abstract: ABSTRACT Much of teacher feedback research is conducted in the L1 and L2 contexts. There is a paucity of research about feedback in the Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language (TCFL) context. Particularly, little is known about teachers' feedback practices and student views of teacher feedback. The present study was undertaken to fill the research gap by focusing on teachers'written feedback. Student data from surveying 38 students was interpreted with teacher data gained from interviewing three teachers. The findings indicate that teacher written feedback, which occurred in a multiple-draft writing cycle, generally accorded with recommended feedback principles. Students responded favorably to teacher written feedback. The results also reveal discrepancies between teachers' feedback practices and student perceptions of and preferences regarding teacher feedback. The results show that students wanted more written comments from teachers, though most teachers didn't prioritize written comments. Despite teachers' practices and their inclination toward offering coded indirect error correction, students in the study expressed their preferences for direct error correction. Most students are interested in receiving teacher feedback that addresses all aspects of writing rather than primarily focusing on language accuracy. The reasons that may account for the disjuncture are also discussed in the study. The study concludes that it is important for teachers to be aware of student attitudes and expectations regarding teacher feedback. Teachers should be flexible enough to provide individualized feedback. Pedagogical implications are included in the paper in the hope of shedding light on the development of effective and helpful teacher feedback. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.A. Asian Languages and Civilizations 2012

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Recent research in the Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language (TCFL) field has focused on the pedagogical perspectives underlying TCFL textbooks and their compilation. With the increasing interaction between China and other countries in global contexts such as culture, economics and commerce, there is a great need to expand research regarding all areas and issues within TCFL, especially in the important area of vocabulary and its translation in TCFL textbooks (Tsung and Cruickshank, 2011). This research investigates a range of translation problems related to the accuracy of the vocabulary lists featured in 12 selected representative TCFL textbooks for teaching Chinese as a foreign language. This thesis presents findings from three triangulation cases (questionnaire survey, corpus research, and assessment test) involving two different groups of participants (e.g. Chinese teachers who completed the questionnaire survey and Chinese undergraduates majoring in English who underwent the assessment test). The contribution of this study is as follows: 1) I conduct a series of empirical evidence based on the viewpoints of practitioners regarding the identified translation problems to fill the gap that there are more descriptive and pedagogical works in the vocabulary translation of TCFL textbooks; 2) I adopt functional equivalence theory of translation and linguistics–based approaches (semantic, pragmatic and grammatical perspectives) to establish a theoretical framework which provides a flexible way of analysing translation and enables the original meanings of Chinese words to be analysed through various perspectives, especially for Chinese and English vocabulary analysis and translation; 3) I draw on translation quality evaluation theory to generate a translation quality evaluation framework which can serve as a reference point for other translation evaluation work regarding vocabulary conducted during other relevant studies; 4) I demonstrate that the majority of translation problems gathered from the selected TCFL textbooks were found at the preliminary level and in the content word class which have much practical relevance and research value for the pedagogical purpose of vocabulary teaching and translation; and 5) I build up a specific parallel corpus with passages and vocabulary lists of the selected TCFL textbooks.

Cette thèse porte sur l’intersinographie, notion construite sur le modèle d’« interlangue », pour caractériser les connaissances "intermédiaires" des apprenants en matière d’écriture en langue étrangère. Nous étudions la dynamique du développement des compétences graphiques chez des apprenants francophones du chinois comme langue étrangère. Nous abordons une question cruciale pour la didactique et l’apprentissage de la langue chinoise (mandarin). En effet, à la différence des langues à écriture alphabétique, le développement d’une compétence graphique en chinois a des spécificités qui ne se réduisent pas à la transcription de la langue parlée. Cela tient évidemment à la nature de l’écriture chinoise. La maîtrise de cette dernière requiert des processus pédagogiques particuliers. Peu de travaux ont été consacrés au développement d’une compétence graphique en langue étrangère et encore moins aux compétences liées à la sinographie. Cette thèse s’articule autour d’une étude de la maîtrise de l’exécution graphique. Afin de dresser une liste des productions graphiques non conformes, nous avons établi trois corpus auprès d’apprenants du chinois langue étrangère : un corpus graphique général, un test de la graphie de 100 caractères et un corpus relevé auprès d’adolescents apprenant le français. Suite à nos études quantitatives et qualitatives (suivi des évolutions individuelles), validées par des analyses statistiques, nous proposons une démarche d’enseignement dite d’« arborescence sinographique (字树, zìshù) ». A l’heure de la digitalisation de l’information et des savoirs, cette thèse propose des pistes de réflexion originales en matière de didactique des sinogrammes. / This thesis focuses on intersinography, a concept built on the "interlanguage" model, to characterize the learner’s "intermediate" knowledge of writing in a foreign language. We study the dynamics of the development of graphic competences in French-speaking learners of Chinese as a foreign language.We address a crucial question for didactics and learning Chinese (Mandarin). Unlike languages written in an alphabet system, the development of the graphic skills necessary for writing Chinese characters is partially distinct from the learning of spoken Chinese. This is obviously due to the nature of Chinese logograms. Mastery of reading and writing in Chinese requires specific pedagogical processes, distinct from those of oral language.Little work has been devoted to the development of graphic competence in a foreign language, in particular to sinography. This thesis is based on a study of the mastery of graphical execution.In order to draw up a list of non-conforming graphic productions, we have built three corpora among learners of Chinese as a foreign language: a corpus of writings from adolescents (the adolescent corpus), a test for diagnosing written competency (the 100-character test), and a general-use corpus of character writings (the general graphic corpus).Following our quantitative and qualitative studies (follow-up of individual evolutions), and validated by statistical analyzes, we propose a method of teaching called the "sinographic tree (字树, zìshù)". In the age of the digitization of information and knowledge, this thesis proposes unique reflection on the teaching of the sinograms.