Study On Brazilian Students’ Acquisition And Teaching On Chinese Characters

During the period of being a volunteer Chinese teacher at the Confucius Institute at the Federal University of Minas Gerais,Brazil,the author took the Brazilian students from the Confucius Institute as the participants.With the methods of data collection,questionnaire investigation and interviews,this study explored the acquisition and the teaching of Chinese characters to Brazilian students,and further put forward the corresponding suggestions and strategies.The author firstly introduced the basic information about the Confucius Institute,including the Chinese teachers,the teaching subjects,the Chinese curriculum setting,and the Chinese character textbooks.Through the investigation,arrangement and analysis of students’ acquisition and teachers’ teaching of Chinese characters,the basic situation of learning and teaching at the Confucius Institute was obtained.Then,through the collection and analysis of Brazilian students’ common offsets in the writing of Chinese characters,the offsets were classified,calculated and described detailedly from the levels of stroke,components and the whole word.With the consideration of the questionnaire analysis,the relevant situation of the Confucius Institute and students’ writing offsets,the reasons of the occurrence of offsets in the writing of Chinese characters of Brazilian students were analyzed from the following aspects: the differences between Chinese characters and Portuguese,learners themselves,Chinese teachers,Confucius Institute,etc.Then,according to the problems occurred in the process of the learning and teaching of Chinese characters,the author,on the basis of Brazilian students’ characteristics and the actual situation of Confucius Institutes,put forward relatively pertinent suggestions and strategies to the teaching of Chinese characters from four aspects: the Chinese character itself,students,teachers and the Confucius Institute as well.The last part pointed out some limitations of the current research,and looked forward to future studies.The present research on the nationalization of Chinese character teaching in South American countries is neither deep nor elaborate enough.The research on Chinese character teaching in Brazil is even rarer.Based on the authentic data and the questionnaire survey of Brazilian students,the author made a detailed statistical analysis,strived to reflect comprehensively and meticulously the situation of the Brazilian students’ acquisition of Chinese characters and the teaching of teachers in Confucius Institutes,and made up for the gap in the teaching of Chinese characters in Brazil.It is hoped that this study could provide some ideas and accumulate some materials for the teaching of Chinese characters in various Confucius Institutes in Brazil,and offer experience and reference for future Chinese teachers in Confucius Institutes.