電子學習對香港小學生書寫漢字的影響

Abstract

The Hong Kong Education Bureau has been actively promoting e-learning since the 90s. However, it is still debatable whether the use of electronic media for learning is of negative influence to primary students’ handwriting for Chinese characters. Ever since the adoption of e-learning, few scholars have paid ample and close attention to the pros and cons derived from the change. This research is based on four classes of 80 primary five students in total as subjects, through video recording and analysis of the performance of students’ handwriting specifically by approaches such as evaluation of top-bottom, left-right and whole-surrounded, semi-surrounded structure of Chinese characters. To measure and compare between the experimental group (learning Chinese characters through electronic materials) and the control group (learning Chinese characters through traditional materials), handwriting of Chinese characters including order of strokes and seriousness of characters mistakes, were studied to see the difference. The research data includes the interviews of the teachers and the results of the Chinese characters writing test. The findings of this research, generally speaking, is that the experimental group has no significant difference in dictation ability and stroke order compared to the control group. However, low-achieving students in the experimental group are found to have lower dictation abilities than that of the control group. The teachers interview show that if the strategies, assessments and assignments of the teaching of literacy are well coordinated, the negative effect of e-learning on writing Chinese characters may be diminished or even eliminated. On the contrary, the insufficiency of corresponding strategies and the subsequent workloads may cause negative effect of learning Chinese character for low-achieving students. Therefore, teachers have to be careful while using corresponding strategies for teaching Chinese characters.