From The Practical Chinese Textbooks To "new Practical Chinese Textbook"

The present paper is trying to make a thorough comparative study between volumes Ⅰ and Ⅱ of "Chinese Practical Reader" and "New Chinese Practical Reader", two sets of Chinese language teaching materials which were edited by the same author but in different periods, respectively1982and2002. In order to discover the similarities and differences between the two of them and be able to point out their advantages and disadvantages, the texts, new words, grammar and exercises of the two sets of teaching materials were examined and analyzed, thus the main content of the paper covers these aspects. In order to obtain a highly relevant result, I conducted a survey among the students of Chinese Language Department of Bucharest University and also asked the teachers to make an objective evaluation of "Chinese Practical Reader" and "New Chinese Practical Reader". The valuable feedback of the teachers and the opinions of the students both had a great impact on the conclusion of this paper.To better understand the two sets of teaching materials, in the second chapter I made a presentation of the printing layout and the content structure. The third chapter is the core of this paper and is divided in four parts. The first part covers the comparative study of the texts, namely the selection of content and the importance of culture in both of the manuals. Through investigation I discovered that regarding the texts, the main difference between the two sets of teaching materials is that the texts of "New Practical Chinese Reader" are longer than those of "Practical Chinese Reader", therefore the difficulty of the texts had also increased. The second part covers the comparative study of the new words, namely the number and arrangement of new words that are included in both of the manuals. The result of the analysis and the comparative study has proven that the vocabulary of "New Chinese Practical Reader" is more modern than that of "Practical Chinese Reader", and this also had a great impact on the modernity and practical use of the texts. The third part covers the comparative study of the grammar section, namely the number, choosing and arrangement of grammar items. The research and analysis demonstrated that the grammar section of "Practical Chinese Reader" is superior to that of "New Chinese Practical Reader". The last part of the third chapter analyzes and compares the exercises included in both sets of teaching materials, mostly comparing the number, types and characteristics of the exercises. The conclusion of this part is that the exercises of "New Chinese Practical Reader" are its most valuable part. The fourth chapter of the present paper is divided in four parts. The first part is called "Supplementary Teaching Materials" and discusses the differences between the supplementary teaching materials of the two sets of manuals. My point of view is that "New Chinese Practical Reader" is superior to "Practical Chinese Reader" firstly because of its separately edited "Workbook" and secondly because of its "Chinese Characters" section. Although the two sets of teaching materials both lay great emphasis on teaching Chinese characters to Western students, the study conducted by this paper will prove in the second part of the fourth chapter that there are still differences in the way both of the manuals approach the teaching of Chinese characters. The third part analyses the modernity of the two sets of teaching materials. Because the textbooks were edited in different times, it’s only natural to encounter differences in terms of modernity, but in order to draw a fair conclusion I have decided that I will not take for granted the differences in terms of modernity and thus conducted a thorough analysis in this respect. Modernity represents one of the key differences between the two sets of teaching materials and directly influenced the overall perception of the teachers and students. Because both textbooks are designed for use by students studying Chinese outside of China, it’s also necessary to conduct a comparative analysis regarding the translations and explanations in English, therefore the last part of the fourth chapter covers detailed comparison in this respect, drawing also a fair conclusion.Just as in the vast majority of the traditional papers, the last chapter of the present paper discusses the conclusions drawn after the conducted analysis, comparison and research, and at the same time reveals some of my personal opinions and suggestions. I also made a detailed statistical analysis of the texts, new words, grammar items and exercises, characters, etc. included in the two sets of teaching materials, the results of which can be found in the appendix of this paper.Compiling Chinese language teaching materials is not an easy task and precisely because of this I would like to express my respect and tribute to the editors of "Chinese Practical Reader" and "New Chinese Practical Reader" and also would like to state that I do not wish in any way to undermine their work, but I am merely trying to make a fairly objective comparative study between the two sets of teaching materials from the point of view of a foreign student.