In order to answer the research question, below is the description of the process to design and develop Hanyu Pinyin WBI based on the instructional system design (lSD) methodology. A. Analysis and design phases In the analysis phase, the learners’ background, the instructional materials, and the delivery modes were carefully examined. This analysis provides inputs to the design of instructions such as refming the learning objectives, specifying the training media and lesson design. Learner analysis is essential to ensure that the design of online materials is customized to the learners. The intended learners of Hanyu Pinyin Instruction are mainly targeted to fulltime students who have no prior knowledge of Mandarin. Thus, prior to this, a survey was done to identify learners’ Hanyu Pinyin learning requirements by identifying the difficulties faced by the learners when learning Hanyu Pinyin and its pronunciation. Two methods were used to collect the data: at frrst from the facilitator’s own teaching experience and secondly, by referring to previous studies of pronunciation errors from UiTM Mandarin lecturers. This piece of data is required not only to determine the learning outcome that will best meet the learners’ needs but also to develop an outline of the content, course objective, learning strategies, and assessment items that will realise those outcomes. Reference [2] had done an analysis on the pronunciation errors of initials and tone in speaking Mandarin among UiTM learners. It shows that learners make the most common mistakes in pronouncing the plosive initials (33.7 %), followed by the affricate initials (25.0%), and fricative initials (21.4%). In terms of plosive initials, most of the learners make mistake in pronouncingp initial (83%), t initial (85.8%), and k initial (54.5%). For affricate initials, a good number of mistakes are found in pronouncing q initials (44.9%), ch initial (82.7%), and c initial (44.0%). In fricative initials, majority of the learners make mistakes in pronouncing the sh initial (48.3%). From the statistic, it depicts that most learners were facing difficulties in pronouncing the initials with aspirated sounds. For tone pronunciation error, the research shows that there are mainly four categories of errors. The errors are incorrect pronouncing the frrst tone, second tone, third tone, and fourth tone. The sequence of pronunciation error from highest to lowest are the second tone (59.5 %), the fourth tone (52.8%), the third tone (36.7%), and the frrst tone (27.5%). In other words, the average mistakes that learners make in pronouncing is the second tone, followed by the fourth tone, subsequently the third tone, and lastly the frrst tone [2]. The data obtained from the research above has provided a fine input to the outline of the content, course objective, learning strategies, and assessment items of Hanyu Pinyin WBI. In addition, it has provided a comprehensible guideline to facilitator for producing pertinent lessons. It is also imperative that the feasibility and implications of various delivery modes are well investigated as the technology and media to be used for presenting the instruction has a broad range of implications for the design, development, and implementation of the instructions. The facilitator has two alternatives to deliver the instructions: using the CD-ROM and the Internet. Thus, in order to have a clearer view of the implications, the facilitator has listed out the functions, strengths, and limitations of the potential delivery modes to ease the work of analysis as shown in Table I.
Most of the Web-based Instruction (WBI) for Chinese focuses on grammar and vocabulary. Comparatively, the numbers of WBI on Pinyin pronunciation and Romanization are relatively small. Some WBI are resourceful, however, they address to the particular needs of their targeted learning entities thus it is impossible to adopt the entire set of these WBI to facilitate the Malay Hanyu Pinyin learners. Besides choosing the sections that are relevant from these instructions to enhance teaching or learning, lecturer should take full advantage of the currently available web authoring tools to create Hanyu Pinyin WBI specifIcally tailored to non-native learners. The lecturer needs not possess any programming skills to develop Hanyu Pinyin WBI as presently there are plenty of user-friendly web authoring tools available and even amateur can put up functional web sites with these tools. Therefore, lecturer should take the opportunity to create their own Hanyu Pinyin WBI tailored to the specifIc needs of their learners. If the self-created WBI is interesting and irmovative, learners will get the most benefIts from it which will result in more effective learning of Hanyu Pinyin.
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