Informants and Research Questions for This Study

The informants in this study were 156 first-year international students at universities in China.Chinese was their compulsory subject and they had four contact hours per week.These 156 students majored in five specialised areas of international trade，international marketing，software engineering，electrical engineering and mechanical automation and designing.Of these 156 students，130 were males and 26 were females.They aged between 18 and 26 with an average age of 20.56.They had been learning Chinese for less than six months.These students were from 21 countries in Central Asia，Western Asia，South Asia and Africa，including Bangladesh，Lebanon，Yemen，Nepal，Pakistan，Uzbekistan，Ethiopia，Congo，Burkina Faso，Somalia，Zambia，Uganda，Burundi，Equatorial Guinea，Zimbabwe，Togo，Chad，Ghana，Rwanda，Algeria and Kazakhstan.