Abstract:

This paper reports a pilot study of blended learning design for remedial training of modern Chinese grammar at university level. The grammatical point of concern in the pilot study is the correct uses of Chinese words in accordance with their parts of speech in a given context. The target language is written modern Chinese, and the subjects are 21 students of Hong Kong Polytechnic University.

The pilot study was done in July 2010. The training is structured in the questions of what should be taught, how to teach, and what have been learned in the remedial treatment as follows: (1) 4 types of common erroneous uses in Chinese word class are derived from an analysis 100 written products by the students. The linguistic data from the analysis is used as materials for remedial training. (2) Before attending the class, students are given a pre-test on these 4 types of error. (3) Their results further indicate what specific problems they have in this area. Such information becomes the focuses to be tackled in fact-to-face classroom teaching. (4) About 3-4 days after the training, students are asked to do a post-test through the Web, to show how much they have learned from the classroom teaching. The whole treatment can be viewed in a process of specifiation as follows:
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.....Error analysis...............Pre-test................Classroom Teaching.................. Post-test...............
..(identification..........(diagnostic test............(focuses for classroom.......(attainment test to show....
......of problems)......for specific problems..............contact)........................learning outcome).......
................................of the target group)....................................................................................
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Blended learning design:.....Web delivery ……..face to face interaction….......Web delivery...........
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Findings show that by going through this process of observing, planning and assessing, the remedial teaching in blended learning structure seems to be an effective way of learning and teaching.

Keywords:

Blended learning, remedial learning, Chinese grammar, specification of problem.