The First Impression of Non-native Romanised Mandarin Learners towards a Newly Designed Web-based Instruction with Customized Architecture Framework

The Web-based instruction (WBI) is the instructional materials that are used in the learning system that involves the network operation center (NOC), the WWW resources, the learners, instructors and the regularly conducted lectures of fulltime teaching staff. The main objective of this paper is to describe the system architecture of web-based Hanyu Pinyin (Romanised Mandarin) instruction and its main features. The Hanyu Pinyin WBI is tailored to tackle the weaknesses and to meet the specific needs of Malay learners. This paper also discusses the first impression of UiTM students who study through Guru Hanyu Pinyin web-based instruction (Romanised Mandarin Web-based instruction). To conduct the study, descriptive statistical tool was used. A group of 28 students in UiTM Penang campus were selected to attend a 4-hour self-learning session using Hanyu Pinyin instruction at the language computer laboratory. An questionnaire on user friendliness of the instruction is given to them to find out their first impression about the instruction. The finding shows that the majority of the students feel that Guru Hanyu Pinyin WBI is user friendly