A Semantic And Pragmatic Study Of Homophones In Chinese As A Foreign Language And Teaching Strategies

As one of the three crucial basic elements of language acquisition system,pronunciation, together with vocabulary and grammar, is regarded as an importantaspect of language learning. A word is a combination of sound and meaning. Sincethe problem, which the ways that words are pronounced are larger in number thantheir meanings, the language phenomenon of homonym emerges. Chinese learner,especially at the primary stage, is puzzled by numerous homonyms in Chineselanguage. Chinese language teacher, therefore, should have a comprehensiveunderstanding of homonym.This study, based on these Chinese language text books—《新HSK大纲》、《汉语水平词汇与汉字等级大纲》and《Boya Chinese》, does the Summary,classification, and analysis of those homonyms that mentioned and present series offeasible teaching methods.The thesis is divided into the following parts:The first part is an introduction to the purpose and significance of this study, theliterature review of homonym, and methodology as well.The second part classifies the homonyms that mentioned in the text books—《新HSK大纲》、《汉语水平词汇与汉字等级大纲》and《Boya Chinese》起步篇（Ⅰ、Ⅱ）、加速篇（Ⅰ、Ⅱ）、冲刺篇（Ⅰ、Ⅱ）、飞翔篇（Ⅰ、Ⅱ、Ⅲ）carefully, andpicks up some typical examples. The semantics characteristics and pragmatics ofthese examples are discussed in great deal, and teaching methods of Chinesehomonym are presented accordingly.The third part of the thesis is the conclusion. Hopefully, the study could presentsome useful tips to the Chinese homonym teachers somewhat.