Case Study on Chinese Vocabulary Teaching for Thai Secondary School Students

Abstract

This descriptive classroom case study examines vocabulary teaching in one Chinese-language lesson involving 35 second-year junior secondary students, aged 14–15 years, at a public school in Phayao, northern Thailand. The account of a 45-minute lesson and its associated assessment summary is considered alongside published work on Chinese as a foreign language, character learning, vocabulary instruction, and formative assessment. The lesson emphasised teacher-led pronunciation, Thai translation, character copying, and short oral exchanges. The accompanying classroom summary reported approximately 82% accuracy in character writing, a 35% tone-marking error rate, and difficulties with rapid word pronunciation and sentence construction. These percentages are descriptive reports whose underlying denominators and scoring procedures are unavailable; they cannot establish instructional effects. Analysis identifies five connected areas for pedagogical consideration: activity design, contextualised word use, distinctions among lexical meanings and tones, culturally situated examples, and assessment breadth. Practical classroom options are developed for each area. Findings are limited to the observed lesson, and the proposed strategies require prospective evaluation before claims about learning gains can be made.