Chengyu in Chinese language teaching: A preliminary analysis of Italian learners' data

Chengyu, also known as Chinese four character idioms, are a type of traditional Chinese idiom, mostly consisting of four characters. They commonly derive from classic Chinese literary sources, including those of the three great philosophical and religious traditions that influenced the entire East Asia cultural sphere: Confucianism, Daoism and Buddhism. Chengyu, therefore, possess a wide range of cu ltural references , and, from Chinese, spread to the languages of the other countries of the sinosphere, such as Japan and Korea. Although many scholars have emphasized the import ance of the acquisition of chengyu , not much attention has been paid to chengyu learning in Chinese Language Teaching research so far. As a preliminary attempt to address this gap, this paper reports the results of two sm all scale, exploratory experiments, aimed at investigating Italian learners’ general knowledge of chengyu and their main interpretation strategies, as well as comparing the effectiveness of direct and indirect instruction in chengyu teaching . The experiment s involved participants from Bachelor and Master programs of Roma Tre University. The results show a predominant effect of negative transfer from Italian, as well as a better performance of the participants who received indirect instruction.