Students Attitudes And Perceptions Of Learning Mandarin Chinese Via Animated Video

The health crisis of COVID-19 has forced many countries around the world to close schools, colleges, and universities. Malaysia's high education administration announced that teaching and learning would be fully online for universities starting from the 1st of June till the end of 2020. This short and long-term disruption shocked by many students and lecturers in the tertiary education sector in Malaysia. Teaching and learning and even assessments have moved fully online, resulting in lot of trials and errors and uncertainty for everyone. Covid-19 has posed significant challenges not only for lecturers, but students as well. There are a plethora of challenges such as technical difficulties, coverage, and speed of the Internet, the quality of teaching, and interactions for students who are not familiar and used to online learning. It is extremely important to attract learners and motivate them in an online learning environment in order to help learners overcome challenges and difficulties in learning.
The present study explored the students’ attitudes and perceptions of learning Mandarin via animated videos at a beginner level. Animated video is used to create content covered in online lessons and integrates basic Mandarin vocabulary, sentence structures and enhances learning. Several surveys and semi-structured interviews were used to assess students’ attitudes and perceptions towards this method of instruction in online teaching and learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings of the study demonstrated that students kept a positive attitude towards learning Mandarin via animated video. Students expressed that animated video not only enhanced their listening and speaking skills, it also helped them learn Mandarin vocabulary and sentence structures. The findings of this study also suggested that animated video provides Mandarin language teachers with extensive Mandarin vocabulary and sentence structures and enhances learning through fun activities in online teaching.