“Thinking about your thinking”
Currently, Thai students are increasingly interested in learning Chinese as a third language (L3) because they think that it can help them in their future career that involves Chinese business sectors. Clearly, Chinese language has played an important role in Thai society in the past few years. At present, Chinese language is important in tourism because Chinese tourists have the highest growth rates in terms of the tourist numbers. According to the National Statistical Office of Thailand (2021), the increasing number of Chinese visitors in Thailand has contributed to economic growth. Students who their major filed of study is Chinese, as the third language, must learn all skills required as the second language. Writing, reading, listening, and speaking are compulsory for every language learner, including Chinese language learners. However, speaking in Chinese seems to be the most difficult skill for learners who choose Chinese as their major and minor courses (Amoah & Yeboah, 2021). In fact, many learners try to get proficient in Chinese.
"Learning strategies that lead students to be successful in Chinese speaking skill"
According to the Office of the Higher Education Commission of Thailand (2010), there are approximately 460,000 Chinese learners of all levels throughout Thailand. Moreover, within a few years, it was found that there are more than 800,000 Chinese learners currently. However, many Chinese learners have experienced difficulties in learning Chinese speaking successfully. For this reason, metacognitive strategies of Oxford (1990) can be used to help students adjust their language learning style, especially for Chinese speaking skill.
“Metacognitive Strategies: The way to improve Chinese speaking skills”
• The idea of metacognition or thinking about think
Metacognition is thinking about how you think and learn. It helps to be a self-aware problem solver and take control of learning. By using metacognition when studying, the learners can be strategic about the approach. They will also be able to take stock of what they already know, whatthey need to work on, and how to approach the best learning of new material (Oxford, 1990)
A small-scale study from 2 groups of the respondents of CMU students, majoring and minoring in Chinese, about their metacognitive strategies used for learning Chinese speaking skill indicates that the majority of the respondents use metacognitive strategies when they learn to speak Chinese. The mean scores of metacognitive strategies used by CMU Chinese major and minor students shows a high agreement level of the metacognitive strategies used in learning Chinese speaking skill.
However, the respondents did not obviously show that they can motivate themselves to learn when they need to communicate in Chinese and the respondents also did not show that they can organize their time to best accomplish their goals when learning to communicate in Chinese. Moreover, they did not clearly show that they stop and go back over new information that is not clear when learning to communicate in Chinese. From these findings, it can be explained why Chinese major students get B grades and Chinese minor students get B+ grades in the subjects they have studied instead of A. This can prove that Chinese is quite difficult for them to learn. Therefore, it is recommended that Chinese language learners should manage their time properly and be more critical when having the unclear content in Chinese language in order to accomplish the course objectives as well as their goals to be capable of speaking Chinese fluently. According to Garner (1988), "to make an individual metacognitively aware is to ensure that the individual has learned how to learn."
In addition to metacognitive strategies, there are also learners’personality and external and internal factors that affect the learners' learning.
Do you think that the personality types of learners can affect Chinese learning?
According to the personality types of learners, most Chinese major and minor students appear to be introverts rather than extroverts. However, being introvert or extrovert learners does not affect their Chinese learning because they both had similar grade results for learning to speak Chinese. Therefore, it is not possible to measure which characteristics of Chinese major and minor learners in this study performed better than the other. Interestingly, successful language learners are extroverts rather than introverts. Based on the studies in language acquisition of Lightbown (2013), many classroom teachers are convinced that extrovert students are more successful in L2 learning than introvert counterparts, especially in terms of being superior in communicative ability. Therefore, it is suggested that Chinese speaking learners, both major and minor ones, should be more extrovert to enhance their communicative skills in Chinese.
External and internal factors that affect learning Chinese speaking skills
According to the results about the factors that affect learning Chinese speaking skills, the respondents showed high agreement level towards both internal (x̄ = 3.84) and external (x̄ = 3.65) factors. Considering the factors that enhance language learning, internal and external factors are very important for every language learner.
To sum up, metacognitive strategies are crucial to students. These strategies can enhance students to learn better and help them manage their own time and thoughts. Moreover, Chinese speaking learners should be more extrovert to improve their Chinese speaking skills. In addition to the metacognitive strategies and personality of the learners, both internal and external factors also affect the learners' learning Chinese speaking.
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