Difficulties faced by Bangladeshi tertiary level students in learning Chinese as a foreign language

Abstract

This study investigates the problems faced by Bangladeshi tertiary level students in learning Chinese as a foreign language and what the students did to mitigate them and suggest for future learners inside Bangladesh. Moreover, the researcher collected data from 10 undergraduate students at BRAC university in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Again, for evaluating the findings, the researcher used a thematic approach. Now, throughout the Chinese language course, the majority of the students had to face some level of difficulties when it comes to Pinyin, tones and Chinese characters etc. as the Bangladeshi students are from a non-tonal language background. Moreover, the students also had a positive classroom environment facilitated by their teachers and classmates. However, even in such a lower anxiety environment while the majority of the students were able to keep themselves motivated from time to time, some students gave in to emotional vulnerability and were unable to acquire more language skills like the rest. Therefore, with the help of a detailed analysis of the Chinese language learning scenario in a Bangladeshi private university, this paper tries to demonstrate that only having a positive classroom environment is never enough to ensure the maximum acquisition of the Chinese language among the beginner level Bangladeshi university CFL learners as language background, personality traits etc. can contribute to the increased level of anxiety among many students where the implementation of certain actions from the part of the students are vital to mitigate the affective factors faced by Bangladeshi CFL learners.