ICT in Homework as a Way to Increase the Cognitive Interest of Students in Learning Chinese

In recent years, Russian schools have increasingly introduced Chinese as a second foreign language in their programs. Given the specificity of the object (characters, tone), the number of fixed lessons (for non-core classes two hours per week) and the number of students per class (average 10 people) educational outcomes, identified in the GEF, can be achieved only by combination of classwork and homework. The study attempts to trace the connection between the integration of ICT in homework and increasing the cognitive interest of schoolchildren while learning Chinese. For this purpose, in the 2019-2020 academic year, a pedagogical study was conducted in which four Chinese language teachers and 44 7th-grade students from three state-funded General education institutions in Moscow took part. The results showed that the integration of ICT in homework itself did not lead to an unambiguous increase in interest in the subject. Nevertheless, electronic homework could have caused an increase in the entertainment quality of the assignments.