Pre-training
The pre-training questionnaire covers nine aspects as follows:
(1)Please state how long have you been learning Chinese so far.
(2)Please state how long have you been practicing Chinese characters since you started learning Chinese.
(3)Please describe the attitude towards Chinese character writing by choosing one of the following:Like;Moderate;or Do not like.
(4)Please state the way on how you practice Chinese characters and the number of Chinese characters you practice every day.
(5)Please rate how satisfied you are with your Chinese character writing skills with the following three options:Good;Average;or Bad.
(6)Describe how confident you are in your Chinese character writing ability with the following three options:Very confident;Moderate;or Not confident.
(7)Please state whether you think Chinese character writing ability will affect the process of Chinese learning.
(8)What other problems do you have in writing Chinese characters?
(9)Please indicate whether you are willing to put efforts to improve your Chinese handwriting，and use“Very much so”，“Perhaps”or“Not at all”as options and state why.
The training is aimed at students in the second semester of Chinese studying，who have already passed the basic learning of Chinese in the first semester and have mastered 100-200 basic Chinese characters.Therefore，students’answers to the first and second questions are basically the same，that is，they have studied Chinese for 3-5 months and practiced Chinese characters for 3-5 months.What is more，for various reasons，students believe that writing Chinese characters is a key factor in learning Chinese and improving Chinese language ability.
As for the third question，37%of the students said they like the process of practicing Chinese characters，and the achievement and satisfaction of knowing Chinese characters and being able to write complete Chinese characters.35%of the students do not like the process of practicing Chinese characters.The main reasons are as follows:it is difficult to memorize Chinese characters，asstudents do not know where to start when writing;unable to write the whole character，often miss out radicals;Chinese characters and their pronunciations are difficult to match;similar radicals in Chinese characters are easily mixed up;radicals such as dots，hooks and other tiny strokes are always forgotten;the psychological pressure caused by the large amount of characters to be memorized makes the learning even more difficult;falling into memory—forgetting—repeated cycles of memory.28%of the participants did not take a clear stand.
Students’responses to question 4 varied widely，from about 20 Chinese characters a week to up to 30 Chinese characters a day.The main ways that students use to practice Chinese characters are handwriting and flash cards.
For question 5，about 45% of the students are not satisfied with their Chinese character writing ability，40%think that it is moderate，and only 15%are satisfied with their ability.
In question 6，students were asked to choose the degree of confidence in their Chinese character writing ability.Most students who chose“Moderate”or“Not confident”were equally split.
As for question 7，whether students think the handwriting ability of Chinese characters will affect the learning process of Chinese，almost all students express a positive attitude.
In question 8，the problems students encountered in character writing can be summarized mainly as follows:
*Difficulties in memorizing complex characters.
*The proportion of strokes in characters.
*Difficulties in memorizing all strokes and the correct stroke orders.
*Always the forgetting of the small strokes in Chinese characters such as dots and hooks.
*Difficulties in memorizing the position of the strokes.
*Difficulties in memorizing the pronunciation and the meaning of Chinese characters as a whole.
*Difficulties in improving writing fluency and writing speed.
*Do not know which stroke to start with.
*Difficulties in differentiating visually similar Chinese characters.
*Time-consuming in writing Chinese characters and difficulties in writing characters neatly and beautifully.
*Difficulties in memorizing radicals and characters as a whole.
*Difficulties in connecting the meanings with the characters they wrote.
To question 9，more than 70%of the students said that they are very much willing to put efforts to improve their Chinese writing ability，less than 30%said“perhaps”;and few students chose“No”as the answer.