The number of Chinese migrants all over Europe is constantly increasing. A considerable percentage of them is composed by university students. For instance, some statistics show that Chinese students in Germany are at the top of the list of the nationalities of foreign students: in 2010 they were 22.779, the first nationality (DAAD, November 2011). My research focused on the analysis of the most common irregularities both in the speech and in the writing of Chinese teenagers in the process of acquiring Italian and German linguistic and communicative skills. I selected some courses founded by local authorities in the city of Empoli as the case study for Italian. I analyzed performances in classroom speech and written works of three groups of students with different competence levels, each one composed by about twenty people for a total of about sixty subjects. Concerning the characteristics and peculiarities of Chinese migrants’ acquisition of German, I analysed performances both in speech and written works of students with different backgrounds (most of them are university students) and different ages, attending some courses in the city of Munich. The gathered data show the diffusion and the persistence of some kinds of specific irregularities among Chinese migrants’ acquisition process of Italian and German as a Second Language. Moreover, new researches show that acquiring good communicative skills (in particular pragmalinguistic and sociolinguistic abilities) can be as difficult as acquiring good linguistic skills for Chinese students learning European languages. The lack of these kinds of skills can seriously compromise the success of a dialogue with a Second Language native speaker. In addition, it can lead to the spreading of prejudices such as “Chinese people have always fear to lose face”. For these reasons my work will focus not only on the linguistic interferences and negative transfers between Chinese and Italian or German as a Second Language, but also on the pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic interferences.
Travelling to learn: Chinese migrants' linguistic and communicative skills development in European languages
SCIBETTA A
2013-01-01
Abstract
The number of Chinese migrants all over Europe is constantly increasing. A considerable percentage of them is composed by university students. For instance, some statistics show that Chinese students in Germany are at the top of the list of the nationalities of foreign students: in 2010 they were 22.779, the first nationality (DAAD, November 2011). My research focused on the analysis of the most common irregularities both in the speech and in the writing of Chinese teenagers in the process of acquiring Italian and German linguistic and communicative skills. I selected some courses founded by local authorities in the city of Empoli as the case study for Italian. I analyzed performances in classroom speech and written works of three groups of students with different competence levels, each one composed by about twenty people for a total of about sixty subjects. Concerning the characteristics and peculiarities of Chinese migrants’ acquisition of German, I analysed performances both in speech and written works of students with different backgrounds (most of them are university students) and different ages, attending some courses in the city of Munich. The gathered data show the diffusion and the persistence of some kinds of specific irregularities among Chinese migrants’ acquisition process of Italian and German as a Second Language. Moreover, new researches show that acquiring good communicative skills (in particular pragmalinguistic and sociolinguistic abilities) can be as difficult as acquiring good linguistic skills for Chinese students learning European languages. The lack of these kinds of skills can seriously compromise the success of a dialogue with a Second Language native speaker. In addition, it can lead to the spreading of prejudices such as “Chinese people have always fear to lose face”. For these reasons my work will focus not only on the linguistic interferences and negative transfers between Chinese and Italian or German as a Second Language, but also on the pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic interferences.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
