A Study On The Teaching Of Idioms In Chinese As A Foreign Language

Vocabulary is an important part in Teaching Chinese as a foreign language whereas because of its unique characteristic, Chinese idiom becomes a special part in Chinese vocabulary system and different from other vocabularies. Also because of its culture connotation and the fixed structure as same as the essence of Chinese language and culture, Chinese idiom is an important resource in Teaching Chinese as a foreign language. But actually teaching Chinese idiom is still in a weak place even it’s an important part in teaching system. No matter the<Syllabus> nor Chinese text books are still need to improve their standard of choice Chinese idioms. Under this background it is especially important in modify idioms teaching contents and methods.In the introduction of this thesis we discussed the important position and main problem in teaching Chinese idioms. Elaborate the present research situation of Chinese idioms in academic. In the first chapter we start from the standard of divide Chinese idioms in different levels. Then we find out that we can decompose Chinese idioms to three different aspects from the characteristic of idioms. These three aspects are semantic, grammar and rhetoric. From semantic we can divide idioms into three types of combination type, comprehensive type and integrative type. From grammar we can divide idioms into two types of grammatical structure symmetry and grammatical structure asymmetry. From rhetoric we can generally divide idioms into metaphor idioms, compare idioms, metonymy idioms and imitate idioms. Also we can divide idiom teaching into three levels of primary, intermediate and senior from the teaching object. From study environment we can divide idiom teaching into teaching idioms in domestic and teaching idioms in a foreign country. From students purpose of learning Chinese we can decide the number and level for students to learn Chinese idioms. Culture is also the other aspect of learning Chinese idioms, on the one hand the rich cultural factors that Chinese idioms have can help us to teach Chinese culture to students at the same time when we are teaching idioms. On the other hand because of different cultural circles we should also pay attention to the problems of cross-cultural communication when we are teaching foreign students Chinese idioms. In chapter two, we started to formulate the form of idioms hierarchy. Then we use two<Syllabus>s, text books of teaching Chinese as a foreign language and Chinese idioms usage frequency to screen the idioms we need. Secondly we divide all these Chinese idioms in two levels by their semanteme and the difficulty of characters. After this we finally get the Chinese idioms hierarchy form. In chapter three, we investigate some text books in different grades under the guide and the thought of teaching Chinese idioms in different levels and the Chinese idioms hierarchy form. We find out that in most text books there are many problems about Chinese idioms that we need to be notice, such as the number of idioms in the text books, the difficult and level of the idioms that the test books selected, the explanation of the idioms are not complete and the singularity of the practice. In the last chapter, we put forward some suggests in how to select idioms for text books, teaching methods in different idiom levels and culture teaching in the idioms.