A Comparative Analysis Between "Chinese For Science And Technology" And "An Elementary Course In Scientific Chinese"

With the progress of science and technology, more and more economic andcultural exchanges are conducted between countries around the world. Globalizationpromotes the optimization of manpower, resources and other production factors in theglobal configuration and at the meantime enhance the international cooperation andexchanges of science and technology. Along with our country’s enhancedcomprehensive national strength and the development of science and technology,more and more foreign students come to study in our country. However, at present,the specialized science and technology Chinese textbooks for science and engineeringstudents in colleges and universities are varied in quality, which cannot satisfy theneeds for foreign teaching. Thus, there is an urgent need of high quality textbooks ofteaching Chinese as a foreign language in science and engineering colleges anduniversities.This paper, according to the characteristics of Scientific Chinese and teachingChinese as a foreign language, makes comparisons between two sets of textbookswith high recognition—“Chinese for Science and Technology” and “An ElementaryCourse in Scientific Chinese”—in various aspects, analyzes the advantages anddisadvantages in compiling, and propose questions that should be paid attention to inScientific Chinese textbook compilation, so as to provide references in futurecomposition of Scientific Chinese Textbook.At the very beginning, this paper puts forward the concept of Scientific Chineseand specifies its characteristics and importance by streamlining the relationship ofscience and language, ordinary Chinese, development of science and technology, andinternational exchange of science and technology. For the second part, comparisonsare made one by one between the two sets of textbook in aspects of overall layout,train of thoughts, as well as text, vocabulary, grammar, and after-class exercises. Byreferring to the general principles of compiling Chinese teaching materials and combining the unique characteristics of Scientific Chinese, this paper makescomparisons in the compilation of the two sets of textbooks and researches on theiradvantages and disadvantages. It also finds out the similarities and differences ofoverall curriculum schedule between the two sets of textbooks by detailed comparisonand research in quantity distribution and analytical approaches of text structure,vocabulary, grammar, after-class exercises, which is done by using statistical methodsand all the data is illustrated straightforward by charts.In the last part, typical featuredexercises of the two sets of textbooks are attached in the appendix for easy reference.Both of them focus on functional teaching in grammar and pick out typical sentencestructures and expression patterns and note afterwards, which makes the emphasesquite clear by such enhancing and specifying. The compilers of the two sets oftextbook also both arrange corresponding exercises to help the students consolidatewhat they have learned.After the above detailed study and comparison in various aspects, the author ofthis paper puts forward suggestions on the compilation of Scientific Chinesetextbooks: In order to keep up with the development of Scientific Chinese and meetthe needs of teachers and learners, theoretically, the constitution of “ScientificChinese Vocabulary Guideline” can refer to the vocabulary domain of the nativelearners of science and technology so to formulate Chinese Vocabulary Levelstandards and guarantee the fundamentality and universality. In real practice, we canalso add in dialogue to enrich the content and diversify formality. Besides, moderneducation technology such as multimedia can also be applied as an auxiliary tool andmore knowledge of the target countries cultural background shall be involved. Hopethat the study in the paper may contribute little for future compilation of ScientificChinese textbooks.