Learners’Linguistic Profiles in CL2 Classrooms
As most Chinese textbooks cater to learners from English-speaking background，for ease of reference，“learners”in the context of this chapter refers to learners of Chinese language whose base language is English.
Language teachers and researchers typically classify learners into three proficiency levels—beginner，intermediate and advanced.However，the criteria for these divisions vary widely.The key criteria in Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi(HSK)in China are based on the learner’s range of vocabulary usage and grasp of grammar.The Chinese Proficiency Guidelines issued by the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages segment learners by the size of language units(namely word，phrase，sentence and paragraph)they can process and a general assessment of their communicative abilities.As our study focuses on the learner’s ability to use a language in real-life situations rather than the amount of language knowledge acquired by the learner，here in this chapter，we follow the ACTFL criteria in defining CL2 beginner learners.
Based on the ACTFL criteria，the beginner level presupposes limited use of words or phrases with hardly any communicative ability.This implies that a second language beginner learner is not able to communicate effectively with the teacher in the target language.In most cases，they mix their base language with the target language or even use the base language directly.If a monolingual target language approach is adopted by the teacher in class，it will not only increase the learner’s learning difficulty and anxiety，but also affect the interaction between teacher and learners，and the learning atmosphere in class.
For beginner learners from English-speaking background，Chinese is truly a foreign language(Jorden and Walton，1987).Since Chinese and English are largely non-cognate languages with virtually no common linguistic features，it poses challenges in learning for English-speaking learners.Even though beginner learners could have mastered a certain number of Chinese words and are able to translate literally from English into Chinese，the literal translation in most cases differ from the idiomatic Chinese expressions.In terms of orthographic system，English uses the Roman alphabet in both spoken and written form，whereas Chinese uses the romanised transcription known as Hanyu Pinyin to represent the spoken language and logographic characters(Hanzi)for the written language.This inevitably increases the learning burden for English-speaking learners.According to the Defense Language Institute in the US，foreign languages are categorised into four levels of difficulty based on the length of time needed for a native English speaker to reach proficiency，with Category I being the easiest to Category IV the hardest.Chinese is in Category IV，meaning it takes longer to learn than other foreign languages in the first three categories.This is due to the time and effort required for an English-speaking learner to learn the writing system of Chinese characters.