AN APPLICATION FOR LEARNING CHINESE LANGUAGE AS A SECOND LANGUAGE: A PROPOSED DESIGN

With the booming of mobile technologies and Internet connection nowadays, this papepresents a framework for learning Chinese language as a second language for primary
school children aged 7 years old through a mobile application. In Malaysia, mobilelearning technology still not widely used in the education system but in developing
countries such as US had emerged into mobile learning technology in school. Plus, the
non-Chinese students who take Chinese language as their second language in schoolhave lower performance compared to the others. Hence, the main objective of thiproject is to encourage and support the process of learning Chinese language amongyoung children who use Chinese as their second language at their own pace anytimeanywhere by develop mobile learning application. It is designed in such a way ofadditional learning tool that young children can use and explore the modules in theapplication. From the user testing survey, most of the students would like to use mobile
learning application in learning Chinese language as additional learning tool because
the children find out it is interesting to learn new language via mobile. The applicationwill include learning with exercise, test and also performance evaluation of the learners.There are five learning modules in the application which are numeracy, my body, mfamily, my school, and animals. Plus, the application also includes three tests based on
random modules question. Then, the teacher can monitor the score of the students thathad registered in the application. With this additional mobile learning tool, the studentwill expose to mobile technology learning at the early age with interesting learn
application that will give excitement in learning the language. Indirectly, this mobilelearning application also helps to develop and maintain the interest of the learners inlearning a new language.