Virtual Booth

Learning Chinese characters among non-native learners is a difficult task, as they need to recognize characters, understand their meanings, and apply them precisely in various contexts. Rote memorization and writing exercises in the classroom may reduce learners’ motivation and provide limited opportunities for real-world language use. To tackle these challenges, Hanzi Cord was created as an innovative educational card game that turns Chinese characters learning into a hands-on learning experience. It combines gamification with word-building activities that encourage players to manipulate Chinese character cards to progressively form words, phrases, clauses, and complete sentences. The game encourages learners to practice the language in meaningful contexts through collaborative and competitive gameplay, instead of just focusing on character recognition. Punctuation cards included further allows and encourages learners to form complete sentences. The game not only helps learners memorize every single character but also improve their understanding of sentence structure and writing rules.  The feature of Hanzi Cord that particularly standout is its progressive design, making it suitable for learners at different proficiency levels. It serves as a useful teaching and learning aid that enable beginners to start with simple word-matching activities and gradually progress to sentence construction. During the trial period, Hanzi Cord was evaluated with 58 respondents, comprising 32 students in the control group and 26 in the treatment group. The pre- and post-test results showed a significant improvement in the treatment group. The results of this classroom intervention indicate the strong potential of Hanzi Cord as an effective teaching and learning aid for supporting the acquisition of Mandarin as a third language.

Keywords:          educational card game, Chinese character learning, progressive design, classroom intervention, third language acquisition.

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