Chinese literacy learning by immigrant learners

For both second and foreign language students, mastery of the Chinese writing system typically presents itself as a special learning challenge. This report begins with a summary of relevant aspects of an exploratory study of East Asian immigrant language learners. It serves to set the stage for a discussion of theoretical problems that hopefully will lead to new directions in research focused on second language (L2) learners of Chinese in general. In particular, the discussion will highlight the circumstances of that population of learners who come to the task of L2 Chinese literacy as already literate in their first language. In this regard, what is the role of language awareness in learning to read and write, in particular regarding the link between characters and their pronunciation? The participants in the study were young adult immigrants from Vietnam who today look back on their experience of language learning in the host country over the course of the last 20 years.