research paper on chinese language

SYSTEMATIC REVIEW article

Research on anxiety of learning chinese as a second or foreign language in and outside mainland china: a systematic review of the literature 1999–2020.

• 1 Research Center for Language and Language Education, Central China Normal University, Wuhan, China
• 2 School of Foreign Studies, Zhongnan University of Economics and Law, Wuhan, China

This paper reviews research on anxiety of learning Chinese as a second or foreign language (CSL/CFL) in and outside mainland China. This review involves 52 Chinese language articles identified in leading journals from the Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) database (中国知网) and 42 English language articles from the Web of Science and ERIC database published during the period of 1999 to 2020. By adopting bibliometric analysis and content analysis, this study compares the topical issues and methodological approaches of research on CSL/CFL learning anxiety published in leading Chinese and international journals. The review found that, compared with mainland Chinese scholars, international researchers examined a broader range of topical issues from multidimensional perspectives. While most Chinese empirical studies are dominated by the quantitative approach, qualitative methods such as classroom observations and in-depth interviews were also widely adopted by international researchers. The analysis also revealed that although Chinese scholars had drawn on well-established theories and concepts originating from foreign language anxiety (FLA) research, their role in CSL/CFL anxiety research is limited and peripheral. Consequently, we conclude this review with recommendations that encourage mainland Chinese researchers to be well informed by the updated theoretical perspective and methodological approaches such as the utilization of social network analysis and the integration of Information Communications Technology in language education.

Introduction

A great variety of emotions experienced by language learners have attracted scholarly attention from various linguistic, educational, and sociocultural contexts ( Jain and Sidhu, 2013 ; Dewaele, 2018 ; Miyahara, 2019 ). Among them, a situation-specific anxiety, that is, Foreign Language Anxiety (FLA) proposed by Horwitz et al. (1986) , is responsible for students’ negative affective reactions to foreign language learning. This complicated psychological phenomenon related to foreign language learning is defined as “a distinct complex of self-perceptions, beliefs, feelings, and behaviors related to classroom language learning arising from the uniqueness of the language learning process” ( Horwitz et al., 1986 , p. 128). In order to accurately measure learners’ anxiety of learning a foreign language, a standard instrument, the Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (FLCAS), was designed and developed, and which has been widely adopted in a range of empirical studies (e.g., Saito et al., 1999 ; Kitano, 2001 ; Park, 2014 ; Weng, 2020 ). These studies on FLA are conducted in different language education contexts, such as Japanese ( Aida, 1994 ; Djafri and Wimbarti, 2018 ), Korean ( Kim, 2000 ; Lee, 2021 ), Spanish ( Noels, 2001 ; Cordeiro, 2019 ), French ( Rodríguez and Abreu, 2003 ; Bosmans and Hurd, 2016 ), and Chinese ( Le, 2004 ; Zhao, 2013 ) providing cross-linguistic and cross-cultural evidence for the pervasive existence of anxiety in foreign language learning. Since Chinese is distinctly different from alphabetic languages such as English due to its unique tone system and logographic writing system ( Shen and Xu, 2015 , p. 82), it posts enormous challenge for Chinese as a second or foreign language (CSL/CFL) learners, especially native-English learners, which reflects partly on the high drop-out rate of CSL/CFL classes ( Luo, 2011 ). Previous studies have revealed that the withdrawal rate is remarkably higher among learners with higher levels of FLA ( Bailey et al., 2003 ; Xiao and Wong, 2014 ). Therefore, there is plausible reason to believe that anxiety is a highly relevant issue among CSL/CFL learners. However, in contrast to the abundant research on English language anxiety (ELA) with a long history, research on anxiety of learning CSL/CFL is not only scarce but only a recent concern. During the preceding two decades, most studies involving CSL/CFL education have focused on language pedagogy (e.g., Mao, 2010 ; Tao, 2012 ), Chinese character, phonetic, lexical, and grammatical learning (e.g., Wu et al., 2006 ; Wen, 2010 ; Fan, 2013 ; Luan, 2013 ), language testing ( Wang, 2008 ), and teacher development ( Guo, 2012 ), while affective factors such as attitudes, motivation, beliefs, and anxiety have not received adequate attention ( Yu, 2010 ). In particular, language researchers started to steer their attention to the anxiety level of CSL/CFL learners in the late-1990s ( Qian, 1999 ; Jiang and Ramsay, 2005 ). Since then, an increasing number of studies on anxiety of CSL/CFL learners have been published in and outside mainland China. Therefore, to depict a whole picture of the current literature on anxiety level specific to CSL/CFL learners, a systematic review on this issue is urgently needed.

However, we notice that the academic exchanges and communication between scholars who publish papers in mainland China and those who publish in international journals 1 are insufficient ( Gong et al., 2018 ). One piece of evidence is that few articles published in mainland China concerning CSL/CFL learners’ anxiety were cited in related articles published in international journals. It seems that the two groups of researchers may not be fully appreciating what their counterparts have achieved in this field due to inadequate bilingual competence and differences in academic practices ( Gong et al., 2018 , 2020a , c ). Moreover, although two reviews of studies on anxiety of learning CSL/CFL were retrieved (e.g., Chen, 2018 ; Xu, 2018 ), they were published in non-CSSCI journals in mainland China with limited impact. Despite the fact that the existing two reviews did provide some insights into this field, they only addressed the studies published in mainland China with a limited time span. Therefore, it is a pressing need to provide a systematic review of research on anxiety of CSL/CFL learners conducted both in and outside mainland China to reflect the topic issues and methodological approaches so that informative mutual exchanges can be facilitated. Moreover, given that the number of students learning CSL/CFL outside mainland China is significant and is still steadily increasing ( Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China, 2019 ) as well as the anxiety of learning CSL/CFL being prevalent among non-Chinese learners abroad ( Luo, 2011 ), it was presumed that mainland Chinese researchers working on anxiety of CSL/CFL learners could learn much from relevant studies published in international journals. To verify this assumption, it is vital to find out to what extend have mainland Chinese researchers referred to studies on anxiety of learning CSL/CFL conducted in the international context. To achieve these ends, this review attempts to address the following two research questions:

RQ1: What topical issues and methodological approaches can be identified in studies on anxiety of learning CSL/CFL published in mainland Chinese journals and international journals?

RQ2: How have mainland Chinese scholars drawn on research on the anxiety of learning CSL/CFL conducted outside mainland China?

Methodology

Database selection.

In view of the sociocultural and historical differences between diverse learning contexts in the greater China region, this review was confined to journals published in mainland China, excluding publications from Chinese Taiwan, Hong Kong SAR, and Macau SAR ( Gong et al., 2018 ). Moreover, because of our concern for both comprehensive coverage and potential impact of the relevant literature in this scope, we selected three databases, that is, the China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI, 中 国 知 网), the Web of Science (WoS), and the Education Resources Information Center (ERIC). CNKI was chosen due to the fact that it is the largest academic journal database in mainland China, covering comprehensive integrated knowledge resources of all disciplines. WoS was selected as another primary database because it offers subscription-based access to many different databases that provide comprehensive citation data for multiple academic disciplines ( Steinhardt et al., 2017 ). In addition, we also chose ERIC, a comprehensive full-text database specialized in educational research, as a complement to the two preceding databases. Generally, these three databases provide researchers with a wealth of data to understand the latest progress and trending research issues of diverse disciplines ( Kuang et al., 2016 ).

Article Selection

After preliminary searching string-based selection, we found that the first Chinese language publication concerning anxiety of learning CSL/CFL dates back to 1999 (cf., Qian, 1999 ) while the first English language article in this field was published in 2005 (cf., Jiang and Ramsay, 2005 ). Also, as we could not guarantee that all related papers published in 2021 could be collected, we limited this review to research published during the years 1999–2020 to ensure the accuracy and validity of the findings. Our first step was to use search strings to search and select articles regarding anxiety in Chinese language learning published in mainland China. Specifically, the search strings [topics = (汉语“Chinese language” + 留学生“overseas students” + 来华“study abroad in China”) *焦虑“anxiety”] were adopted in the CNKI database, which resulted in 401 articles being found. Secondly, to identify relevant English language publications, the search strings [topic = (Chinese language AND anxiety)] were used in WoS and ERIC, which yielded 421 and 116 articles respectively. Next, these two collections of articles from the two databases, i.e., WoS and ERIC, were compared in case of data duplication and 16 articles were found to be overlapping and consequently excluded from one of the collections.

As a result, a total of 401 Chinese publications from CNKI database and 521 English publications from WoS database and ERIC database were found. Moreover, considering the quality and potential impact of the relevant studies, we further limited our review to core journals listed in the China Social Sciences Citation Index (CSSCI): an interdisciplinary citation database that covers “the top journals with high academic quality from thousands of journals in China” ( Ge, 2019 , p. 48). Hence, a total of 61 articles were found. To further identify the relevant studies related to anxiety of CSL/CFL learners, the titles and abstracts of the resulting 582 articles were then examined and evaluated by all three members of the team. After the thorough evaluation, 94 articles were identified as relevant, including 52 Chinese language articles (see Figure 1 ) published in mainland China and 42 English language articles (see Figure 2 ) published in international journals. The PRISMA flow diagrams presented in Figures 1 , 2 follow the guidance from PRISMA statement ( Page et al., 2021 ).

Figure 1. Chinese language articles’ selection process.

Figure 2. English language articles’ selection process.

Analysis and Tools

To identify the topical issues of research on anxiety of learning CSL/CFL, we conducted the bibliometric analysis and content analysis. To be specific, this review inspected the bibliometric indicators of the selected publications, which included the publication year and keyword. Keyword co-occurrence analysis as well as keyword frequency analysis were carried out, aiming at detecting the primary content and emerging trends of a body of scientific knowledge ( Callon et al., 1983 ; Chen, 2004 , 2006 ). Keyword co-occurrence means the common occurrence and sharing of the same keywords across different papers, revealing core research domains and cognitive structures ( Su and Lee, 2010 ). The embedded bibliometric analysis tool in the CNKI database and the WoS database, as well as Vosviewer, a software that can build and visualize bibliometric networks structure, were used to detect and visualize the findings ( Van Eck and Waltman, 2010 ). Meanwhile, content analysis was adopted to examine the topics addressed in each of these selected articles. To be precise, the titles, abstracts, and conclusions of the reviewed publications were studied by three members of the team to determine the addressed topical issues. Whenever necessary, we also read the full text to ascertain their topics. This categorization of the topical issues was based on an existing classification of themes in FLA research (e.g., Luo, 2013 ), which provided us basic criteria for theme classification in CSL/CFL anxiety research. During the review process, new themes were appended or subcategories within each existing theme were refined and revised to capture what was revealed. Through the categorization process conducted by two members individually, we have identified four categories, namely, measure of CSL/CFL anxiety, factors associated with CSL/CFL anxiety, effects of CSL/CFL anxiety, and classroom practices to reduce CSL/CFL anxiety. As “the most widely used measure of interjudge reliability” ( Perreault and Leigh, 1989 , p. 137), Cohen’s (1960) kappa was used to assess the intercoder reliability for each categorized articles. And kappa here was 0.871, indicating a high level of reliability. The content analysis enables us to precisely identify the topic as well as the detailed relevant content of individual article for in-depth analysis while the bibliometric analysis visualize a holistic network map of the topical issues in mainland Chinese and international journals for global comparison. To identify the methodological approaches on anxiety of learning CSL/CFL, methodological sections or relevant descriptions were examined to identify which methodological paradigm had been adopted.

To address the second research question, the citation lists of the 52 selected Chinese language articles were analyzed to understand how these studies had drawn upon previous research on the anxiety of learning CSL/CFL published outside mainland China. Citations have been interpreted as a reference to some previously published source of information that is relevant to the argument the author wants to make ( Baird and Oppenheim, 1994 ). They are seen as an index of how an article builds on a previous body of research. Therefore, an analysis of the type and number of citations can help to shed light on the second research question. In total, 318 citations were identified from the 52 selected publications. In an attempt to detect how these Chinese language articles had drawn upon their English counterparts, two members of our team first classified all the citations into Chinese language publications and English language publications. And while examining the topical issues of these citations through reading their titles and abstracts, we noted that a portion of articles in both Chinese and English addressing issues of second language acquisition (SLA) are not associated with FLA. Thus they were classified as separate groups. Consequently, the 318 citations were categorized into eight types: (1) Chinese language publications on CSL/CFL anxiety research; (2) Chinese language publications on English or other language anxiety research; (3) Chinese language publications on SLA 2 ; (4) Chinese language publications unrelated to FLA or SLA; (5) English language publications on CSL/CFL anxiety research; (6) English language publications on English or other language anxiety research; (7) English language publications on SLA; and (8) English language publications unrelated to FLA or SLA. Two members of our team conducted the citation analysis based on these eight categories individually. And to measure the intercode agreement, Cohen’s (1960) kappa was also used to assess the intercoder reliability for each category. And kappa here was 0.846, showing a high level of reliability.

Topical Issues

General observations on topical distributions of the studies.

The thematic analysis indicated that the 94 selected articles (52 Chinese language articles and 42 English language articles) could be categorized into four groups: measure of CSL/CFL anxiety, factors associated with CSL/CFL anxiety, effects of CSL/CFL anxiety, and classroom practices to reduce CSL/CFL anxiety. The number of articles and its corresponding proportion within each category is specified in Table 1 . To further detect whether there is any difference between the topical concerns in mainland Chinese articles and international English articles, we conducted the Chi-Square Test, the results of which are presented in Table 2 below. The result shows that p = 0.038 ( p < 0.05), revealing clear differences between the topical issues addressing in articles published in mainland Chinese and international journals. The detailed comparisons and analysis are presented in the following part in this section.

Table 1. The number and proportion of selected articles on each theme.

Table 2. The chi-square test result of topical issues in mainland Chinese and international articles.

The measurement of anxiety level of Chinese language learners is a main topic explored by both mainland Chinese scholars and international scholars in this field. FLCAS, the most widely used tool for measuring FLA designed by Horwitz et al. (1986) , was adopted in most of these studies. Apart from using FLCAS to examine learners’ listening, speaking, reading, and writing anxieties in Chinese learning ( Zhang, 2002 ; Wu and Liu, 2019 ), FLCAS was also applied to test the correlation between learners’ levels of anxiety with other factors such as learners’ willingness to communicate ( Liu, 2017 ). However, while many studies verified their research assumptions by using FLACS, Luo (2014) questioned the general reliability and validity of this anxiety scale, arguing whether the proposed FLACS could comprehensively examine students’ anxiety in Chinese language learning as it does not address the unique characteristics of the target language. In response, she developed an anxiety scale specific to the measure of CSL/CFL learners’ anxiety levels (cf., Luo, 2014 ).

Apart from efforts to measure CSL/CFL learners’ anxiety level, over one third of Chinese language articles and approximately one fourth of English language articles examined multiple factors associated with anxiety in CSL/CFL learning. These diverse factors can be generally categorized into two types, i.e., background variables and quantitative learner variables. Frequently inspected background variables involve learners’ gender, age of acquisition, target language proficiency, heritage-learning status, ethnic background, and the length of residence in the country where the target language is spoken. For example, Fan’s (2009) study revealed different levels of anxiety among American, Japanese, and Korean students with the same level of Chinese language proficiency when reading Chinese. This study gave further evidence that learners’ Sinosphere background, or the so-called Chinese-character cultural circle, is a significant factor that may affect language anxiety in learning Chinese. This finding is in accordance with Wen’s (2011) study published outside mainland China that compared with other ethnic groups, non-Chinese Asian groups, i.e., Asian but not Chinese American, demonstrated the most positive learning experience. In another study, Yu and Watkins (2008) found that learners’ language anxiety was significantly and negatively correlated with their Chinese language proficiency. This means that the poorer the target language proficiency, the more language anxiety they may experience. Quantitative learner variables are the second type of factors associated with anxiety of learning CSL/CFL, which include learners’ age, learning motivation, foreign language aptitude, self-perceived foreign language learning ability, language achievement, self-perceived achievement, and the difficulty level of the target language. For instance, learners’ FLA when speaking Chinese was found to be closely related to their self-perceived Chinese language proficiency in a native Chinese-speaking environment ( Liu, 2017 ). Zhang and Wang (2002) investigated 42 international students’ FLA in learning Chinese as well as their performance in HSK ( Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi , standardized test of Standard Chinese language proficiency of China for non-native speakers). The analysis indicated a negative correlation between learners’ language anxiety and their Chinese language achievements, especially in listening and speaking sections. Some studies also discussed how the difficulty level of Chinese language, as an influential factor, can have an effect on learners’ anxiety. Luo’s (2015) study examined CSL/CFL anxiety and its associated factors among Chinese heritage learners. The correlation and multiple regression results indicated that perceived difficulty level of Chinese was a significant predictor of language anxiety. Overall, both mainland Chinese scholars and international scholars have made substantial contributions to exploring the various factors and their interrelationship with CSL/CFL learners’ anxiety levels.

The third main topical concern is how CSL/CFL learners’ anxiety has an impact on their language performance and achievements. As illustrated in Table 1 , compared with their international counterparts, Chinese mainland researchers were more interested in this branch of research as they published almost twice as many as articles on this topic. Although findings concerning anxiety and achievement in second language learning have been relatively uniform, suggesting a consistent negative correlation between anxiety and achievement (typically test scores) ( Horwitz, 2001 ), researchers working on anxiety of learning CSL/CFL, especially mainland Chinese scholars, have contributed to the exploration of how anxiety affects learners’ performance in specific language skills or aspects. As an example, via accurate measure of 15 international students’ voice speed, unnatural pauses during topic-oriented narration as well as levels of anxiety in learning CSL/CFL, Zhang (2001) measure the effect of anxiety on learners’ fluency of spoken Chinese. Liang and Quan (2016) examined the effect of CSL/CFL anxiety on the writing performance of ASEAN learners, i.e., students from South-East Asian Nations such as Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam, studying in China during different academic stages. To capture the true effects of anxiety, an English language article ( Liu, 2017 ) assessed the effect of language anxiety together with other cultural and linguistic variables on CSL adult learners’ willingness to communicate in Chinese.

Mainland Chinese and international scholars showed different foci in the last topical concern. Although only 7 (13.46% in total) Chinese language publications explored how classroom practices could reduce CSL/CFL students’ anxiety, all of them addressed this issue from teachers’ perspectives (e.g., Deng, 2008 ; Guan, 2012 ; Tao, 2013 ; Liu, 2019 ). For example, Deng (2008) investigated overseas students’ affective reactions to teachers’ different questioning modes in CFL classrooms and concluded with suggestions for teachers to adapt their questions based on learners’ language and cognitive competence in order to bolster learners’ confidence. As another example, Tao (2013) pointed out that teachers’ inappropriate ways to correct students’ errors in oral tasks may directly lead to CFL learners’ high level of anxiety and a sense of frustration. In response, he suggested teachers decrease the frequency of correcting learners’ errors and offer them ample time to formulate their utterances. However, in these two studies mentioned above, both researchers did not further conduct comparative research to find out whether learners’ perceived anxious experience had really changed. On the contrary, among the 14 English language publications concerning this topic, most of them (10 out of 14, 71.43%) attempted to eliminate learners’ perceived anxious experience by creating learner-centered learning environment. For instance, many studies probed into the integration of VR tools ( Xie et al., 2019a , b ), computer-mediated communication (CMC) activities ( Jiang and Ramsay, 2005 ; Wang et al., 2017 ) and on-line games ( Hwang et al., 2013 ; Hong et al., 2019 ) that provide opportunities for CSL/CFL learners to immerse in the target culture and enhance their communicative competence in relaxed leaning environment. It seems that the coping strategies proposed by mainland Chinese scholars to reduce learners’ anxiety are mainly from teachers’ perspective while international scholars 3 in this field tend to address this issue by designing learner-oriented activities or incorporating new technologies or tools to eliminate learners’ perceived anxious experience.

Similarities and Differences in Topical Issues

The bibliometric analysis of keywords in Chinese and English papers are presented in Figures 3 , 5 , respectively. In these two maps (the Chinese map and the English map), a node represents a keyword and the size of the node denotes the activity of the keyword. We set the minimum number of keyword occurrence as 1; then the threshold of the Chinese map is 250 and that of the English map is 176. In total, there are 79 items in the Chinese map and 167 items in the English map meeting the requirement. From the keyword co-occurrence network of Chinese articles shown in Figure 3 , it can be seen that three keywords, i.e., “焦虑” (anxiety 4 ), “对外汉语教学” (teaching CSL/CFL), and “留学生” (overseas students) play a central role and are linked to various other keywords. Closer inspection of Figure 3 reveals 14 different thematic clusters connected with each other, among which Chinese reading cluster, correlation analysis cluster, and teaching strategy cluster are the three largest clusters. It is also worth noting that the “汉语学习” (learning CSL/CFL) and 对外汉语教师 (CSL/CFL teachers) are frequently mentioned topics in Chinese language publications. Compared with the network of Chinese publications, a more complex and multi-dimensional social network structure of the English language papers is depicted in Figure 5 . “Anxiety” is the biggest cluster with the highest occurrence as it was used as the search string. Although there is no definitely prominent cluster (e.g., learners/attitude/foreign language/motivation/2nd language), these 13 thematic clusters are evenly distributed, and each cluster has multiple links to each other. A comparison of Figures 3 , 5 shows that “Reading” and “Speaking” are two keywords in both network structures, suggesting that issues related to speaking and reading anxieties were fully examined in Mainland Chinese and international articles. Furthermore, three keywords co-occur in these two networks of publications: “Emotion,” “Motivation,” and “Achievement,” which indicates that researchers in and outside mainland China have carried out extensive research on factors associated with learners’ anxiety in learning Chinese. This finding is consistent with our analysis in section “General observations on topical distributions of the studies.”

Figure 3. Keywords co-occurrence in Chinese language articles.

Figure 4. English translation of keywords co-occurrence in Chinese language articles.

Figure 5. Keywords co-occurrence in English language articles.

Considering the topical distributions and the keywords co-occurrence in mainland Chinese and international journals, some differences can be identified between the research of CSL/CFL anxiety in and outside mainland China. Firstly, the comparison of the two keyword co-occurrence maps illustrates that, compared with mainland Chinese scholars, researchers overseas addressed a broader range of topical issues. In particular, some keywords such as “bilingualism,” “virtual reality assisted language learning,” “online learning” and “social network analysis” that occurred in English articles were not mentioned in their Chinese counterparts. Indeed, international researchers were aware of the importance to discuss CSL/CFL learners’ language anxiety in multilingual contexts in an attempt to explore its uniqueness in the field of SLA. As an example, McEown and Sugita-McEown (2020) assessed the effects of positive and negative psychology on students’ anxiety in learning foreign languages other than English (LOTE), i.e., Chinese, German, French, and Spanish. Their study proposed that CSL/CFL learners may experience lower levels of anxiety when compared with learners of other three LOTE in the same study environment as CSL/CFL learners generally receive more support from their parents and teachers due to the fact that Chinese (Mandarin) is the second most powerful language in the world. McEown and Sugita-McEown’s (2020) study is among a number of English language studies aimed at comparing the differences between anxiety of learning CSL/CFL and anxiety of learning other foreign languages (e.g., English) ( Liu, 2016 ; Collie et al., 2017 ; Sun and Zhang, 2020 ), which is a new research perspective that has not been explored in Chinese language articles.

Secondly, it is noteworthy that there have been several contributions published in leading international journals addressing how the employment of information and communication technology (ICT) affect students’ anxiety in learning CSL/CFL ( Wang et al., 2017 ; Shi and Stickler, 2018 ; Hong et al., 2019 ; Xie et al., 2019a ). Wang et al. (2017) , for example, found that CMC activities were an effective foreign language learning facilitator that could reduce learners’ FLA. This empirical study also indicates that CSL/CFL learners are more anxious when chatting with native speakers than chatting with non-native speakers. Shi and Stickler (2018) explored the most suitable interaction patterns between the CSL/CFL beginners and teachers of Chinese in an online language teaching environment to support online speaking practice and reduce learners’ levels of anxiety. Drawing on data obtained from the utilization of computer-assisted language learning (CALL) in CSL, Jiang and Ramsay (2005) examined whether this medium can be used to foster learner–teacher rapport beyond the realms of face-to-face interaction of the classroom. This exploratory study suggested that CALL can enhance learning, motivate learners, and reduce learner anxiety. Similarly, Xie et al. (2019b) investigated university students’ use of interactive virtual reality tools (VR tools) for learning CFL. The study indicates that the integration of VR tools in CSL/CFL classrooms not only creates an authentic language environment but also alleviates participants’ anxiety when presenting in Chinese.

In sum, by examining the commonalities and individuality of the topical issue of research on anxiety of learning CSL/CFL conducted in and outside mainland China, we can see that scholars have reached a general consensus that language anxiety is a negative emotional reaction that may interfere with CSL/CFL learning and cannot be ignored. The application of various anxiety scales, especially FLCAS in empirical studies, has greatly contributed to our understanding of levels of anxiety among a growing number of CSL/CFL learners globally. Compared with researchers in mainland China, international scholars addressed a broader range of research issues with innovative perspectives. In particular, they set research on anxiety of CSL/CFL learning in a multilingual context and make the best use of ICT in an attempt to provide coping strategies specific to CSL/CFL learners, which are rarely adopted by mainland Chinese researchers in relevant research.

Methodological Approaches

Through examining the relevant methodological sections or descriptions in each selected article, we identified a total of 81 empirical studies and 13 non-empirical studies during the period 1999–2020 (see Table 3 ). The analysis illustrated that while international journals are inclined to empirical studies (100% in total), a quarter of articles published in mainland Chinese journals are non-empirical. These non-empirical studies addressed the issue of learners’ anxiety in Chinese language classrooms based on personal views without a purposed research plan, reliable data, or detailed analytical procedures (e.g., Tao, 2013 ; Zhao, 2013 ). A closer inspection of the methodological approaches adopted in the 39 Chinese empirical studies revealed that the majority of empirical studies involved quantitative research (28 out of 39, 71.79%) with only a small number of qualitative (7 out of 39, 17.94%) and mixed-method studies (4 out of 39, 10.26%). On the contrary, although quantitative research (45.24% in total) accounts for the largest proportion of English empirical studies, a large number of mixed-method studies (30.95% in total) and qualitative studies (23.81%) are also involved. It can be seemed that quantitative paradigm involving qualification of data and objective testing appealed to most mainland Chinese researchers, whereas qualitative paradigm involving naturalistic and interactive data as well as an integration of quantitative and qualitative approaches were also adopted by international researchers.

Table 3. Methodological approaches.

A detailed examination of methods revealed that, as the most widely adopted measure for FLA, FLCAS was used in most quantitative studies published in and outside mainland China to examine language anxiety of CSL/CFL learners worldwide. In the late 1900s, Qian (1999) published the first article on anxiety of learning CSL/CFL in mainland China, using quantitative statistical methods, that is, FLCAS to measure the anxiety levels of CSL/CFL learners in target language countries. It is the first time that the concept of CSL/CFL anxiety was introduced into the research field of teaching Chinese as a foreign language (TCFL), and also the first time that the FLCAS was applied in studies of CSL/CFL anxiety. Since then, most of the relevant articles published in mainland Chinese journals used FLCAS for precise and in-depth measurement (e.g., Zhang, 2001 , 2002 , 2008 ; Zhang and Wang, 2002 ; Liang and Quan, 2016 ; Cao and Tian, 2017 ). A small number of studies made some adaptation to this scale for accurate measure of CSL/CFL learners’ levels of anxiety (e.g., Fan, 2009 ; Zhou, 2015 ) while most of the rest apply it directly in their studies. We speculate that this practice may result in the large proportion of quantitative studies published in mainland Chinese journals. FLCAS was also largely adopted in quantitative studies published outside mainland China. But we also notice that in order to enhance the reliability and validity of their studies, other scales were integrated with FLCAS to appropriately measure learners’ anxiety in learning Chinese as well as its correlation with other factors (e.g., Liu, 2016 ).

However, inspired by a number of English language studies claiming that the uniqueness of target language may have an impact on learners’ FLA ( Aida, 1994 ; Saito et al., 1999 ; Le, 2004 ), study Luo’s (2014) published outside mainland China criticized that FLCAS, as a generic instrument, does not take the characteristics of the specific target language into consideration. In response to this lack of consideration for the target language, Luo constructed the Chinese Language Learning Anxiety Scale (CLLAS) as a reliable and valid measure for the anxiety level of CSL/CFL learning. Luo (2014) also proposed that qualitative analysis is also needed for a more comprehensive understanding of major causes of language anxiety. Consequently, qualitative techniques such as classroom discourse analysis ( Lambert and Zhang, 2019 ), classroom observations ( Xie et al., 2019b ; Tong and Tsung, 2020 ), reflective journals ( Sun and Luo, 2018 ), and personal interviews ( Xie et al., 2019a ) were used extensively in English language publications. For example, empirical work triangulating qualitative analysis of learners’ L2 discourse with multiple quantitative sources of data was conducted in order to gain deep insight into the cognitive, affective, and linguistic processes that take place on a range of pedagogical tasks in second language classrooms ( Lambert and Zhang, 2019 ). In another study, three qualitative data collection tools, i.e., in-class observations, learners’ reflections, and semi-structured individual interviews, were carried out and aimed at probing into learners’ perceived advantages and difficulties of utilizing VR tools to learn Chinese language as well as culture ( Xie et al., 2019b ). Moreover, while a few Chinese language research articles (4 out of 39, 10.26%) chose a combination of the quantitative paradigm such as questionnaire surveys and anxiety scales and the qualitative paradigm including in-depth interviews and classroom observations (e.g., Deng, 2008 ; Cao and Tian, 2017 ), approximately one third of English language articles (13 out of 42, 30.95%) adopted the mixed methods approach. For instance, in a study aimed at exploring CSL learners’ anxiety when speaking Chinese and its association with self-rated proficiency in Chinese, both questionnaire surveys and semi-structured interviews were adopted ( Liu, 2016 ). The questionnaire was designed to identify learners’ self-rated proficiency in Chinese while the interview was conducted to explore the participants’ real inner thoughts and attitudes toward learning CSL. In another study, Lambert and Zhang (2019) investigate CSL learners’ levels of anxiety in a range of pedagogical tasks by triangulating multiple sources of data including anxiety questionnaire, video-recorded classroom observation, and in-depth interviews to gain insight into learners’ cognitive and affective responses to different types of classroom tasks.

In general, while all the English language articles are empirical studies with rigorous data collection and analytical procedures, still one fourth of the Chinese language articles are non-empirical and largely based on personal experiences and reflections. In addition, most of the Chinese empirical studies report the use of statistical analysis or measurement of learners’ anxiety level. In contrast, qualitative research methods including classroom observations and personal interviews are also widely adopted in the English language articles. Moreover, mixed-method approach that entails a combination of the qualitative and quantitative paradigm with the aim of generating a more adequate and thorough understanding of CSL/CFL learners’ anxiety has been adopted largely by international researchers. This finding suggests that Chinese language research in this field has been dominated by a positivist paradigm that perceives anxiety as an objective ‘reality’ that can be scientifically studied and measured ( Gao et al., 2001 ; Gong et al., 2018 ). Meanwhile, international researchers in their studies of CSL/CFL learning anxiety invested a great deal of effort in integrating theory and practice in “inquiry.” A fundamental characteristic of their research is that they are emic-oriented. That is, they attempt to interpret the complex psychological phenomenon of language anxiety from a learner’s perspective rather than from an etic or researcher’s perspective. From this perspective, qualitative research methods such as observation of authentic classroom interactions and in-depth interviews with individual participants are also essential for fully revealing the subjective and multi-faceted nature of CSL/CFL learning anxiety. Therefore, we encourage mainland Chinese scholars to be better equipped with diverse research techniques for implementing high-quality, inquiry-driven, quantitative and qualitative research. After all, methodological knowledge means not only mastery of skills, “but also informed choices and decisions” ( Gao et al., 2001 ).

Mainland Chinese Research’s Dependency on Previous English Language Research

To address our second research question, citation analysis was carried out for each selected Chinese language article by two members of the team to shed light on how these publications had drawn on relevant research published outside mainland China. In total, 318 citations were identified from the 52 Chinese language articles, including 67 Chinese language publications on CSL/CFL anxiety research, 35 Chinese language publications on English or other language anxiety research, 97 Chinese language publications on SLA, 63 Chinese language publications unrelated to FLA or SLA, 25 English language publications on English or other language anxiety research, 22 English language publications on SLA, and 9 English language publications unrelated to FLA or SLA (see Figure 6 ).

Figure 6. Citation trends (1999–2020). C-CLA, Chinese language publications on CSL/CFL anxiety research; C-E&O, Chinese language publications on English or other language anxiety research; C-SLA, Chinese language publications on SLA; C-Un, Chinese language publications unrelated to FLA or SLA; E-CLA, English language publications on CSL/CFL anxiety research; E-E&O, English language publications on English or other language anxiety research; E-SLA, English language publications on SLA; E-Un, English language publications unrelated to FLA or SLA.

Overall, far more Chinese language publications (175 in total) were cited than English ones (40 in total). In addition, the analysis reveals that Chinese language articles on CSL/CFL anxiety research were cited the most (74 out of 318, 23.27% in total). This suggests that Chinese researchers draw heavily on their Chinese colleagues’ publications, especially relevant articles on CSL/CFL anxiety research. It is pretty noteworthy that no English language article on CSL/CFL anxiety research, which should belong to the most relevant and valuable intellectual base for researchers working in this field, was cited. It seems that mainland Chinese researchers do not know what their counterparts have achieved in this domain or what emerging thematic trends or new topics are being explored. This may be due to researchers’ inadequate bilingual competence (e.g., Chinese and English) and limited exchanges among researchers and institutions in China and abroad ( Gong et al., 2018 ). Moreover, a closer examination of the 25 cited English language articles on English or other language anxiety research demonstrates that most of these articles are publications that introduced well-established research theories or concepts (e.g., Horwitz et al., 1986 ; Weiner, 1986 ; Saito et al., 1999 ) and very few of them are case studies that focus on a particular group of learners in specific learning contexts (e.g., Park and French, 2013 ). To be specific, 13 studies introduced and applied FLCAS developed by Horwitz et al. (1986) to measure CSL/CFL learners’ general level of anxiety. Furthermore, the classical “attribution theory of motivation and emotion” proposed by Weiner (1986) was introduced in Zhang (2008) and was used to verify its appropriateness to explain the causes of anxieties among foreign students learning Chinese in mainland China. Although there are a few Chinese language studies attempted to supplement and revise theories or concepts generated by international scholars, their contributions were limited to some minor revision to FLCAS in order to be used in the CSL/CFL learning context (e.g., Zhong and Gao, 2014 ; Wei, 2016 ). It seems that Chinese language scholars tend to draw on well-established and widely adopted theories generated elsewhere while failing to keep track of the latest trends in CSL/CFL anxiety research fronts.

The content analysis of the 36 cited Chinese language articles on FLA research reveals that most of these cited papers concern the identification of anxieties associated with specific skills such as reading, writing, and speaking ( Chen, 1997 ; Kang, 2011 ) as well as the analysis of correlation between anxiety and affective factors ( Wang and Wan, 2001 ; Zhou and Wang, 2008 ), which is in accordance with our finding of topical issues elaborated in section “Topical issues.” However, in the last decades, FLA research in mainland China, especially English language anxiety research, has witnessed an increasing number of publications adopting new theoretical perspectives and methodological approaches such as flipped teaching mode, Computer-Assisted Instruction, and online synchronous tutorials ( He and Wang, 2020 ) which cannot be found in research on anxiety of learning CSL/CFL conducted in mainland China. A possible explanation for this finding is that most Chinese language articles on CSL/CFL anxiety are published by teachers or researchers working in CSL/CFL-related disciplines, which are sub-categories of Chines language and literature ( Liu, 1997 ). Thereby, these researchers’ engagement with research in international contexts is not as strong as their colleagues in English-related disciplines. This can be changed if more researchers working in the field of CSL/CFL anxiety research could enhance their bilingual competence and expand their theoretical perspectives.

The present systematic review covers both Chinese language articles and English language articles published in flagship journals during the period from 1999 to 2020 in and outside mainland China in an attempt to depict a whole picture of the topical issues and methodological approaches and shed light on how mainland Chinese scholars have drawn on research on the anxiety of learning CSL/CFL conducted by international scholars.

Firstly, the content analysis and citation analysis of the selected Chinese publications reveal that Mainland Chinese scholars are not fully informed about the emerging theoretical trends and research fronts in terms of CSL/CFL anxiety scholarship. This is evidenced by three aspects of observations. To start with, although 42 English language publications on CSL/CFL anxiety research were identified from leading international journals, none of them was cited by their Chinese counterparts. Besides, among the 25 cited English language articles concerning English or other language anxiety, most of them are publications that introduce well-established theories or concepts published more than 20 years ago (e.g., Horwitz et al., 1986 ; Weiner, 1986 ; Saito et al., 1999 ). And few latest English language studies that tackle FLA from new perspectives were cited by Chinese language publications. Furthermore, a number of English language articles published in recent years that reported the incorporation of ICT into language learning in an attempt to reduce learners’ anxious and discomfort experience in classroom learning environment ( Wang et al., 2017 ; Hong et al., 2019 ; Xie et al., 2019b ) cannot be found in Chinese language articles in this field. The effort to apply new theoretical perspectives and methodological approach embodies international researchers’ initiative to draw on achievements of scholars from diverse disciplines to gain insight into the multi-faceted and multi-dimensional nature of FLA. Unfortunately, Chinese language researchers’ engagement with the latest research theories and concepts is relatively limited. Although Chinese scholars have drawn on relevant theories and concepts in this field, the results show that most of their research are influenced by Horwitz et al. (1986) ’s FLA theory and their contributions to FLA research are rather peripheral. This failing to keep track of the emerging theoretical trends may be a result of the inadequate multilingual competence, a lack of interdisciplinary awareness, as well as the insufficient collaboration and conversations between scholars from diverse disciplines in mainland China and abroad ( Gong et al., 2018 ).

Secondly, the content analysis reveals that research on anxiety of learning CSL/CFL conducted by mainland Chinese scholars tend to be teacher-oriented while international scholars mainly address CSL/CFL anxiety issue from learners’ perspective. Firstly, as discussed earlier in section “General observations on topical distributions of the studies,” the coping strategies formulated by mainland Chinese scholars to reduce CSL/CFL learners’ anxiety are mainly from teachers’ perspective. To be precise, mainland Chinese researchers attempted to “tell” teachers what to do, such as providing suggestions on how to group CSL/CFL learners with different nationalities ( Wei, 2016 ), proffering advice for teachers to modify their error correction modes ( Tao, 2013 ) or questioning modes ( Deng, 2008 ), thereby potentially ignoring the learners’ perceived affective experience in classrooms. On the contrary, researchers outside mainland China mostly focus on learners’ language acquisition process and emotional experience during a dynamic learning process. Accordingly, they attempted to alleviate CSL/CFL learners’ perceived anxious experience by creating learner-centered learning environment, such as integrating VR tools to create authentic real-life settings for the students to feel relaxed in pedagogical practices ( Xie et al., 2019b ) or encouraging CSL/CFL learners to pursue and sustain interaction with faculty members, classmates as well as the host country people to better adapt to the L2 community and feel more confident and motivated in CSL/CFL learning ( Yu, 2010 ). Secondly, the importance attached on CSL/CFL learners’ feelings and experience by international scholars can also be reflected from the methodological approaches adopted in their research. Compared with mainland Chinese articles that are largely dominated by the quantitative paradigm (28 out of 39, 71.79%), qualitative methods such as video-recorded classroom observations ( Xie et al., 2019b ; Tong and Tsung, 2020 ), semi-structured individual interviews ( Xie et al., 2019a ), and learners’ reflective journals ( Sun and Luo, 2018 ) were also widely adopted in English language articles to probe into learners’ perceived anxious experience in long-term learning process. This observation is consistent with Ma et al.’s (2017) and Gong et al.’s (2018) study that Mainland Chinese researchers tend to place greater emphasis on Chinese language teachers’ beliefs, concepts, practices, and teaching pedagogy rather than learners’ values, experience, and competence. One primary reason for that may be the different educational concepts in mainland China and abroad. Chinese education emphasizes the inculcation and mastery of knowledge, emphasizing “precision” and “depth” ( Li, 2007 ). Hence, this largely contributes to teacher-centered classrooms and teacher-oriented research perspectives. On the contrary, it has been a long tradition for international scholars especially western scholars to “focus on research into language learning and language learners/users,” harboring the fear that they might leave out learners’ voices ( The Douglas Fir Group, 2016 ). However, to compare these different orientations, we made no attempt to build an opposition between teacher-centered and student-centered teaching practices or views of research. We would like to depict a comprehensive picture of different research perspectives so that teachers as well as scholars can make informed choices based on target students and readers.

Thirdly, our review also reveals that quantitative measure of learners’ CSL/CFL anxiety by using FLCAS ( Horwitz et al., 1986 ) is a noticeable characteristic of most Chinese language articles. This seems to suggest that Chinese scholars studying CSL/CFL anxiety tend to view language from an “objective” perspective and expect to quantify these “objective facts,” whereas international researchers in this field are more likely to view language learning as “an activity that relied on individual psychological factors” from a more subjective perspective ( Gao et al., 2001 ), which is evidenced by the large number of qualitative studies and mixed-method studies in the English language articles reviewed. Given that language anxiety is a subjective psychological phenomenon ( Jain and Sidhu, 2013 ; Dewaele, 2017 ; MacIntyre, 2017 ; Boudreau et al., 2018 ) that may vary from person to person in different learning contexts, we encourage Chinese language researchers to be sensitive to the contextual and interactive dimensions of anxiety and adopt diverse methodological approaches. Besides, although FLCAS has contributed significantly to the study of FLA, it has received some criticism. One primary reason is that this generic instrument is designed mainly based on students’ experience of learning Indo-European languages such as English and French ( Wu and Liu, 2019 ) and fails to address the characteristics of many other target languages such as Japanese and Chinese ( Aida, 1994 ; Luo, 2014 ). Therefore, whether FLCAS remains a suitable and reliable tool to measure learners’ anxiety in CSL/CFL learning is still pending. In the light of this, Luo (2014) constructed a Chinese Language Learning Anxiety Scale in an attempt to reflect the uniqueness of the Chinese language and accurately measure CSL/CFL learning anxiety. Based on this newly developed anxiety scale, we believe that more studies to cross-validate its reliability in different learning contexts may need.

Finally, with the support of information technology, second or foreign language learning has changed from face-to-face classroom activities solely to a combination of real-life classroom interaction and virtual teaching, facilitating easy access to language learning immune to the barriers of space and time ( Peters and Shi, 2011 ; Blake, 2013 ). The change of teaching platforms also entails the challenges of adapting offline pedagogical practices to online environment and tackling learners’ anxiety brought by different interaction patterns ( Stickler and Shi, 2013 ). To reduce learners’ anxiety in synchronous online Chinese tutorials, especially during speaking practice sessions, Shi and Stickler (2018) identified the best patterns of interaction between teachers and students in an online environment that could alleviate learners’ anxiety and maximize their opportunity for speaking. This study contributes to our understanding of online teaching process and learners’ psychological state in a virtual learning environment, which is highly significant especially with the global outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic and the urgent need to transform classroom-based teaching activities to online ones.

This paper reviews the topical issues and methodological approaches of CSL/CFL anxiety research published in and outside mainland China from 1999 to 2020. The results showed that in comparison with mainland Chinese researchers, international scholars examined a wider range of topical issues in diverse contexts and dedicated to exploring the latest theoretical approach to alleviate CSL/CFL learners’ anxiety. While most Chinese empirical studies are dominated by the quantitative paradigm, qualitative and mixed-method approaches were also largely adopted by international researchers in this field. The review also reveals an evident disconnection and insufficient academic communication between mainland Chinese and international scholars in field of CSL/CFL.

To be specific, while scholars in and outside mainland China are constantly expanding their perspectives when undertaking relevant research, scholars overseas investigated a broader range of topical issues in various contexts. For example, they explored the uniqueness of CSL/CFL anxiety in a multilingual context (e.g., McEown and Sugita-McEown, 2020 ) and examined how learners’ anxiety in CSL/CFL learning was affected by online language education [e.g., Horwitz et al. (1986) ’s FLA theory; Wang et al., 2017 ; Shi and Stickler, 2018 ]. The analysis also revealed that non-empirical studies that are largely based on personal experiences and views are absent from English language articles, whereas they account for one fourth of the Chinese language articles. In addition, most of the Chinese empirical studies are dominated by a quantitative approach that views anxiety as an objective ‘reality’ that can be scientifically studied and measured ( Gao et al., 2001 ; Gong et al., 2018 ). In contrast, qualitative methods such as classroom observations and in-depth interviews are also widely adopted by international researchers to interpret the complex psycho-social phenomenon of language anxiety from a learner’s perspective. The review concludes that although Chinese language scholars have drawn on well-established and widely adopted theories and concepts originating from FLA research, they failed to keep track of the emerging trends in CSL/CFL anxiety research fronts and lacked pioneering initiative to pursue advancements in this domain. Therefore, we draw on our findings to proffer the following advice to scholars inside and outside mainland China to enhance research in this field. We hope that such efforts can help relevant research achieve greater impact in international mainstream journals.

First, it was noted in the review process that Chinese scholars working on CSL/CFL learning anxiety drawn heavily on previous literature published in mainland China and referred to limited theories and concepts appeared in international journals around two decades ago. Therefore, we strongly recommend that Chinese researchers in this field carefully review previous relevant literature published both in and outside China, so as to be well informed of the updated and emerging theoretical perspective and methodological approaches in CSL/CFL learning anxiety scholarship. For example, social network analysis (SNA) has been widely used in social and behavior science to explore relationships among diverse social entities in face-to-face encounters and the patterns formed in naturally occurring interactions ( Wasserman and Faust, 1994 ). This method was later applied as an analytical tool in online education to reveal the best teacher–learner interaction patterns that can reduce learners’ level of anxiety during online Chinese tutorials ( Shi and Stickler, 2018 ). We believe that this new methodological approach can offer a large amount of valuable data on diverse interpersonal relations in both face-to-face and online language classrooms, the result of which has implications for teachers to enhance their competence to modify interaction patterns and create low-anxiety classroom atmosphere. Besides, previous research on the integration of CALL in language learning has proffered solid evidence of how CALL, compared with face-to-face classroom interaction, can promote interactive learning ( Warschauer, 2000 ), “genuine communication” ( Bax, 2003 , p. 23) in target languages, build up teacher–learner rapport and alleviate learners’ anxiety ( Jiang and Ramsay, 2005 ). However, how and to what extent can CALL foster the social relationship between teacher and students in CSL/CFL teaching context remain a neglected area of research and need more future studies. At last, apart from the frequently inspected variables that are associated with CSL/CFL learning anxiety such as learners’ ethnic background ( Fan, 2009 ) and Chinese language proficiency ( Yu and Watkins, 2008 ), Yu (2010) observed that international students’ sociocultural and academic adaptation also closely related to their language learning attitudes and level of anxiety. This finding has implications for both researchers and teachers to lay more emphasis on how CSL/CFL students from abroad integrate into local communities and host institutions. The introduction of new methodological approaches and theoretical perspectives to CSL/CFL anxiety research may facilitate scholars to cast new light on this complex psychological phenomenon and enable classroom practitioners to alleviate CSL/CFL learners’ feeling of nervousness and apprehension.

Second, the content analysis as well as the bibliometric analysis of the selected Chinese language publications reveals a tendency to address the issue of CSL/CFL learners’ anxiety mainly from teachers’ perspective. Chinese scholars may now want to take diverse perspectives and gain insight into this topical concern from learners’ perspective. This means that apart from giving instructions to teachers on how to implement some specific teaching practice or strategy and view learners as passive beneficiaries of teachers’ conduct (e.g., Deng, 2008 ; Tao, 2013 ; Wei, 2016 ), language researchers as well as classroom practitioners can design student-oriented activities or learner-generated content tasks (e.g., Lambert and Zhang, 2019 ) in which learners can gain relaxed and enjoyable experience directly. The integration of virtual reality tools into CFL learning in an attempt to create an authentic setting and alleviate learners’ anxiety when delivering presentations in a foreign language is a good example to follow (e.g., Xie et al., 2019b ). Furthermore, starting from learners’ point of view also requires the researchers to view CSL/CFL learning anxiety as a subtle, fluid and subjective psychological phenomenon. This means that the “pure” quantitative methods such as the use of questionnaires (e.g., Hoxur, 2001 ) or anxiety test scale (e.g., Zhang, 2002 ) only may not be adequate to accurately measure learners’ anxiety during a dynamic learning process. Driven by the specific research questions, qualitative methods such as classroom observations, writing reflective journals and individual interviews that can generate comprehensive and naturalistic data may also needed. This should encourage researchers to equip themselves with qualitative techniques as well as rigorous data collection and analytical and interpretation methods in order to conduct high-quality research.

Last but not least, we hope that more researchers could draw their attention to how and to what extent CSL/CFL learners’ anxiety levels are affected by online or remote language teaching, which becomes even more inevitable and ubiquitous with the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic. On the one hand, it has been documented that computer-mediated communication has been a popular method in foreign language teaching ( Chun et al., 2016 ) due to the fact that it can increase motivation toward foreign language learning ( Abrams, 2011 ) and facilitate a more comfortable and relaxed learning environment ( Doughty and Long, 2003 ; Jochum, 2011 ). On the other hand, the sudden change of classroom settings, the lack of direct interaction between teachers and learners, the weak emotional bond, and the unstable internet access are all potential variables that can affect foreign language learners’ level of anxiety ( Mahyoob, 2020 ). Therefore, we urge scholars in and outside mainland China to work collaboratively to address the critical issues related to anxiety of CSL/CFL learners globally emerging from the virtual language education environment. Moreover, opportunities and resources in and outside CSL/CFL classrooms need to be integrated to improve learners’ Chinese proficiency and communicative competence in daily situations, which can be a crucial and useful means to reducing their learning anxiety ( Gong et al., 2020b , 2021 ).

The current study has several limitations. First, given that the journal publications are valued more than other types of publications in institutional research assessment exercises, only the journal articles published in the CSSCI and SSCI journals were reviewed, whereas the non-CSSCI/SSCI journal articles, books, or book chapters were excluded, which might devalue the investigation on the account of leaving out some valuable academic monographs. Second, in view of the sociocultural and historical differences between diverse learning contexts, the articles published from Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau were also excluded. Therefore, various types of publications (i.e., books) and database sources (i.e., Taiwan Social Science Citation Index) can be included in the future studies to provide more insights into CSL/CFL anxiety research.

Data Availability Statement

The original contributions presented in the study are included in the article/supplementary material, further inquiries can be directed to the corresponding author/s.

Author Contributions

SY, DZ, and QS contributed to conception and design of the study. SY organized the database. DZ performed the statistical analysis. QS wrote the first draft of the manuscript. All the authors contributed to manuscript revision, read, and approved the submitted version.

The research reported on in this article was funded by the Hubei Provincial Teaching Research Project of Tertiary Education (Grant No. 2021092).

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Publisher’s Note

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

Acknowledgments

We wish to thank Lirui Zhang for helpful suggestions. We are also grateful to the editor and the reviewers for their comments on earlier versions of this manuscript. All remaining errors are entirely our own responsibility.

• ^ The term “international journals” used in this article refers to journals issued outside mainland China and the term “international articles” refers to articles published in international journals.
• ^ The group 3 refers to publications concerning issues of second language acquisition that are not associated with foreign language anxiety. As the full explanation would be too long, we use “Chinese language publications on second language acquisition” to name this group. This also applies to group 7.
• ^ As English is now the most powerful global language ( Ma et al., 2017 ) and the main medium of academic publication ( Gong et al., 2020a ), the term “international scholars/researchers” is used in this article to refer to scholars/researchers who tend to publish their articles written in English outside mainland China.
• ^ The English translation of each Chinese keyword can be found in Figure 4 .

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Keywords : learning anxiety, Chinese as a second or foreign language, mainland Chinese journals, international journals, bibliometric analysis

Citation: Yao S, Zhang D and Shen Q (2022) Research on Anxiety of Learning Chinese as a Second or Foreign Language in and Outside Mainland China: A Systematic Review of the Literature 1999–2020. Front. Psychol. 13:843858. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.843858

Received: 27 December 2021; Accepted: 16 February 2022; Published: 10 March 2022.

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Copyright © 2022 Yao, Zhang and Shen. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Qian Shen, [email protected]

Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

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Research on Teaching Chinese as a Second or Foreign Language in and Outside Mainland China: A Bibliometric Analysis

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• Yang Gong 1 ,
• Boning Lyu   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-6858-2738 1 &
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This article reviews studies on teaching Chinese as a second or foreign language (CSL/CFL) inside and outside Mainland China. In the review process, we analyzed a total of 1358 Chinese language articles and 175 English language articles from CNKI (中国知网) and Web of Science, respectively, during the period from 2004 to 2016. By analyzing the frequency and the co-occurrence of keywords in these articles, this review identifies the development trajectories and topical trends of Chinese language education research in mainland Chinese and international journals. The review also highlights both researchers and institutions that contributed significantly to research on CSL/CFL teaching and learning. As revealed through the analysis, researchers in and outside mainland China focus on different research issues with different perspectives, while few cross-border research collaborations are observed among the leading researchers and(or) institutions in this field. Consequently, we conclude this review with suggestions for researchers in mainland China and other contexts, journals, and institutions for promoting transnational-collaboration research to support the development of Chinese language education.

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Gong, Y., Lyu, B. & Gao, X. Research on Teaching Chinese as a Second or Foreign Language in and Outside Mainland China: A Bibliometric Analysis. Asia-Pacific Edu Res 27 , 277–289 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40299-018-0385-2

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• Original article
• Open access
• Published: 19 January 2018

A qualitative study on learning trajectories of non-native Chinese instructors as successful Chinese language learners

• Shijuan Liu   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-3580-3554 1 &
• Fu Wang 2  

Asian-Pacific Journal of Second and Foreign Language Education volume  3 , Article number:  2 ( 2018 ) Cite this article

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Metrics details

This paper reports a qualitative study on the Chinese language learning trajectories of non-native Chinese instructors as successful Chinese language learners . While some literature has been found on studying good learners of English and other languages, there is a lack of research on studying good learners of the Chinese language, especially on their life-long Chinese learning process. Six active instructors teaching Chinese at K-12 schools or universities in the United States, whose native language is English, were interviewed on a one-on-one basis with an auto/biographical approach. This approach, as one type of narrative inquiries under a qualitative paradigm, has been increasingly used in the study of English language learners. Findings of the study include that the six participants all had experiences studying in Greater China, and all held lifelong learning attitude as well as demonstrated various self-regulation strategies with strong self-motivation and dedication. While they all took Chinese classes at college, only two of them studied prior to college, which is encouraging for Chinese learners who were unable to learn Chinese from an early age. This study helps to fill the gap in literature on good language learners of Chinese, and provides educational implications for Chinese language learners, instructors, researchers, and other stakeholders.

Introduction

The past decade has seen a rapid expansion in the learning and teaching of Chinese worldwide. In the United States alone, according to Tsung and Cruickshank ( 2011 ), there are over 500 schools and universities offering Chinese language programs. In addition, the website of Hanban ( 2017 ) shows that 110 Confucius Institutes and 501 Confucius Classrooms have been established in the United States to respond to the increasing needs of local institutions.

As some scholars (e.g., Brecht & Walton, 1994 ; Everson & Shen, 2010a ) have pointed out, in addition to language programs, it is also critical for the growth of a language field to conduct research on problems and issues germane to the field. Compared to the research on teaching English to speakers of other languages (TESOL), studies on teaching Chinese to speakers of other languages, as noted by many researchers (e.g., Duff et al., 2013 ; Han, 2014 ), are still limited.

This article reports a qualitative study that the authors recently conducted on studying non-native Chinese instructors Footnote 1 as good learners of the Chinese language.

Literature review

Research on good language learners.

Research on good language learners is in alignment with the notion on best practice in other professional areas such as business and health care (Norton & Toohey, 2001 ). The beginning of the line of research on good language learners (GLL) is often credited to the work of Joan Rubin’s TESOL Quarterly article published in 1975 (Griffiths, 2008a ). Rubin’s ( 1975 ) rationale of studying good learners, was that “if we knew more about what the ‘successful learners’ did, we might be able to teach these strategies to poorer learners to enhance their success record” (p.42). Based on her experience learning several languages and teaching English as a second language, she co-authored the book entitled How to Be a More Successful Language Learner , in which Rubin and Thompson ( 1982 ) proposed 14 strategies for becoming a successful language learner, such as “find your own way,” “be creative,” “make your own opportunities,” “learn to live with uncertainty,” “use mnemonics,” “let context help you,” and “learn formalized routines.” According to Cohen ( 2008 ), Rubin’s idea was very original at that time, since “there was no focus on what the learners were doing” (p.8), and to some degree, was comparable to the Wright brothers telling people about their ideas for a “flying machine.”

In addition to Rubin, earlier advocators on GLL research in the 1970s include Stern ( 1975 ), Cohen ( 1977 ), and others. One rigorous GLL study was conducted by Naiman and associates from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of Canada in 1978. Their study included two parts. In the first part, the researchers interviewed 34 adults on their second language learning experiences. They found that despite the uniqueness of their individual language learning career, there were many common experiences and characteristics among the interviewees. For example, the good learners were actively involved in the language learning process, and found ways to overcome linguistic, affective, or environmental obstacles. They also monitored their own practices, performances, and involved themselves in communication. The second part of the large-scale study involved classroom observations of students in the 8th, 10th, and 12th grades learning French as a second language in Toronto. They found that attitude and motivation were the best overall indicators of success for language learning in most instances. Brumfit ( 1995 ) comments that the findings of Naiman and his coauthors stood up well for the subsequent research, and “the only really significant addition is the view that good language learners are flexible and vary their learning strategies” (p.ix).

Since then, a number of works (e.g., Ellis, 1994 ; Cohen & Macaro, 2007 ; Graham, 1997 ; Macaro, 2006 ; Oxford, 1990 ; Stevick, 1989 ) have been published on further study of good learners and their strategies. The edited book Lessons from Good Language Learners by Griffiths ( 2008b ) groups the 23 chapters from various contributors into two parts: (1) Learner variables and (2) Learning variables. The contributors in this edited book summarized research on 14 variables concerning language learners such as age, personality, gender, learning style, motivation, metacognition, and autonomy, as well as 12 variables related to language learning, such as vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation, listening, speaking, reading and writing. They also provided implications for the teaching/learning situation and questions for ongoing research. In the concluding chapter, Oxford and Lee ( 2008 ) pointed out that language learning was “a difficult journey across a demanding landscape by extremely complex beings who behave in completed ways” (p.315), and many questions still need to be further investigated.

In light of sociocultural theory (e.g., Hall, 1995 ; Lantolf, 2000 ; Vygotsky, 1978 ) and research on communities of practice (e.g., Lave & Wenger, 1991 ), Norton and Toohey ( 2001 ) point out that “understanding good language learning requires attention to social practices in the contexts in which individual learn L2s” (p.318), and urge researchers to pay attention to how communities and their practices are structured. Their position is echoed in the book Social Turn in Second Language Acquisition by Block ( 2003 ). In his book, Block examines the “Input-Interaction-Output” model (see, for example, Gass, 1997 ) and suggests a broader, more socially informed and interdisciplinary approach to second language acquisition (SLA) research. Block’s “social turn”, as mentioned in his book, is based on discussion of many researchers on this topic since mid-1990s (e.g., Brumfit, 1997 ; Firth & Wagner, 1997 ; Hall, 1995 , 1997 ; Lantolf, 1996 ; Rampton, 1997a , 1997b ; van Lier, 1997 ), and some of the cited articles are available in the special issues of the Modern Language Journal (1997 Autumn issue) and International Journal of Applied Linguistics (1997 June issue).

In addition, most of the early work on language learners, according to Pavlenko and Lantolf ( 2000 ), were solely on linguistic proficiency. They suggest that a language learner is more a participant in language socializations, who crosses the border into the domain where selves and worlds are reconstructed. Hanauer ( 2011 ) further articulates that a language learner is “a socially and culturally contextualized individual with a rich, extended history of personal experience” and language learning, therefore, involves “an interaction with everything that makes up the experience and understanding of the learner, including issues of identity and self-perception” (p.109). Benson and Cooker ( 2013 ) continue to advocate the use of sociocultural approaches to study identity, agency and autonomy of language learners, the socially constituted individuals.

Related studies on Chinese language learners

As Tsung and Cruickshank ( 2011 ) state, while there is a strong tradition of linguistics research in Chinese, empirical research investigating the learning and teaching of Chinese as a second/foreign language is relatively new, compared to studies on teaching and learning of English or other commonly taught European languages. Some empirical studies have been found on Chinese language learners. For instance, Jin ( 1989 ) investigated whether or not a composite theory of universals and typological parameters could account for interlanguage process in terms of developmental patterns, learning difficulty, and possibility of transfer based on her data from 86 adult Chinese learners. Everson and Ke ( 1997 ) investigated reading strategies of intermediate and advanced learners of Chinese, and Winke ( 2007 ) studied the effects of L1 background on L2 Chinese learners’ tonal production. In addition, Wen ( 2010 ) studied acquisition of the displacement Ba-construction by English-speaking learners of Chinese, and Yang ( 2014 ) examined the effects of pragmatics instruction on L2 learners’ acquisition of Chinese expressions of gratitude.

The Chinese Language Teachers Association (CLTA)‘s monograph Research among Learners of Chinese as a Foreign Language edited by Everson and Shen ( 2010b ) includes eight empirical studies. Most of them focus on cognitive aspects of the second language acquisition of Chinese. In the preface of her edited book Studies in Second Language Acquisition of Chinese, Han ( 2014 ) points out that while research on second language acquisition of Chinese has existed, for a long time it has been “confined to a narrow range of topics and perspectives” (p.ix). The book includes six studies in second language acquisition. One of them was by Jin ( 2014 ), which investigates peer/group interaction in a Chinese study abroad context from a sociocultural perspective based on qualitative data (e.g., weekly interviews, informal observation and participants’ weekly reflective journals) collected from 11 study abroad students. One finding of her study was that peer/group interactions in both L1 and L2 “played a vital role in the study abroad program, particularly for lower level learners at the beginning of the program” (p.72).

It is worth noting that with increasing exchanges between China and other countries including the United States there is a growing body of literature addressing study abroad experience of the Chinese language learners. For instance, Tseng ( 2006 ) investigates language gain in grammar, listening, and reading by second year non-native students of Chinese in the study abroad and domestic programs. Liu ( 2010 ) describes a model that integrates an at-home preparation intensive summer program with a short-term, study abroad summer program to increase students’ Chinese-language proficiency, cultural awareness, and personal career development. Qin ( 2014 ) studies the impact of culture in five communicative elements (namely, roles, place, time, audience, and scripts) based on data she collected from real-life interaction through shadowing 20 American learners of Advanced Chinese when they were participating in a study abroad program in China.

Compared to the hundreds of studies on various aspects of TESOL, as many scholars (e.g., Cruickshank & Tsung, 2014 ; Han, 2014 ) have pointed out, more empirical research is needed on the study of teaching and learning Chinese to speakers of other languages. In addition, review of the literature also indicates that there is a lack of research on good language learners of Chinese. Stevick ( 1989 ) interviewed seven language learners whom he considered were successful with their foreign language learning. One was a Chinese learner, who was a diplomat under the given pseudonym Bert. The findings of his interview with Bert were grouped into two parts: (1) Audio-lingual-style activities, such as intensive mechanical drill, and memorization of texts; (2) Other activities, which included such activities as paraphrasing as a learning technique, and meaningful memorization of texts technique.

The report by Prescott and Orton ( 2012 ), entitled Good Learners of Chinese – Profiles of Students in Secondary Schools, is the only study that we found on studying good learners of Chinese. The two Australian researchers interviewed 14 students to understand the reasons for their success. The students, aged between 13 to 18 years old from six schools in Australia, were identified by their Chinese language teachers as good oral language learners. Each interview lasted approximately 30 min and was analyzed through such lenses as family influences, personal attitude to Chinese language and culture, as well as practices they engaged in. Some of their findings include that the students all “greatly enjoy the challenges it offers despite the work it takes”, and they all benefit from “support and a positive attitude to their study from their family” (p.4). No previous study has been found on studying the long-term language learning experience of good Chinese learners yet. Our study is intended to fill this gap.

One critical element of studies on GLL is how to define “good learners”. For instance, in the aforementioned Naiman et al. ( 1978 ) study, the good learners were recommended as proficient learners by the researchers’ acquaintance or through the researchers’ own connections. The researchers clearly reported that they did not give the participants any proficiency test to validate.

In the present study we decided to choose non-native Chinese language teachers as our good language learners based on the following two considerations. First, their success in Chinese language learning is validated by their profession, which is more convincing than informal evaluation (e.g., recommendation by acquaintance) or a single proficiency test. Second, while many English native speakers can be found in the profession of teaching Spanish, French, and other commonly taught languages, there are much fewer English native speakers found in the work force of teaching Chinese in the United States, as also noted by Everson and Xiao ( 2009 ). A significant advantage of having local teachers as language instructors, as Snow ( 2007 ) identified, Footnote 2 is that they can “inspire students to believe that success is possible” and provide students with a good role model (p.8). In addition, study of the journeys of the Chinese instructors who are Chinese language learners themselves can provide inspirations to other Chinese learners who have the potential and interest in becoming Chinese language instructors.

Two overarching questions guided this study: (1) what are the life-long Chinese language learning processes of these non-native Chinese instructors? and (2) what are the common experiences shared among them regarding their Chinese language learning?

Review of the literature on Chinese language learners also shows that fewer studies investigate learners as socially and culturally contextualized individuals with naturalistic and qualitative (including the narrative inquiry) approach. As Duff et al. ( 2013 ) point out, “most existing studies analyze acquisition from a (psycho) linguistic or cognitive perspective rather than from a socialcultural or social-practice perspective” (p. 12). Furthermore, similar to what some scholars (e.g., Hanauer, 2011 ; Pavelenko & Lantolf, 2000 ) commented on the early studies on language learners in TESOL, very limited research has been found on studying learners’ learning process holistically including their identity, autonomy and other involved aspects in addition to their language proficiency.

To holistically understand the various dimensions of the complex language learning process and describe the experiences of language learners with richness, researchers (e.g., Bell, 2002 ; Benson 2005 , 2011 ; Firth, A.& Wagner, J., 1997 ) suggest conducting qualitative research. Qualitative research, as Roberts ( 2002 ) explains, has “a number of features stemming from its philosophical and theoretical approach to the social world, including remaining close to the experiences and views of the researched” (p.2).

Auto/biographical research method

Benson ( 2005 ) coined the term “(auto) biography” to refer to both biography and autobiography. According to him, (auto) biography has often been used in different terms in TESOL and Applied Linguistics, such as narrative research, narrative inquiry, ethnographic approach, “narrative study of lives, autoethnography, life history, and autobiography.”

Pavlenko ( 2007 ) categorized autobiographic narrative data into three types: (1) Diaries and journals by L2 learners; (2) Linguistic biographies and autobiographies , collected through interviews in the North American tradition; and (3) Language memoirs , which were published linguistic autobiographies. According to Bell ( 2002 ), narratives allow researchers to understand experience and “present experience holistically in all its complexity and richness” (p.209). Benson ( 2011 ) concurs and argues that one of the strengths of narrative research is its potential to provide insight into long-term language learning experience that cannot be investigated in real time.

Wang ( 2014 ) used “autobiography narratives” to study four professors who were international faculty at an American university regarding their life-long English learning experiences. The narratives were collected by approximately one-hour long interviews of each interviewee. At the beginning of the interview, he prompted the interviewees to reflect on their English learning experience as if they were writing a language memoir before asking them to elaborate what they wrote down in the memoir.

Duff and her coauthors (2013) reviewed existing (auto) biographical accounts of learning Chinese. In addition to available case studies of American or Canadian non-heritage leaners of Chinese, Duff and her coauthors also reviewed books written in memoir genre such as Fallows ( 2010 ) and autobiographical accounts of sojourners in China such as McDonald ( 2011 ). As pointed out by Duff and her coauthors (2013), there is “almost no studies framed by socialcultural theory or narrative inquiry have been conducted on the acquisition of Chinese by English speakers” (p.17) and few studies have provided an in-depth and contextualized analysis of individual learners’ motivations and goals for choosing to study Chinese and “their longer-term trajectories as Chinese learners” (p.13).

This present study adopted a similar method as used by Wang ( 2014 ) to study the life-long Chinese learning experience of Chinese language instructors who are native English speakers. The term “narratives” in this study is used to refer to similar qualitative data that Wang ( 2014 ) in his study, which consisted of (1) the oral interview with the participants, and (2) the outline written down by participants about their language learning history as if writing a language memoir at the beginning of the interview.

However, in this paper, notably, we decided to use the term “auto/biographical” instead of “autobiographical” used in Wang ( 2014 ) based on the following two considerations: (1) to describe the nature of the narratives more accurately. The narratives were not completely produced by the persons being researched but were collected through interviews between the researcher and the participants. Using the term “auto/biographical” can help avoid confusion with those that are truly autobiographical, such as the autobiographical narratives used in Fang ( 2006 ), in which she examined her own experiences of learning languages and teaching English in China; (2) to reflect the role of researchers as “auto/biographer” in this type of research. As suggested by Roberts ( 2002 ), in the collection of their stories through interviewees, the interaction between the researcher and the interviewees not only “is helping the interviewees to reflect and give form and structure to their lives”, but also “helping researchers to begin to draw on their own experiences” (p.13).

Participants

We used two criteria in selection of participants: (1) the participant was an English native speaker with non-heritage background, and (2) the participant taught the Chinese language at a formal K-16 institution in the United States as part of his or her job responsibilities.

A number of potential participants who met the above two criteria were approached. Six of them agreed to participate in the study. Three of them taught Chinese at K-12 schools, while the other three taught at the post-secondary level. Three were male and three were female (see Table  1 for more information about the six participants).

Data collection and analysis

The six participants were interviewed on a one-on-one basis between July and November of 2014. The first interviewee was a college professor whom the first author had known personally through other circumstances. The interview was conducted by the second author alone via phone. Before the interview, the two authors discussed the interview protocol thoroughly. After the interview, the first author listened to the audio recording of the interview and analyzed the data separately from the second author. Then the two authors compared and contrasted their analysis for the purpose of ensuring the reliability of the qualitative data analysis.

The other five participants were also identified by the first author through professional network and/or at various professional occasions (e.g., conferences). Because the first author is a Chinese language instructor herself, it is easier for her to build trust and rapport between the researcher and the interviewees, which is important, as mentioned by Roberts ( 2002 ) for conducting the auto/biographical research. The five interviews were all conducted by the first author alone either onsite or at distance over the phone or via Skype.

The information of the participants and data collection means is summarized below. To protect their true identities, each participant is given a pseudonym, and the detailed information of their working places and related educational backgrounds is intentionally not specified.

At the beginning of each interview, participants were given some time to reflect on their Chinese language learning experiences as if they were writing a memoir. They were asked to write down the outline on a given paper with such prompts as how many chapters would you write? What would be the headings for each chapter? (See the Appendix for details) For remote interviews, the interviewees were asked to share what they wrote (or typed) via email before the interview started. During the interview, the researchers mainly went over with each participant the outline of the memoir that s/he wrote down (or typed) on paper. The researcher only gave necessary prompts such as what was your rationale to identify this period of time as a single chapter?

It is noteworthy that since the goal of this study is to gain an overall picture of the learning trajectory of each participant, there is usually little need for the researchers to ask additional prompts during the interview. In addition, supported by the rationale stated in the literature review (e.g., Benson, 2005 ; Hanauer, 2011 ), we view every single participant as a subject who tried to find meaning of his or her life and career, and therefore, we tried to keep our intervention to a minimum, and only asked for confirmation and requests for further details occasionally when we deemed it as important and necessary.

The six interviews were conducted in a mixture of Chinese and English based on the interviewees’ preference. Each interview lasted for about one hour, and was audio recorded. A detailed summary was written right after each interview, and the recorded interview was later transcribed verbatim. Similar to handling the first interview, the two researchers first analyzed the interviews separately and then compared and contrasted what they found through ongoing discussions. As suggested by Johnson ( 1997 ), descriptive validity and interpretive validity were emphasized in this quality study. The recordings and transcripts of the interviewed were reviewed multiple times for themes and patterns, and the data analysis results were shared with participants for feedback and accuracy check.

Results and discussions

Similar to what Naiman and his coauthors found from their interviews in 1978, our findings showed that while the six participants achieved their success in different ways, there were several shared experiences and factors across their narratives. Additionally, in light of our review of the literature, especially the theoretical relevance of “social turn”, we view the language learning as a process that involves not only cognitive and psychological factors but also emotion and identity construction under the social-cultural context. One great strength of the auto/biographical approach, as previously discussed, is to allow researchers to capture participants’ long-term language learning experiences in all its complexity and to understand their learning process holistically. While there are also some specific themes we found from the data analysis, such as textbooks used by participants and their recommendations, due to the limitation of length and scope of a paper, we decided to give more focus on reporting the participants’ life-long learning experiences in a macro perspective so that readers can get a holistic and overall picture of the learning trajectory of the participants.

(1) Culture, community, family -- the initiation

Participants in this study all shared how their Chinese language journey began. Dr. Peter, Mr. Dylan, and Dr. Sara mentioned that their motivation in learning Chinese started with their interest in Eastern philosophy. According to Dr. Peter, he always enjoyed reading books on Confuciusm and Buddhism, and he chose to study Chinese language for the purpose of learning Chinese philosophy and culture in greater depth. Mr. Dylan recalled that one of his high school teachers advised him to read the related thoughts of ancient Asian philosophers from China and India for his senior project. After reading Lun Yu (论语, The Analects ) of Confucius and a number of books on Buddhism, he realized that his view of the world was limited to Europe, and he then decided to learn more about Asia in college. Similarly, Dr. Sara mentioned that she did an independent study on philosophy in her high school in order to find different ways of thinking, through which she became interested in traditional Chinese philosophy. Notably, Mr. Dylan shared that he initially was interested in both Chinese and Japanese languages, and later chose Chinese over Japanese because he was more intrigued by communism and Chinese politics.

Most of the participants commented that their interest in Chinese was also influenced by their families, friends, and communities. For example, Dr. Peter mentioned that he grew up in a college town, where he had opportunities to meet with international faculty, including some from Taiwan, through his family connections. Dr. Sara mentioned that her mother was a French language teacher, and she always had an interest in foreign languages. Mr. Andy recalled that his initial motivation in learning Chinese was rather accidental. In the summer before he went to college, a few business friends of his father from Taiwan visited his family. During his conversation with them, they encouraged him to “try Chinese language in college” since he had already studied other foreign languages in high school. Ms. Pam’s decision was largely shaped by her father who believed that Chinese and Spanish were the most useful languages to learn. She also remembered that in 7th grade she had a classmate and good friend whose family was from Taiwan, and she was fascinated by the Chinese culture that she experienced through her friend’s family, such as the delicious food her family made, and the beautiful decorations for celebration of Chinese New Year in her house. Ms. Katy’s case was different than other participants in that she was born in Taiwan when her family lived there because of her father’s work.

The motivation of learning a language has been an important topic in all language study research (Dörnyei & Ushiota, 2013 ; Gil, 2014 ; Noels et al., 2000 ; Rubin, 1975 ; Wen, 1997 ). Motivation is listed by Rubin ( 1975 ) as one of three essential variables for good language learning. The intrinsic interest in Chinese culture that initially motivated the participants to learn Chinese language is consistent with the literature. For instance, Wen ( 1997 ) found in her study of 77 learners that interest in learning Chinese culture and understanding one’s heritage was the first factor for students to start to learn Chinese, and this intrinsic motivation factor was in strong collation with student learning outcomes. Additionally, the family and community factors found in our study are also consistent with what Prescott and Orton ( 2012 ) found from the motivation of good learners in secondary schools.

Gil ( 2014 ) found that economic competitiveness, political competiveness, and population competiveness most strongly supported the “macroacquisition” of Chinese based on his survey of language learners enrolled in universities in Australia and China as well as his study of a range of secondary sources. The three types of competiveness, however, were not mentioned by participants in our study. This finding probably is related to the fact that most participants in our study began to learn Chinese between the 1970s and 1990s when the economy of China was still less developed. On the other hand, this difference might imply that intrinsic motivation is more important for good language learners at least in this study.

Considering students’ initial motivation to learn a new language is related to the enrollment of beginning language classes, findings related to this theme have implications not only for researchers and practitioners but also for administrators and other stakeholders. Given the importance of the intrinsic motivation and the roles that family and community play, Chinese instructors and program coordinators at K-16 levels are encouraged to continue to organize co-curricular and extracurricular activities to promote Chinese language and culture on campus and in the community. It is also advisable to collaborate with local Chinese communities and colleagues from related disciplines (e.g., history, philosophy, arts) as well as seek support from administrators and other stakeholders.

(2) Chinese learning in college (home institution) -- the foundation

Among the six participants, only two of them (Ms. Katy and Ms. Pam) studied Chinese before college. According to Ms. Katy, because her parents were living in Taiwan and “there was no American school or international school at the time nearby,” she attended regular schools for local Taiwanese children from four years old to eight years old (preschool to 3rd grade). Ms. Pam started to learn Chinese during her junior and senior years at high school along with studying Spanish for four years. Ms. Pam recalled that it was difficult to find a Chinese teacher in her hometown area back in the 1980s. Her Chinese teacher was an old gentleman who used to be a spy in World War II and studied Chinese in his own way. It was an age wherein there were “no cassette tapes nor internet,” not to mention “language partners” whatsoever.

Except Dr. Peter who was an English major in college, the other five participants all majored in Chinese or Asian Studies as undergraduate students. According to Dr. Peter, there was no professional Chinese instructor available at the university he attended in late 1970s. His first Chinese instructor was a person from the field of arts who studied Chinese for three years. The other five participants all began to learn Chinese from their college freshman year. Dr. Sara went to study Chinese in Taiwan right after her freshman year, while the other four participants (Mr. Dylan, Ms. Pam, Mr. Andy, and Ms. Katy) all studied Chinese in their home institutions for the first two years before studying abroad in their junior year. They all recalled that the sizes of their Chinese classes were small, especially the upper level Chinese classes.

According to Mr. Andy, the two years of studying Chinese at his college in the United States helped him build a solid foundation for his Chinese learning, and it did not take him long to adjust to the immersive Chinese environment when he arrived in Taiwan. This finding is consistent with what Liu ( 2010 ) points out, that is, the at-home preparation program, if well-designed can help build students’ confidence and allow them to benefit more from interacting with native speakers during their study in China.

Rubin ( 1975 ) listed age as one of the factors requiring further research. Gass et al. ( 2013 ) summarized literature on age differences in language acquisition, including the discussions on Critical Period Hypothesis (CPH), which was originally formulated by Lennenberg ( 1967 ). Marinova-Todd et al. ( 2000 ) cautioned researchers and others not to jump to conclusions about early learning, and proposed that age differences may reflect more the situation of learning than a capacity for learning. While it is apparent that there are many advantages identified in learning a language at an early age (Birdsong, 1999 ; Gass et al., 2013 ), our findings show that it is still possible for learners to achieve highly satisfactory level of Chinese proficiency in their academic career through hard work, as exemplified by the experiences of four participants in this study, who didn’t begin their Chinese learning journey until college due to various reasons.

(3) Study abroad experience -- the immersion

The six participants all had experience studying Chinese in Greater China. Dr. Peter went to Taiwan for one summer and stayed with a local family after graduating from college. He took some Chinese language and culture classes at a university in Taipei while teaching English part time. Ms. Pam studied at Tsinghua University in Beijing in the summer after her sophomore year and studied Chinese at another university in Beijing for one year on a Chinese government scholarship. After her graduation she also went to China multiple times. Mr. Dylan studied at Beijing through the Associated Colleges in China (ACC) program during the summer and fall semester of his junior year, then studied in Taiwan for a number of years after graduating from college. He also earned a master’s degree and nearly finished a doctorate degree in Chinese history while in Taiwan.

Both Mr. Andy and Ms. Katy studied at the Inter-University Program (IUP) for Chinese Language Studies in Taipei. Dr. Sara studied Chinese at Taiwan Normal University for her sophomore year and returned to Taiwan again to continue her Chinese learning while teaching English part time after her graduation. She later studied Chinese at Beijing University for another year while conducting research for her graduate study. Similarly, after graduation Ms. Katy studied Chinese intensively in Nanjing University as part of her graduate study for one year.

Zeng ( 2011 ) states that study abroad “is an important rite of passage during which language learners apply what they have previously acquired from classroom to more authentic social settings” (p. 32). The six participants in this study all spoke highly of their study abroad experiences. According to Mr. Dylan, studying in the ACC immersion program was very helpful, and was a breakthrough for his Chinese communication proficiency. As he explained, the structure of the Chinese classes offered at his college in the United States was good, which made him want to learn Chinese. He had Chinese every week day, three days for lecture, and two days for drills. He also went to lab to do required listening and recording. He recalled that he went to the language lab frequently and listened to those audiotapes a lot during his first two years of learning Chinese at his college, but he still felt that he was not making much progress and not proficient enough to communicate fully in Chinese. He stressed a couple of times during the interview that when he studied in the language lab he “had a strong feeling of going to China” and could not wait to take part in the immersion environment as soon as possible.

According to Dr. Sara, her study abroad experience in Taiwan during her sophomore year not only helped improve her Chinese proficiency but also helped in deciding to major in Chinese. Ms. Pam further stated that studying in China even helped her change her personality in addition to improving her Chinese. She said that she was very introverted and not confident before studying in China. During her study in China she would need to make many decisions herself. In addition, she had the time and freedom to explore her interests, such as studying Buddhism and Taiji. These experiences made her become more confident and extroverted, and had a large impact on her professional career.

Mr. Dylan, Ms. Katy, and Dr. Sara all commended the good structure of the study abroad program they attended. According to Mr. Dylan, the ACC program had “very good curriculum.” Students in the ACC program lived in dorms on campus and pledged to speak Chinese all the time with classmates and roommates. There were four-hour Chinese language courses taught in the morning, and cultural activities in the afternoon with excursions arranged over weekends. Similarly, Ms. Katy mentioned that the IUP Taipei program was “very rigorous.” The instructors were selected by the program director. The ratio of instructor to students in the combined session was one to three, and in the single session one to one. The curriculum was topic oriented, covering various topics, such as stories, novels, radio and broadcast programs.

While Dr. Peter did not study in Greater China before he graduated from college, he found that the immersion program he attended at Middlebury College was “really very helpful” for his Chinese learning. According to him, the summer Middlebury program was total immersion. Students were asked to speak Chinese all the time, “except, in a situation where, like medical emergency or something like that.” Professors were selected from different universities to teach courses, which were “highly structured and very demanding.”

Notably, in addition to the immersion program, Mr. Dylan shared that using authentic Chinese books to study history was also critical for his Chinese learning. According to him, when he studied Chinese in Taiwan after he graduated from college, he found the classes did not meet his personal needs and the class setting (i.e., studying with other students) did not fit him any longer. He then decided to have tutors help him study Chinese history through books for native speakers. He felt that there was huge improvement for his Chinese and wished that he could have done this type of study earlier. After he was admitted to the M.A. program in Chinese History at a Taiwanese university, he studied with native speakers and read books all in Chinese. He recalled that it was challenging for him in the beginning. According to him, he had to finish reading one book per week while in the past it could take him the whole semester. For writing, he would need to write a report in 10,000–40,000 words in Chinese while his Chinese language classes usually just required some paragraphs. Because the teacher and classmates were all native speakers, he would need to understand the lecturing and participate in the small group discussions in Chinese, which challenged his listening and speaking skills as well. He summarized that he used the Chinese language as a tool for him to study history, and in the past he had used it as a travel tool. His case is consistent with what Zeng ( 2011 ) found in that the level “‘advanced’ marks a transition from learning a language to learning in the language”, and studying abroad facilitates learners’ use of the language to accomplish their higher professional goals (p.ii). In addition, Mr. Dylan’s success in improving his Chinese proficiency through studying authentic history books adds to the related literature (e.g., Grabe & Stoller, 1997 ; Krashen, 1982 ; Stoller, 2002 , 2004 ) regarding the advantages of using content-based instruction for language learning.

(4) Life-long learning -- dedication, self-regulation

All participants indicated that language learning is a life-long learning process either explicitly or implicitly. A couple of them used the well-known Chinese idiom, Huo dao lao, xue dao lao (活到老学到老, Liv e till old, learn till old ),to describe it. For instance, while Ms. Katy has achieved native-level Chinese proficiency through her life-long learning process since her childhood, she mentioned that there were still many things for her to learn, such as the various ways of closing for writing Chinese letters with classical terms. She said her Chinese was not good when it came to writing business letters, and stressed that she could “do Chinese well but not at the very native level.” To continue to improve her Chinese, she communicated with her Chinese colleagues in Chinese. She saved all of the written communications with Chinese friends and colleagues to study the beginning and the ending as well as how native Chinese speakers communicated. She also mentioned that she had an officemate who was originally from Taiwan to help correct her Chinese while she helped her with English.

Likewise, Dr. Peter mentioned that as a non-native speaker, he needed to broaden his vocabulary throughout his whole life. In addition, while it was hard to eliminate accent, one could keep on improving to become close to the native level. He mentioned that there were electronic dictionaries and many Internet resources that one could use for learning a language nowadays. He also explained that learning Chinese had to be a life-long process because there were many different dialects and variations of Chinese from different geographical regions and historical periods.

Most of the participants mentioned that, to learn Chinese very well, one needs to be highly self-motivated, stay focused, and make special efforts especially when studying in a non-Chinese environment. As Mr. Andy explained, “ in the United States it is an English environment, many [Chinese] people speak English with you even though you know Chinese. There were so many Chinese who learned English for so long and they spoke English better than American speaking Chinese .” He stressed that one would need to make especial effort to keep up one’s Chinese in the United States.

Similar to what Naiman and his coauthors (1978) found from their interviews of good learners, participants in this study also showed that they were actively involved in their language learning process and found ways to overcome linguistic, affective and/or environmental obstacles in their learning. Based on related research on self-directed learning, autonomy, self-management, and self-efficacy, Oxford ( 2010 ) discussed the importance of self-regulation in detail and presented a strategic self-regulation model of language learning. Participants in this study showed strong self-regulation in their Chinese language learning careers. For instance, according to Dr. Peter, one would have to have sufficient determination to deny extraneous activities, such as foregoing some social activities when studying in a non-Chinese environment. He recalled that some students took trips to Montreal during breaks in the summer immersion program at Middlebury College, but he chose not to because he gave priority to his Chinese learning and could not find additional time. As he recalled:

Sometimes your social life suffers a little bit... And then, it takes so much of your time - fortunately, I’m not kind of person who had a whole lot of hobbies, like going fishing or whatever.... I think for some individuals who aren’t able to focus that much of their time and energy on one type of study or one course of study such as Chinese language, it would be difficult... You can also look at this, well, this is a phase in my life that, eventually when I get to establish a career, I’ll be able to have a more normal, social life, and have this intense study behind me.

Dr. Peter also mentioned that when he travelled to Taiwan in the summer, he tried to speak Chinese all the time, and avoid those who tried to speak English with him. Mr. Dylan concurred and shared that when people tried to practice English with him, he told them that he was from France, a trick taught by one of his teachers. Similarly, Ms. Pam said that when she studied Chinese at Beijing, she and her classmates tried to speak Chinese with each other all the time. She remembered that her roommate was from Switzerland. Although her roommate could speak English they both decided to speak Chinese with each other. She also had a classmate from Thailand who had studied in the United States before, but he did not speak with her in English at all. When she found out later that he could speak English well, he told her that his purpose for studying in China was to learn to speak Chinese.

(5) Other findings

In addition to their life-long Chinese learning process, participants in this study, who were Chinese instructors, also shared some of their perspectives on the teaching and learning of Chinese language based on their own experiences. For example, Dr. Peter believed that learning a language is similar to learning other skills such as playing tennis or a music instrument. One needs to retain daily practice and overlearn in order to make the skill become automatic. As he put it:

Language learning is kind of like learning a musical instrument or learning a sport very well in that you have to learn it to a point of overlearning, you practice it to the point where it becomes automatic. It’s a very different approach than content courses like sociology or history or something like that, where it’s not that important to overlearn the skills. Anytime there’s skill involved, you want to try to over learn it… same thing with athletics, you overlearn to the point where it just becomes natural; you don’t have to think about the stroke, the slam or whatever, because you’ve done it so many times. I think with foreign language learning, because it’s also a skill, you have to practice. With a coach in the sport, with a musical teacher learning an instrument,...having a conceptual understanding of something is not enough; you have to practice, practice, practice.

This view is well supported by the related literature (e.g., Snow, 2007 ; Stryker & Leaver, 1997 ). In addition, Mr. Andy mentioned that because people learn things differently, it was very important for learners to find study methods that work best for themselves. He recalled that when he studied Chinese at college, he started a study group with his classmates after class on how to study Chinese, such as grouping Chinese characters with radicals. He stated that teachers should provide a variety of methods for students to choose what worked well for themselves. His view concurs with what Rubin and Thompson ( 1982 ) mentioned in their book.

Furthermore, similar to Stevick ( 1989 ) found from his study of the Chinese learner, both Mr. Andy and Dr. Sara in this study mentioned that repetition and recitation were necessary for Chinese learning. Mr. Andy recalled that when he studied in Taiwan he had classes in which teachers asked students to read texts after them, and he found it was a good way to improve pronunciation. Dr. Sara mentioned that for learning a language, one would have to memorize some text based on her learning and teaching experience. As she said:

For [learning] other European languages, it [memorizing some text] maybe is not necessary. But for our language [Chinese], which is really, truly, totally, foreign, it is necessary... This is how you developed template in your head, Doing through dialogues is easier than memorizing a list of vocabulary because you have an actual conversation, you have a situation, and it’s more meaningful. At the same time, it gives you a framework for the sentence structures that you can refer back to even after class.

Mr. Andy and Dr. Sara also shared their insights on teaching grammar and communicative skills. They believed that the two aspects did not conflict. As Dr. Sara explained:

I do not think that classroom should be completely grammar based. You know, you want to be communicative. But I think having clear grammar explanation is very important for non-native beginners. They have to know, you know, it is really helpful for them to have grammar explanation but also to understand how this is related to what they do in English, explicit instruction about differences... As I tell my students at the beginning that you are adults, so you are not going to pick up accents as easily and nicely as little kids will, but you can think things abstractly and we are going to take advantage of that. We are going to analyze sentence structures abstractly, and this is something that you can do that little kids cannot, and you can benefit from it.

Mr. Andy concurred and used a good analogy to illustrate his view. As he said,

Grammar is the skeleton of a body, and if you are teaching only communicative, then they have the body part, but you may have a body that has no skeleton… But no one wants to do just the skeleton, because skeleton is scary, and not so much fun. You want to do the fun body-moving stuff, so you have to do a little bit of skeleton to be able to do more fun things with the body.

Conclusions

Using the auto/biographical approach, in this study we interviewed six non-native Chinese instructors in the United States regarding their Chinese learning experiences. While each participant reached his/her success in their own way, we found many similar experiences and common themes among the participants. First, we found that most of the participants began to learn Chinese because of their intrinsic interest in Eastern philosophy and Chinese culture. Their initial motivation was also influenced by their family and community. To attract more potential students Chinese teachers, related administrators and practitioners are encouraged to organize cultural activities to promote Chinese language and cultural awareness in local communities, especially in areas where the Chinese community is small and there is short of resources on Chinese culture.

The study also found that all of the six participants took Chinese classes in college and what they learned in their local institutions helped build a foundation for their Chinese learning. Only two of them took Chinese classes prior to college. While literature shows that there are many advantages of learning a new language at an early age, many American college students do not have experience learning Chinese in their K-12 education due to various reasons. The finding of this study is encouraging for those learners in that it shows that even though one begins to learn Chinese from college, s/he can still possibly achieve high-level proficiency in Chinese and can even go on to become a Chinese instructor like participants in this study.

In addition, participants in this study all had experiences studying in mainland of China and/or in Taiwan. One of them also attended the summer immersion program at Middlebury College. They all held their immersion programs in high regard, and nearly all of them mentioned that study in such a program was critical in their Chinese learning career. Kubler ( 1997 ) suggests that study abroad experience should not be considered an optional plan for learning Chinese but an essential component of a Chinese learning curriculum. While it might be not realistic to require each Chinese major to study in Greater China at some universities, Chinese instructors, program coordinators and related advisors should at least encourage Chinese learners to study abroad as long as their financial condition permits.

It is worth pointing out that the immersion programs the participants in this study described were very rigorous and well designed. When organizing and/or recommending programs for students, instructors and related administrators need to pay attention to the design of the immersion programs, such as teacher qualification, pedagogy, as well as the interaction with peers. As Zeng ( 2011 ) notes in review of literature (e.g., Marriott, 1993 ; Rivers, 1998 ) on study abroad programs, sometimes “being there is not enough” (p. 32).

Furthermore, participants in this study were found to hold life-long learning attitudes toward their Chinese language learning, and use various strategies to self-regulate their learning throughout their learning careers. As Snow ( 2007 ) states, “learning a foreign language involves much skill components than learning many other school subjects” (p.27), the first task as a language instructor is to help students understand language learning. It is also imperative for a language educator to help students learn to build learner autonomy and self-regulate their learning in their language learning careers. The perspectives that the participants shared in this study on Chinese teaching and learning both as good language learners and as non-native Chinese instructors provide helpful implications for Chinese learners, instructors (native or non-native), researchers, as well as other practitioners and stakeholders.

Admittedly, this study has at least two limitations. First, as some researchers (e.g., Benson, 2011 ; Pavlenko, 2007 ) point out, one needs to “avoid treating narratives as factual accounts” (Benson, 2011 , pp. 545–546). This in no way means that the participants were not telling the truth. Because the life-long learning processes span many years, and some incidents took place a very long time ago, there is the possibility that some participants might not have been able to recall what they did accurately. Second, there were only six interviewees in this study, and like all qualitative studies, readers need to be careful in generalizing the findings.

Despite these limitations, as partly discussed previously, this study nevertheless makes contributions to the field in three ways. First, it adds to the body of literature on Chinese language learners, especially helps to fill the gap on the study of good learners of the Chinese language. While there are publications available on studying of good learners of English and other commonly taught languages (e.g., Cotterall, 2008 ; Naiman et al., 1978 ; Norton & Toohey, 2001 ), research on good learners of Chinese language, however, is still extremely limited. The experiences of good learners, as many scholars (e.g., Rubin, 1975 ; Griffiths, 2008a ) have pointed out, can provide helpful implications for other language learners, their teachers as well as other related stakeholders.

Second, the study chose non-native Chinese instructors as good language learners, whose experiences can provide implications to practitioners and researchers of language teacher programs. Compared to non-native instructors in TESOL and commonly taught foreign languages in the United States such as Spanish and French, non-native instructors of the Chinese language are disproportionately rare. As Snow ( 2007 ) points out, there are many advantages of having local teachers, who can provide inspiration to learners through their own learning experience. It is our hope that our study can help motivate more successful Chinese language learners to join the Chinese teaching profession.

Finally, this study uses auto/biographical research method to collect narratives through interviews. One advantage of this approach, as previously discussed, is to help the participants to reflect on their long-term experiences (life stories) comprehensively within a short time (such as 45–60 min). While the approach has been used in TESOL (e.g., Wang, 2014 ), no study has been found in studying Chinese language learners yet. We hope that our study can help expand repertoires of researchers in the study of learning/teaching Chinese as a foreign/s language, a promising field where more research is needed.

We use “Non-native Chinese instructor” in order to indicate that the native (first) language of these instructors is not Chinese, which does not reflect their Chinese proficiency level.

Snow ( 2007 ) discusses learning and teaching of English. Local teachers in his book, accordingly, refer to non-native teachers from local countries, e.g. teachers who grew up in China teach English in China. The concept is the same in case of learning and teaching of Chinese. The non-native Chinese instructors in this article are local teachers, who grew up in the United States teach Chinese in the United States.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the six participants in this study for their generosity of sharing their incredible Chinese learning experiences with us, and thank the Dean’s Office of College of Humanities and Social Sciences of Indiana University of Pennsylvania for partially funding the project.

The study was partially funded by the Dean’s Office of College of Humanities and Social Sciences of Indiana University of Pennsylvania.

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Department of Foreign Languages, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Room 456, Sutton Hall, Indiana, PA, 15705, USA

Shijuan Liu

Statistics, Measurement, Assessment, & Research Technology, Graduate School of Education, University of Pennsylvania, 3700 Walnut St, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, USA

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Contributions

SL conceptualized the paper and initiated discussions with FW to conduct the study together by using similar method that FW used in his study on English language learners. SL and FW wrote the IRB together and reached out to recruit participants after receiving the IRB approval. SL successfully recruited six participants in the study and introduced one to FW. FW conducted the first interview by phone to establish the interview protocol and summarized the interview. SL interviewed the other five participants and wrote detailed summary with partial verbatim transcription for each of the six interviews. SL applied for a grant, and had the six interviews fully transcribed verbatim. SL and FW analyzed the data separately. FW wrote the first draft of the literature review section based on his previous study, and SL rewrote the literature review section by adding much more literature and restructuring the section. SL drafted the methodology and finding sections, and FW provided feedback for improvement. SL then wrote the first draft of the full paper, and FW offered suggestions on some wordings. SL also incorporated suggestions based on other colleagues and had two native speakers proofread the finalized paper. Both authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Shijuan Liu .

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Interview Protocols

Prompts given to the interviewees at the beginning of the interview.

Think of your Chinese learning as a long story. Suppose you are writing a memoir on your Chinese learning experiences. How many chapters would you write? What would be the headings for each chapter?

The rationale of this is to strike a balance between the need to obtain a complete and rich narrative from you on the one hand, and the practical limitations of time and data on the other. Please take your time to think about it. You can use the following table as reference or create one on your own.

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Liu, S., Wang, F. A qualitative study on learning trajectories of non-native Chinese instructors as successful Chinese language learners. Asian. J. Second. Foreign. Lang. Educ. 3 , 2 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40862-018-0043-5

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Received : 27 August 2017

Accepted : 04 January 2018

Published : 19 January 2018

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1186/s40862-018-0043-5

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Chinese as a Second Language Research

• Online ISSN: 2193-2271
• Print ISSN: 2193-2263
• Type: Journal
• Languages: English, Chinese
• Publisher: De Gruyter Mouton
• First published: April 15, 2012
• Publication Frequency: 2 Issues per Year
• Audience: Researchers in Applied Linguistics, Chinese Linguistics, Second Language Acquisition, and Intercultural Pragmatics.