Title: Reading Aloud in Chinese Character Texts: A Students’ Perspective

In teaching Elementary Chinese, I have been trying various methods or approaches in order to help the students speak better while gradually improving their ability to use characters in reading, recognition, understanding and writing. While class time is limited, I have experimenting and developing a routine practice of reading aloud in character texts. Students are asked to read aloud half of each dialogue or narrative in Integrated Chinese and each student is to be evaluated with their reading aloud in class the next day. Students have been doing this exercise four days a week except for the last day of the week. My paper will outline the reasons for doing such an exercise, describe with examples the ways of doing this exercise and its evaluation methods, present students’ responses in two categories (of heritage and non-heritage students), and finally summarize the benefits of such a routine practice and ways for improvement. My paper intends to accumulate some data as the result of one semester of my pedagogical research and practice. I would like to share them with my colleagues in the field and work together with them toward the creation of more affective approaches in teaching and learning Chinese at the beginning level.