Post-training Results and Analysis
Students are also required to fill out a post-training questionnaire after the 2-month DPC Chinese-character-writing training.Nine questions are included as follows:
(1)Was your Chinese writing ability improved by training?Why?
(2)Is the strategy learned from the DPC Chinese-character-writing training still used after class?Why?
(3)Please describe your attitude towards Chinese character writing after the DPC Chinese-character writing training with:Like;Moderate;or Do not like.
(4)How many Chinese characters do you practice every day?
(5)Please describe your current Chinese writing ability in terms of great progress，little progress or no progress.
(6)Please choose the degree of confidence in your Chinese character writing ability with three options，“Very confident”，“Moderate”or“Not confident”.
(7)Please describe whether this training has helped or not helped your Chinese proficiency improvement.
(8)What other problems do you have in writing Chinese characters?
(9)Please describe whether you are still willing to put efforts on improving Chinese character writing using“Very much so”，“Perhaps”or“Not at all”as options and state why.
For the first question，students think that their writing speed，fluency，and confidence in writing Chinese characters，especially their reaction to the sequential links，the structure of Chinese characters，and their cognition of the components of Chinese characters have all improved.92%of students think that their character writing skills have improved significantly.The remaining 8%said it did not help much because some students think they are more likely to forget the strokes themselves if they are memorized in stroke order.
For the answer to question 2，more than 50%of the students said that they have started to try this new method and will combine it with their own original practice.The rest of the students said they still use their own methods after training，as although the practice method is helpful in all aspects of memorizing Chinese characters;some students still like to use flash cards to memorize Chinese characters;and one student indicates that the air writing body movement is too tiring，and one student thinks that the body movement of making air writing in public makes him/her feel shy because the movement is too big.
It must be noted that for the two students who claimed that the air writing movement made them tired or embarrassed，they could have misunderstood the process and its purpose，or they should have missed the second and third cycle practice.Air writing movement is designed only for the early stage to assist them establishing a new way in learning Chinese character writing.Once they passed the first and the second cycle，air writing has achieved its goals and is no longer used in the third cycle.
The third question asked the students’attitude towards writing Chinese characters after the DPC Chinese-character-writing training.The most exciting change from the pre-training questionnaire was that the number of students who chose“Do not like”fell from 35%before the training to 7%after the training.
Question 4 asks students the number of Chinese characters they practice every day，and the answers vary widely，ranging from 20 per day to 25 per week on average.
Question 5 asks if students have made any progress after the training，and those who chose“Great progress”and“Some progress”were 45%and 52%respectively.Only 3%students chose“No progress”.
Question 6 asks students about the degree of confidence in their Chinese character writing ability after the training.More than 50%of the students chose“Moderate”while the rest chose“Very confident”.However，it is comforting to know that no students selected the option“Not confident”after the DPC Chinese-character-writing training.
Question 7 asks the students whether the DPC Chinese-character-writing training is helpful in Chinese learning as a whole.69%of the students chose“Very helpful”and 27%chose“Maybe helpful”;only 4%students think that it is“Not helpful”.
Question 8 inquiries about the problems students still have in character writing after the training.The answers can be summarized as follows:
*Writing is still ugly.
*The problem of forgetting small strokes such as points and hooks still exists.
*Too many characters to remember.
*The confusing of words with similar strokes.
*The confusing of the proportion of similar strokes in a character.
*The confusing of characters which look visually similar.
The good news is that about 25%of students fill in this column with“No problem”.
Question 9 asks whether students are still willing to put efforts to improve their Chinese character writing after the training，and most of the students responded positively saying that they are willing to keep improving their character writing skills in order to improve the speed and fluency of their handwriting and the level of proficiency in Chinese;they also want to read better;to get high marks;and to be better for communication.