港澳大學生辨認書寫簡化字調査與分析 = A study on university students in Hong Kong and Macau to recognize and write simplied Chinese characters

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Classical Chinese Characters are always used in different levels of school education stages, such as pre-school education, junior and senior forms education, and local books and magazines in Hong Kong and Macau. However, Simplified Chinese Characters have been used more and more popularly and existed in different industries because different modes of exchange have become frequently between mainland China and HK and Macau. Hong Kong Examinations and Assessment Authority (HKEAA) expresses clearly and definitely that examinee can write in Simplified Chinese Characters in public examinations. This will surely affect primary and secondary students’ learning attitude as well as their reading and writing of Chinese characters in Hong Kong. In order to investigate university students’ recognition and writing simplified Chinese in Hong Kong and Macau, we designed a set of questionnaire which consisted of three parts: the first part consisted of 200 frequently-used simplified Chinese characters to test how many of them that the students were able to recognize. The second part consisted of 50 frequently-used simplified Chinese characters to test the same thing. The last part consisted of 100 selected simplified Chinese characters to test whether students could write them properly. According to the result of the questionnaires, Hong Kong and Macau university students were able to recognize a large proportion of standard simplified Chinese characters in Mainland China but were unable to write them properly. This brings concern for language educators in Hong Kong and Macau to remind students of writing proper simplified Chinese characters in their teaching.