are moderately correlated.The statistical results lead to the conclusion that determining whether a student has high-quality traits is mainly from his/her efforts and desire on learning Chinese,and his/her previous learning backgrounds."Willingness to Minor in Chinese"is also an important indicator of a high-quality trait.After all,it is a proof that students were determined to continue to invest more time on Chinese learning.Although the“Students’weekly study time on Chinese" is moderately correlated with the Competitive Student,the variable is actually ranked last,in comparison with other variables.It might be the reason that this course is only an elective course,and students spend relatively less effort.However,the students’ quality of the whole sample only reaches half of the full evaluation points from the research results.Most students spend only three hours a week in the preparation of Chinese class.Hence,how to make the learning environment more engaging and challenging becomes extremely important in terms of cultivating students’interest on Chinese learning and for attaining the effective learning outcomes.It is an innovative pedagogical method on Chinese Teaching.But due to the restriction of the sampling size and time,empirical theory needs to be summed up and accumulated.The researcher,with a view to play an initial role of conducting this empirical study,wishes to enrich the Chinese pedagogy and increase the level of Chinese teaching.