A Study Of Using Chinese Language Radicals To Increase The Efficiency Of Teaching Chinese Characters To The Vietnamese

Vietnam is a country in the Chinese culture circle (i.e. Chinese culture region), most of its aspects are under the effect of the Chinese civilization. There was a long history period in which Chinese was used as an official written language in Vietnam. Written Chinese is based on character morphemes (each Chinese character represents a morpheme, but not a phoneme), each Chinese character is represented by a syllable, and, vice versa, each syllable in Chinese is used to represent a character. The majority of lexical items are monosyllabic in ancient Chinese, and in the early time when Chinese entered Vietnam, they were mainly monosyllabic items. Later, with the development of language, Vietnamese and Chinese tended to be diphthongized. The early monosyllabic words, on the one hand, kept their original meaning, functioned, on the other, as word forming basic units, which are termed "Chinese language radicals".In the present time, the Vietnamese writing system is phontetical Latin writing. On the surface, there seems to be no relation between Vietnamese and Chinese writing systems; however, among the three elements of a writing system which include form, sound and meaning, the sound and meaning of Chinese characters are closely related to Vietnamese words. Via the Sino-Vietnamese sounds-the "live fossil" of the sounds of Chinese characters-and the pronunciation of modern Chinese, one can find the relationships and their rules, thus promoting the efficeincy of the teaching of Chinese to the Vietnamese. This thesis aims at proposing teaching methods that can promote the effciency of learning Chinese characters for Vietnamese through the study of the Chinese language radicals in Vietnamese and the mastery of their characteristics and status in teaching Chinese characters.The thesis consists of six chapters, beside the chapters on the theoretical background, chapters3,4, and5analyze the relationships between Chinese characters and Chinese language radicals in Vietnamese in the aspects of sound, meaning, and form. Chapter6, based on the results of the study, proposes relatedteaching methods and suggestions.