Textbook Seires Analysis:"Learning Chinese Makes A Happy Trip In China"

Textbook is an important means for teachers and students in teaching andlearning languages. Among the four steps of completed teaching process ofChinese to foreigners which are overall plan, textbook compiling, evidence ofclass teaching, and test plays, textbook compiling plays an important role inteaching Chinese. Moreover, textbook represents an overall planwhich is also the basis of class teaching methods and test plays. Therefore, itwill be worthwhile to analyze textbook compiling of teaching Chinese to foreigners.“Learning Chinese Makes a Happy Trip in China”, the Chinese textbookseries compiled by Tianjin Municipal Education Commission, Tianjin ExperimentalHigh school which are specifically designed for Thai students in primary andsecondary school levels are one of the most influential and widely usedtextbooks in Thai schools. These book series are also selected as a standardizedtest in Chinese Bridge-Chinese Proficiency competition for foreign students.Despite the wide use of these book series in school and standardized test, noarticles or studies related to Learning Chinese Makes a Happy Trip in China hasbeen found. Therefore, this thesis strives to explore these textbook series moreprofoundly in the areas of cultural contents, new vocabulary, grammatical points,texts, exercises, including both advantages and disadvantages.The key implements of this research are,“Standards for Mandarin ChineseProficiency and Outline of Chinese Grammar” published in1996by Higher educationpress, and “A Graded Syllabus of Chinese Proficiency Vocabulary and Characters”published in1992by Beijing Language and Culture University press.Among those various principles of textbook designing, I analyze the textbookthrough the four chosen principles; normative language, language targeted,practicality and interesting language. The research finding is that these Chinesetextbook series were written by theory according with structure, function, and culture,which are the significant principles in designing the complete textbook withincludable learning skill for student. In cultural dimension, these textbook series givethe expression of Thai culture which related to the target group. The vocabularies inthese series are inconsistent with the basic Chinese learning curriculum, especiallyin the different number of new vocabularies in each chapter.In the word and morpheme context, the textbook designer neglects theexplanation of each morpheme, and leaves the word and morpheme withoutcombinability.In these series’ part of speech tagging context, the research found that thetextbook designer identified words’ specification according to each chapter’s context,without considering other possible meaning or function of the words. This methodwould convenient for the beginner, however, there are numbers of error in part of speech tagging context, including in the translations from Chinese to Thai, forexample error in translation, error in Thai spelling, and error in transliteration oftranslations.In part of grammatical points, the number of grammar topic is under-standard ofgrammar learning. However, the difficulty of grammar is ordered respectively andproperly. In part of the texts, analyzed through four principles mentioned above,there are numbers of punctuation and grammatical error within. However, in part oflanguage targeted, practicality and interesting language are well designed. Thenumbers of each chapter’s exercises are suitably organized with difficulty level.The research assumption is that these textbook series “Learning Chinese Makes aHappy Trip in China” is completely designed accordingly with Thai’s foreignlanguage learning4C standard; Communication, Culture, Connection, Community.This series of textbook is beneficial for the learner’s language skill development,including other knowledge about tradition and culture, of both Thai and Chinese,which also contribute to the learner’s everyday life.