A Study Of Chinese Teaching In American Middle Schools

With the rising enthusiasm for learning Chinese, Chinese language(mandarin) is gaining attention and influence worldwide. Among all secondlanguages taught in the United States, Mandarin is becoming a more desirableoption in high school curricula. Doing research on teaching Chinese at the highschool level can not only enhance the influence of the Chinese language, but canalso make a contribution to improving awareness of Chinese Culture.As part of high school level second language teaching in the United States,the Chinese language exhibits the charm of Chinese culture and makes the trendof “Mandarin Fever” and “China Fever” more striking. However, with theimprovement in the methodology of teaching second language, and with moreresearch taking place in the field of Teaching Chinese as a Second Language,there still exist a lot of problems in the issue of teaching quality, teachingmethods and teaching skills. We should put more consideration into how toimprove teaching methods, teaching philosophy, the use of teaching materials, anoverall teaching pedagogy through future research.The teaching methods which are used for teaching high school levelChinese in the states adopt English primary language teaching methodology, butretain the origin of Chinese language teaching methodology as well. Thenegative transfer of the first language, namely the differences between Englishlanguage and Chinese language, will affect learning tremendously when Englishnative speakers learn Chinese. Chinese teachers in the states should not use thesame teaching methods and materials when teaching American students and theyshould consider how to teach their students practical Chinese instead of simplyteaching the rules of the language.The majority of textbooks that are used in the United States are mainlywritten by Chinese language experts in China. They use some textbooks which come from local Chinese language experts as well, but that only takes a smallnumber. Therefore, the individual differences of high school level AmericanChinese learners are not given enough consideration by teachers who do notcompare and combine domestic textbooks and overseas ones. We should givemore concern to finding textbooks which are more suitable for American Chineselearners. This should include combining existing textbooks and making them fitthe special characteristics of American Chinese learners better.There is a lot of research about the development of methodology teachingChinese as a second language in Asian countries, such as Japan, Korea, Vietnamand India, but not with North America or some other English speaking countries.As Chinese learning is becoming more famous in the United States, doingresearch on second language learners of Chinese will enrich the field of Chineselanguage teaching.Based on my experience observing Chinese classes at the United States,this dissertation discusses the development of Chinese as a second languageteaching and learning in the states, and the advantages and disadvantages of it. Iam trying to figure a better way to help Chinese teachers conduct their Chineseclasses, and chairing a discussion in the end about what we should focus on infuture research. Hopefully this dissertation would make a contribution to enrichresearch on the field of Teaching Chinese as a Second Language, enhance thecommunication between countries, and develop Chinese language teaching.