A Survey Of Teaching Chinese To The Speakers Of Other Languages Textbooks (tcsol) -on The Match Between Tcsol Textbooks And Overseas Learners From The Aspect Of Topic Interest

Interest including situation interest, individual interest and topic interest has a great effect on learning and performance. Besides, learners'interest is one of the checklists of textbooks evaluation, so it is of great importance for the textbooks evaluation as well as textbook compilation. The study of the match between Match between TCSOL (Teaching Chinese to Speakers of Other Languages) Textbooks and Overseas Learners from the Aspect of Topic Interest can do a great help to the TCSOL Textbooks compilation and TCSOL learning and performance. However, very little attempt has been made in this area.In this study, the writer use SPSS to find the match between TCSOL textbooks and overseas learners from the aspect of topic interests. The writer use topic preference survey. The subjects of the survey are 130 overseas learners including 65 American teachers in the intensive English training program in Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST) and 65African students from HUST. The questionnaire includes two parts: basic information about the subjects, students'topic interest.The result can be seen as follows. First, The results show that the 20 highest interesting topics listed from the most interested to the least interested are as follows: friendship, traveling, family love, love, healthy life, reading, across the border ( international traveling),holiday and vacation, marriage, family life, social ethics and moral standards, environmental protection, chatting, accommodation, doing sports, music, self-introduction, studying in the campus, science, asking for directions and transportation. In comparison, the 20 lowest interesting topics listed from the least interested to the most interested are as follows: Smoking, gambling and drugs, fashion, occupation, TV shows, weather, seeing a doctor, Show business, business and economy, financing, time and date, Public services (such as in the bank, post office, court and so on), Emergency, humanities, internet, appointments and parties, food culture, shopping, animals, meeting and leave-taking, housing.As the questionnaire for topic preference survey covered seven parts, namely daily life, entertainments, sentimental life, travelling, social life, education and social problem. For better discussion, the author has discussed the distribution of 20 most interesting topics in these seven parts. The seven parts from the most interesting to the least interesting are sentimental life, travelling, entertainment, social life, education, social problem and daily life.The reason is that overseas learners like individualism a lot. They interest in anything about themselves. Besides, they like travelling and leisure so sentimental life, travelling, entertainment are most interesting topics. On the other hand, as most of the subjects are in their elementary phase in learning Chinese, the have some difficulties in expressing some social life topics. Moreover, as half of the subjects are teachers they have less interest in education and occupation, social life, education and social problem topics are the least interesting topics.Second, American and African learners have biggest difference over the following nine topics: family life, internet, music, travelling, marriage, studying in the campus, science, environmental protection, and social ethics and moral standards. Among them the topics that American show more interest are: family life, music, travelling, marriage, animals and social ethics and moral standards. However the topics that African show more interest are: Internet, studying in the campus and science.Third, Chinese Tutorial has the biggest percentage of 20 most interested topics in total chapters, next come to Accelerated Chinese textbook and Foreigners Learn Chinese and at last Bridge. So the data display that in terms of topic interests, Chinese Tutorial published by Beijing Language and Culture University Press can meet the students'need relatively better and next comes the Accelerated Chinese textbook by the Beijing University Press, then comes Foreigners Learn Chinese by Chinese Teaching Press while the last one is Bridge by Beijing Language and Culture University Press.