Research On Chinese Teaching And Teaching Materials In Universities Of The United States

Chinese teaching has been developed in the United States for more than one hundred years since the officer of Yikun Ge in Qing Dynasty first introduce Chinese language into the United States.Over one hundred years,Chinese teaching has been developed from short training coursefor political purdose to a majorin university such as Asian studies.America is a diverse country,languages learning are highly encouraged and research has been done to make learning more effective.The teaching materials that were used are famous novels.Unlike today,we have a lot of textbooks for specific levels and abundant resources online.Textbook of different languages should be published in accordance with SLA research.However,Chinese textbooks for foreign countries published in China are facing problems.Teaching materials in a broad sense include all of the materials which are needed for teaching.Chinese textbook as a language course book is influenced by the concept of language.Influenced by Structuralism,for a long time many textbooks have emphasized on grammar and the structure of sentences.Influenced by modern psychology and sociolinguistic research,new generations of Chinese textbooks are more learner-centered and task-based,in an attempt to make the textbooks more practical.For example,Chinese:communicating in the culture,Interaction:a cognitive approach to beginning Chinese.:paying attention to uniqueness of target language,interesting and familiar topics for learners,effective in improving the language competence,applicable in American culture.To get a closer view of the Chinese textbooks,I collect eight elementary Chinese textbooks and compare the contents in the vocabulary selection,grammar distribution,and the length of text using the corpus.Throughthe charts and graphs,I have tried to verify the criteria for assessing Chinese textbooks in the United States,which are proposed in Chapter 3.In the implementation of the criteria,I am trying to figuring out some problems in class and give suggestionson the teaching materials.Chinese characters should not be taught in isolation.The relation between the character and other units is also important issue in teaching Chinese.Within the character association between shape,meaning,and sound should be enforced in the way of the radical and pronunciation parts of characters.As mentioned above,Chinese characters are divided into two parts,and the pronunciation part should not be neglected in teaching characters.Grammar explanation should avoid using linguistic terms,which make learners more confusing.Grammar would arrange in a certain order and keep related so as to be in concordance with the level of difficulty.Each of them should be explained in an accessible way and predicting the possible errors of the learners.Teaching grammar in context is a good way to teach.According to the anthropologist Edward T.Hall,Chinese is a high-context language;a lot of information has been hidden behind the language,including the tradition,culture and the relationship.etc.So grammar should be taught in the context with rhetoric and pragmatics.In conclusion,Chinesee teaching materials should be based on up to date theories and containing concise contents and should be arranged in a proper way for learners.The contents should be a reflection of Chinese characteristics.The implement of the teaching materials are expected to consider the speciality of learning of Chinese as a Second Language and encouraged to include more class activities to involve more students in class.Innovations in materials:Survey on more than 20 universities including Ivy universities in the United States and collect data for the most common eight Chinese textbooks to display the full view of Chinese textbooks in the United States.Innovations in theories:Implement of Second Language Acquisition and Europe foreign language theories to analysis the principles of textbooks and set up frame of Evaluating Chinse textbooks in SLC(Chinese as a Second Language)field.Innovations in research methods:Combination of theories and practice,using corpus methods to support criteria of evaluation theories which are stated in Chapter 3.