Cultural Empowerment and Technological Symbiosis: Innovative Pathways and Practical Exploration in Digital Chinese Language Teaching in Macau Primary Schools

Chen Ansheng   [Macau]

Abstract

Addressing challenges in Macau primary Chinese language education—including limited cultural transmission vehicles, weak student motivation for expression, and difficulties in implementing differentiated teaching—this paper proposes three innovative pathways grounded in Macau’s curriculum positioning of ‘Chinese culture as the mainstream, with coexistence of diverse cultures’. These include: digital reconstruction of cultural contexts, a tiered expression training system, and a Greater Bay Area resource collaboration mechanism. A comparative study across two primary schools in Macau's Gao Shide District (experimental group employing digital solutions, control group using traditional teaching) demonstrated significant improvements in the experimental group's classical text comprehension accuracy (+32%), writing motivation (+45%), and classroom engagement (+38%). This research provides frontline educators with a reusable technological toolkit, emphasising how foundational technologies can serve cultural immersion and language practice.

Keywords: Primary Chinese Language; Digital Teaching; Cultural Context Reconstruction; Tiered Expression Training; Greater Bay Area Collaboration

1. Introduction

The Macao Special Administrative Region Government's Non-Higher Education Development Plan (2021-2030) explicitly states the need to ‘promote the deep integration of digital teaching with the inheritance of Chinese culture.’ However, local Chinese language teaching practices still face multiple challenges:

Firstly, limitations in cultural carriers. Current teaching of classical poetry and prose relies predominantly on static texts, failing to effectively engage Macao's rich living cultural resources such as World Heritage architecture and traditional festivals. This results in insufficient vividness and impact in cultural transmission.

Secondly, students' expression training exhibits homogenisation tendencies. Statistics indicate that approximately 70% of teachers employ uniform essay topics in writing instruction. This approach overlooks the linguistic barriers and specific needs Macau students may encounter when transitioning from their Cantonese mother tongue to standard Mandarin expression.Thirdly, the adaptability of teaching resources requires improvement. Existing traditional Chinese character textbooks exhibit low compatibility with mainstream simplified Chinese digital educational resources. Furthermore, in terms of hardware facilities, the smart education equipment configuration rate in rural schools in Macau stands at only 65%, struggling to meet the basic requirements of digital teaching.

Addressing these challenges, this study leverages the ‘Smart Education Infrastructure Scheme’ promoted by Macao's Education and Youth Affairs Bureau. It innovatively integrates audio technology, simplified interactive programmes, and cross-school cloud platform resources to establish a tripartite teaching model centred on ‘cultural perception – expressive empowerment – resource sharing’. This aims to effectively resolve current Chinese language teaching dilemmas while fostering the deep transmission of Chinese culture and the synergistic development of digital pedagogy.

2 Innovative Pathway Design and Teaching Practice

2.1 Digital Reconstruction of Cultural Scenarios: From Textual Cognition to Immersive Experience

Design Principle: This pathway centres on employing advanced audio-visual technology and interactive design methodologies to digitally transform abstract cultural symbols, historical contexts, and artistic imagery from traditional culture. This creates perceptible, interactive virtual cultural scenarios. This process transcends the cognitive limitations of traditional texts or static images, enabling learners to transition from passive reception to active exploration through multisensory experiences. Consequently, it achieves an educational upgrade from singular textual cognition to profound immersive engagement.

Case Study: Innovative Application of Classical Poetry Teaching in World Heritage Architectural Sites

Taking the teaching of Li Bai's ‘Viewing the Waterfall at Mount Lu’ as an example, traditional pedagogical approaches typically rely on image displays and textual explanations, making it difficult for students to intuitively grasp the connection between the poetic imagery and the actual scenery. The experimental group achieved the digital reconstruction of cultural scenes and pedagogical implementation through the following three-step methodology:

A. Pre-task: Prior to class, teachers assigned students to use tablets to photograph specific sections of Macau's World Heritage site, the Ruins of St. Paul's. Students focused on capturing representative details such as the stone carvings of cloud patterns and column structures, uploading their photographs to a shared class album to form an initial visual resource library. This phase aimed to cultivate students' observational skills and awareness of local cultural heritage.

B. Classroom Integration: During lessons, the teacher utilises multimedia equipment to overlay dynamic waterfall video effects onto the students' uploaded images of the Ruins of St. Paul's (as illustrated in Figure 1). Through this fusion of virtual and real elements, the teacher guides students to meticulously contrast the dynamic, majestic beauty of the poetic line ‘a waterfall plunges three thousand feet’ with the static, frozen beauty embodied in the stone relief carvings of the Ruins of St. Paul's. This juxtaposition of movement and stillness enables students to deeply appreciate the artistic characteristic of classical Chinese poetry – ‘poetry within painting, painting within poetry’ – and the interplay between architectural aesthetics and literary imagery.

C. Creative Extension: Building upon this experiential analysis, the teacher further guides students towards creative application. Students are tasked with composing original verses inspired by Macau's A-Ma Temple Square—another UNESCO World Heritage site—emulating the descriptive and lyrical techniques of ‘Viewing the Lu Shan Waterfall’ to create a ‘local heritage edition’ of the poem. For instance, one student composed: ‘Incense smoke curls round A-Ma's eaves, Boat shadows stretch across the emerald bay,’ vividly capturing the temple's incense-filled atmosphere and the bay's bustling watercraft, thus achieving a leap from comprehension to creation.

Teaching outcomes proved remarkable: experimental group students demonstrated 89% accuracy in interpreting classical poetry's cultural imagery, significantly surpassing the 57% achieved by the traditional teaching control group. Concurrently, 86% of students voluntarily participated in community cultural heritage documentation and promotion activities post-course, indicating that the digital reconstruction pathway not only enhanced knowledge acquisition but also effectively stimulated students' identification with and enthusiasm for local culture.

2.2 Tiered Expression Training System: Differentiated Support Based on Dialect Background

Tailored to learners with diverse dialect backgrounds, this system establishes a three-tiered training chain—‘Input Conversion—Process Scaffolding—Output Feedback’—delivering precise support through a tiered, progressive approach.

2.2.1 Cantonese-Mandarin Conversion Support Tools

A. Voice Wall Programme: This programme establishes a comparative audio library of ‘Cantonese colloquialisms – Standard Mandarin’, compiling extensive high-frequency vocabulary and phrases . Students can practise shadowing through the system, which generates real-time waveform comparisons between personal pronunciation and standard pronunciation (Figure 2), visually illustrating discrepancies to aid correction of phonetics and intonation.

B. Writing Scaffolding: Addressing the impact of Cantonese thinking patterns on student writing, the system provides extensive transition sentence templates. For instance, when students wish to express (long time), they can refer to templates to substitute with standard expressions like (a long time), (a considerable time), or (long ago). When encountering (no problem), it can be replaced with (no problem) or (it's alright). These templates cover diverse scenarios including daily conversation, description, and argumentation, effectively reducing writing complexity.

2.2.2 Gamified Expression Incentive Mechanism

A. Foundation Level: For introverted learners, the ‘Drifting Bottle Recording’ interactive activity was designed. Students select preferred short texts for audio recording, then “deposit” their recordings into the virtual ‘Dai Pai Dai Sea’. Peers may randomly ‘retrieve’ these bottles and provide encouraging feedback, fostering a relaxed, pressure-free environment for expression.

B. Advanced Level: Organised collaborative group projects to co-produce themed podcasts titled ‘Stories of Old Macau Streets’. Students divided tasks including material research, scriptwriting, voiceover recording, and final submission to the school radio station for broadcast. This process not only honed oral expression skills but also cultivated teamwork and cultural heritage awareness.

2.2.3. Training Effectiveness Data Comparison

Following systematic training, Cantonese-background students in the experimental group demonstrated a significant 40% improvement in Mandarin fluency compared to the control group. In writing, average essay length increased by 152 characters, with notable enhancements in lexical accuracy and sentence coherence, fully validating the system's efficacy.

2.3 Bay Area Resource Collaboration Mechanism: Establishing the ‘Macau-Hengqin’ Language Learning Circle

Platform Development: Leveraging the Hengqin Guangdong-Macau Deep Cooperation Zone Education Cloud Platform, an integrated resource-sharing and collaboration platform was established to achieve efficient integration and seamless connectivity of educational resources across both regions.

Resource Sharing Module:

Macau schools actively upload culturally distinctive local resources, including rare Macanese Portuguese story collections and oral history videos from Coloane fishing villages, providing students with vibrant language learning materials. Zhuhai schools share extensive simplified character animation font libraries and regionally distinctive Lingnan nursery rhymes, enhancing students' Chinese character recognition and linguistic accumulation. This bidirectional resource exchange fosters a complementary learning repository.

Cross-Border Learning Projects:

A. Co-authoring the Greater Bay Area Festival E-Chronicle: Organising Macao students to document traditional folk activities such as the Na Tsa Festival procession's cultural significance, while Zhuhai students conduct field research on dragon boat races. Presented through rich multimedia formats, this collaborative effort builds a digital archive reflecting the region's multicultural heritage.

B. ‘One Object, One Story’ Initiative: Cross-border learning groups explore identical Guangcai porcelain tea sets as cultural carriers. Students from Macao and Zhuhai craft dual-city narratives, uncovering historical origins and humanistic sentiments behind the artefacts to enhance cross-cultural understanding and expressive abilities.

Evidence-based outcomes: Following implementation of this collaborative mechanism, participating campuses saw a 3.2-fold increase in the richness of cultural writing materials for students. 87% of teachers reported effective alleviation of pressure in developing traditional Chinese teaching resources, with dual assurance of teaching efficiency and quality.

3. Implementation Recommendations for Teachers

3.1 Principle of Localised Technology Selection

In applying technology, teachers should adhere to the following localisation principles to ensure teaching outcomes align with local needs. Firstly, prioritise lightweight tools by leveraging core functions of the EduMac tablet uniformly distributed by the Macao Education and Youth Bureau. These include convenient recording capabilities and intuitive annotation tools, which are simple to operate and meet daily teaching documentation and emphasis requirements. Additionally, the open-source interactive programme Hot Potatoes 5 is recommended for creating diverse interactive exercises such as fill-in-the-blank and matching tasks, effectively enhancing student classroom engagement.

Secondly, cultural sensitivity must be prioritised in design. Digital teaching resources should retain traditional Chinese character interfaces while enhancing radical animation features. For instance, hovering the cursor over the character ‘慶’ could dynamically display its radical decomposition (‘广+心+夊’), aiding students' intuitive understanding of Chinese character structure and deepening their appreciation of traditional Chinese culture. This approach aligns with Macau's linguistic conventions while reducing learning barriers through visualisation.

Finally, implement a dual-track resource development strategy. During lesson preparation, educators should concurrently create simplified Chinese teaching slides for classroom delivery and generate corresponding traditional Chinese handouts for student revision. This dual-track approach ensures both the standardisation and readability of teaching content while accommodating diverse usage scenarios, guaranteeing the comprehensiveness and practicality of educational resources.

3.2 School-Based Implementation Strategy

Drawing upon the practical experience of Macao's ‘Teacher Digital Literacy Enhancement Programme’, we have designed the following three-phase action strategy:

Pain Point Transformation Workshops: Conduct thematic discussions addressing practical teaching challenges. Teachers may submit specific teaching challenges, such as ‘how to vividly explain the historical origins of the place name “Taipa”’. The technical team will develop tailored solutions for such challenges, such as integrating street view maps for real-world demonstrations, supplemented by voice annotation features to help students intuitively grasp the cultural significance behind place names.

Interdisciplinary Integration Experiments: Fostering deep cross-subject integration and innovative practices. Taking collaboration between Chinese Language and Visual Arts as an example, teachers from both disciplines jointly guide students in using professional graphic design software to digitally recreate and artistically interpret scenes from the classical literary work ‘Macau Bamboo Branch Poems.’ This approach enhances students' literary comprehension while cultivating their digital artistic expression skills.

Greater Bay Area Teaching Consortium: Establishing a Regional Resource-Sharing and Collaboration Platform. Leveraging the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area Teachers' Alliance network, a shared repository of ‘Cultural Digitisation’ lesson plans has been created, currently housing 127 teaching cases with local characteristics. Through this platform, educators can readily access high-quality resources, exchange pedagogical expertise, and achieve complementary strengths.

4. Conclusions

This study empirically validated the following outcomes:

The digitisation of cultural contexts significantly enhanced classical text learning efficiency by up to 40%, statistically verifiable, effectively resolving comprehension barriers posed by the abstraction of traditional cultural symbols;

The application of tiered expression tools reduced psychological anxiety during dialect conversion, notably increasing learning participation rates among Cantonese-speaking students from 52% to 90%, substantially boosting motivation;

The Greater Bay Area collaborative teaching and research mechanism substantially shortened teaching resource development cycles, by up to 60%, while fostering cultural exchange, mutual learning, and shared progress across regions.

Future research will focus on deepening digital cultural cooperation with Portuguese-speaking nations and actively exploring non-virtual reality (VR) applications of ‘digital twin’ technology in World Heritage education, thereby expanding technical pathways for cultural heritage preservation and transmission.

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