大家好,

I'm working on a final project for my Chinese Phonology class and I was hoping that some Skritter members would be willing to lend a hand. It should only take about 10 minutes to complete, and I will be giving every participant personal feedback upon completion (if they need it).

The survey consists of a few basic background questions, and 40 basic words or phrases in Chinese. Anyone with an understanding of roughly 300 common characters is welcome to join in!

If you are interested in taking part you can find more info on my personal blog: http://ilearnmandarin.blogspot.tw/2012/12/seeking-participants-for-small-research.html

Or just visit the Google Doc folder I created and download either the simplified or traditional version of the survey:
https://docs.google.com/folder/d/0BwLiKdXvsdaSVW1kUW1mSlJrRm8/edit

For those living in Mainland China who are looking to participate, simply leave a comment below and I will use my super admin powers to drop you an email.

Once you've completed the survey and recorded the audio section, just submit them to me at jake@skritter.com

Thanks for your help and please let me know if you have any questions.

Best,
SkritterJake

By non-native speakers, do you mean only people who picked it up purely on a foreign language basis? I don't know if I qualify since I had some exposure to Chinese language (but not reading/writing) growing up.

Hi blakomen,

You would probably be an outlier for the data, but if you wanna take part than by all means!

Jake

mainland, yes!

For Part 2, should one look up the characters they don't know in a dictionary? Or should they just skip the characters they don't know?

malaili, you would run a free audio recording program, like Audacity, on a computer with a mic (most laptops have them built in these days) and speak some Chinese words, then email the file to Jake.

I sent in my responses. I was embarrassed to not remember all the tone sandhi rules for 一, but probably I should have been worried about even more pronunciation mistakes in there. Jake, are you going to grade me? ;)

The labels for the current Chinese Level rating seem a bit strange:

Novice
Poor
Average
Fair
Excellent

'Novice' sounds like a level, but Poor/Average/Fair/Excellent sound like how good you are at your current level.

Say I was upper-beginner level, and really good at Listening and Speaking at that level, would I mark myself as "poor" (to reflect upper-beginner level), or "excellent" (to reflect my ability in the upper-beginner level)?

@malali, I'll send you an email with the survey attached. As Nick said, you just need to use recording software to complete the reading section.

@learninglife j.h. I'll send you an email!

@nick, I will be grading everyone ;)

@lechuan, thanks! I made a note in section two. Hopefully it is a bit more clear. I originally designed the survey for students here in Taiwan. Since I was doing the recording for the subjects it wasn't an issue.

As for the Chinese levels, you're totally correct in that there are two ways to interpret how you could answer this question. Live and learn I guess. This is a one-shot study so I can't make any changes now, but I will not be using that method again in the future.

Do you or any other users have a better way to self-assess language level? Past research seems to rely on number of years (or number of hours) studying a language to gauge Chinese level, but that has always struck me as a relatively poor indicator of actual ability. Short of giving every participant an actual aptitude test I'm stumped on how to collect this kind of data in a way that can be used for analysis.

I'll be working with my advisor on this question when I start my actual thesis paper, but I'm open to hearing any ideas that you guys have!

I like the ATCFL classifications. They have a detailed explanation of each level so that the user can accurately assess what level they're at:

http://www.languagetesting.com/scale.htm

Thanks, I'll try and figure out a good way to use something similar in my future studies. Although, if past experience is any indicator it will be hard to get someone to actually read two pages worth of explanation to assess their own language level ;)

But at least the wording of their proficiency scale is very clear.

Cheers!

I sent in my results. I look forward to your observations! :)

I'm on the mainland and would like to participate.

Not sure if that'd be helpful outside Europe, but the levels of the Common European Framework of Reference for Language (A1-C2) seem a relatively well-known frame of reference.
To assess yourself you'd also need to read a couple pages of description, but alot of students might already know / a lot of textbooks seem to have it as part of their title or description.

@inkubus, I'll be sure to keep that in mind as well. Could work very well when researching European students who are studying Chinese.

Cheers!

Also in the mainland and would like to participate. I have two different registers that I use, the 普通话 of my university classes and the 东北话 on the streets - or in the hutongs. I guess you're looking for the former?

Thanks to everyone who participated!

I've spent the past three days working on analyzing the general results of the study and will be getting back to everyone personally as soon as I can.

@Amitabha, sorry for not responding sooner. I had to present my results today so I couldn't get you in in time. Thanks for interest! I'll be doing lots more research in the future.