In:
Valodu apguve: problēmas un perspektīva : zinātnisko rakstu krājums = Language Acquisition: Problems and Perspective : conference proceedings, Liepaja University, , No. 16 ( 2020-5-14), p. 63-73
Kurzfassung:
In the 21st century, especially after the 2010s, a new phenomenon in the field of Latvian teaching is observed in China: the Latvian Program was initiated in higher education institutions and more Chinese have started to learn Latvian. The causes for this situation are mainly as follows. Firstly, Latvian is one of the two remaining Baltic languages and it is of great value to academic researches. Secondly, as globalization goes deeper in the new century, the relations between China and the European Union (EU) also develop rapidly, thus boosting Chinese people’s interest in the EU’s member countries. Latvian is one of the official languages of the EU and it plays an important role in the China-Latvia and even the China-EU cooperation. Thirdly, since China proposed the 16+1 Format and The Belt and Road initiative, exchanges between China and Latvia have become more frequent.
The motivation for learning Latvian is easy to understand: some learners are students, who are interested in the language and prepare to conduct studies in Latvian; some are common people, who are attracted by the environment in Latvia and plan to work or live in Latvia. Although the reasons to learn Latvian may be various, Chinese learners of Latvian are all influenced by the same mother tongue and culture; therefore, they have similar learning difficulties and problems. To explore possible learning obstacles, there were designed and distributed questionnaires to 47 Chinese learners of Latvian, who are either students in China’s universities or Chinese in Latvia. In order to have a thorough understanding, this paper also invited ten Latvian teachers to join in, who all have experience of teaching Latvian to Chinese learners. The results obtained from the questionnaires were analyzed and sorted into the categories of language skills, including listening, reading, writing and speaking. Latvian acquisition for Chinese learners is anew topic in teaching Latvian as a foreign language, and solutions to deal with the special learning difficulties and problems still need time to work out. This paper may provide some suggestions for future study. Firstly, most Chinese learners are visual learners, thus methods of visualization in learning process are very useful. Secondly, learning materials and practices should be tailored to the special difficulties of Chinese learners. Thirdly, to make the teaching process more systematic and targeted, teaching and research teams are suggested to include both Latvian and Chinese specialists in Latvian.
Materialart:
Online-Ressource
ISSN:
2661-5584
DOI:
10.37384/VA.2020.16.001
DOI:
10.37384/VA.2020.16.063
Sprache:
Lettisch
Verlag:
Liepaja University
Publikationsdatum:
2020
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