Implementing Web-Based Teaching and Learning of Putonghua at the Institute of Vocational Education

This dissertation, "Implementing Web-based Teaching and Learning of Putonghua at The Institute of Vocational Education" by Ying-san, Enoch, Chiu, 趙迎新, was obtained from The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong) and is being sold pursuant to Creative Commons: Attribution 3.0 Hong Kong License. The content of this dissertation has not been altered in any way. We have altered the formatting in order to facilitate the ease of printing and reading of the dissertation. All rights not granted by the above license are retained by the author. Abstract: Abstract Putonghua has become important to Hong Kong people since the first of July, 1997 when there was the change over from British rule. It has become more essential after the signing of the Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement between the China and Hong Kong government. In addition, when more visitors and tourists from China spend more money than tourists from other countries, the reliance of Hong Kong's economy on mainland China is becoming more imminent, Hong Kong people who can speak Putonghua are in greater demand. Putonghua courses are inevitably becoming more popular than English for the first time in Hong Kong. However, as Putonghua was only taught to pre-school children and lower forms pupils in primary schools in China and Taiwan, where it is spoken, the pedagogies and teaching methodologies used are very traditional. There has been little influence on the way Putonghua is taught in Hong Kong over the years, while new teaching approaches and good practices in teaching other subjects, such as English and other languages, are becoming in norm. Application of Information Communication and Technology (ICT) in education, for example, has proved to be positive and effective to both teachers and students for learning. The adoption of e-learning and online learning modules has also become a reality disregarding teachers' likes or dislikes. To use ICT Putonghua teaching and to make Putonghua learning also beneficial from other Putonghua resources meeting the eyes of students everyday, this dissertation developed a WebQuest project which is to replace the Independent Learning Assignment in the Putonghua Curriculum at the Institute of Vocational Education. When students accomplish the assigned tasks in the WebQuest, they will not only finish the independent learning assignment and do better than they did before with text-based resources, but will be more familiar with the immense Putonghua resources on the Internet, and this will help them to learn Putonghua on their own in the future whenever, and doubtlessly, they will need to speak the language. Using a research and development approach the WebQuest was developed and tested with staff to create a quality product built on research. ii DOI: 10.5353/th_b2995999 Subjects: Mandarin dialects - Computer-assisted instruction - China - Hong Kong Web-based instruction - China - Hong Kong