This article attempts to critique and analyse the possibilities and complexities of the manifestations of aspects and dimensions of popular participation in Theatre for Development with particular reference to the University of Zimbabwe’s Manfred Hudson Hall Sanitation Project (2004). It examines the extent to which Arnstein’s classification of levels of participation can be adopted in Theatre for Development projects. It emerges that the adoption of critical and systematic approaches in the analysis of the function of participation in Theatre for Development can be fruitful, seeing that the danger of celebrating manipulative and problematic participation is real. Major emphasis is also placed on the constraints, limitations and potential risks related to various aspects of community participation. The authors contend that this is only achievable within the context of a critical and robust engagement with dynamic and multi-dimensional manifestations of community participation in given Theatre for Development projects.

This paper examines the use of computer-assisted pronunciation practice in teaching Chinese as a foreign language. The paper is based on the concept of de-foreignizing sounds for a foreign language. Ten participants in 2012 and 40 participants in 2013 from the University of Zimbabwe participated in this study. Participants were recorded producing some Chinese sounds under strict guidance of the teacher, and then edited audios were given back to the participants for their own listening practice. The results showed that after the computer-assisted pronunciation practice, over 75% of the students had better perception of the Chinese second and third tones which they were not able to differentiate before the computer-assisted pronunciation practice. This paper concludes that; though this computer-assisted pronunciation practice might be time consuming, it can be also an effective method to stimulate students' interest in Chinese.

The present research paper critically examines use of pinyin as a substitute of characters by Zimbabwean students during acquisition of Chinese language. A questionnaire survey and character recognition survey was done and it was discovered that the use of pinyin as a substitute for Chinese characters negatively affects the acquisition of more complex characters. It was concluded that since each Chinese character is an individual morpheme that carries meaning, therefore dependence on Chinese pinyin negatively affects vocabulary acquisition. The paper recommends that use of pinyin in teaching Chinese language should be limited to the first few weeks, because pinyin was developed to help students acquire the phonetic system of Chinese language rather than the acquisition of vocabulary and grammar. The paper suggests that there is need to explore more ways of balancing the teaching of pinyin and characters in a way that will motivate learners to like Chinese language.

The present paper analyses the Shona–Chinese bilingual dictionary in relation with the teaching of the Chinese language to native speakers of the Shona language or teaching of the Shona language-to-Chinese people in Zimbabwe. The main aim of this paper is to give a critical analysis that will help improve this dictionary or other future similar dictionaries. The data used in this article are based on the headwords in the dictionary as well as the experience of teaching Chinese over 1 year. The Shona–Chinese bilingual dictionary is a remarkable step towards developing local Chinese teaching materials in Zimbabwe. The data analysis showed that to increase the usefulness of this dictionary as a complementary teaching reference book, there are a number of areas that need to be perfected. Some of the critical aspects that require attention include: the meanings of headwords should be defined as they are used in the target language, and all important headwords in daily conversations should be included in the dictionary. It was recommended that a more thoroughly revised dictionary should be produced to provide high-quality teaching materials of this sort.

This paper examines the semantic equivalence between Chinese and Shona lexical items within the comparative and contrastive theoretical framework in order to promote the teaching and learning of Chinese as a second language to native speakers of Shona in Zimbabwe. Shona and Chinese language are typologically different languages that belong to different language families and typology, as a result, translating Chinese into Shona is a challenging task. In order to examine the semantic equivalence between these two languages the researcher used both qualitative and quantitative research methods. A case study of the "SHONA -CHINESE, CHINESE -SHONA DICTIONARY with English glosses" is used since it is the first Shona-Chinese and ChineseShona dictionary in Zimbabwe. The study also analyzes the semantic similarities and differences observed by the researcher during the compilation of the "SHONA -CHINESE, CHINESE -SHONA DICTIONARY with English glosses". The comparative analysis helped to predict some possible challenges that are likely to occur when native speakers of Shona acquire Chinese vocabulary.Nida's theory of equivalence is used as the basis of analyzing the semantic equivalence between Chinese and Shona words in the "SHONA -CHINESE, CHI-NESE -SHONA DICTIONARY with English glosses". Though this theory was propounded in the late 1960s, it is still influential in the field of translation as well as in second language vocabulary teaching and learning arena. Since the compilation of the "SHONA -CHINESE, CHINESE -SHONA DICTIONARY with English glosses" is based on this theory of translation, it is therefore important to consider this theory as the basic theory for the purposes of critically analyzing the extent to which Chinese and Shona words are equivalent in terms of their meaning. Based on this