This research was designed to develop and investigate a Chinese interactive video instructional system with the use of a microcomputer. Studies in Taiwan have indicated that several major problems confront the teacher who attempts to design CAI courseware. The major difficulties are the need for Chinese input/output and the lack of authoring tools. Hence, the purpose of this project has been devoted to explore a model for using interactive video in education in Taiwan;The major task of this study was to develop the Chinese Interactive Video System (CIVS), a computer assisted video learning environment with Chinese characters display capability. Two components, a computer interface and an authoring program, were designed. An interactive video system interfaces a computer with a video cassette recorder (VCR), a slide projector, and a voice processor. The sequence of presenting the video lesson is under the control of the computer program. The computer is thus used to teach, query, remediate, or otherwise support the audio-visual lesson;The instructional options are organized through the use of editors, which are given the form of screen-displayed menus. The authoring program in the CIVS system consists of five editors: voice editor, graphics editor, character sets editor, test editor, and lesson script editor. The voice editor helps the author to organize the voice data and data-files; the Chinese Courseware Graphics Editor provides a menu with which users can compile their lesson frames; the character-sets editor allows the user to define special symbols; the test editor enables the author to create and update test items; and the lesson script editor provides the menu with which the author can build the script that forms the instructional presentation flow;The CIVS system utilizes a simple-to-follow prompting format that enables the designer to create video lessons with little or nor programming skills. Obviously, the idea and the model developed in this research represents an extension of studies regarding the implementation of computer-assisted instruction in Taiwan.