Application Of Hierarchical Teaching In Teaching Chinese As A Foreign Language

Mandarin is becoming one of the top foreign languages being learnedinternationally. As the Chinese culture is developing and disseminating, educatingforeigners’ mandarin enters new era of vigorous development. Since more and morepeople are interested in learning mandarin, educators face more complicated situations.Traditional educational settings cannot fulfill every learner’s requirement. Therefore, itwould be really difficult to optimize the learning environment and teach each individualmandarin effectively. Overcoming such problems are emergent.In this paper, experiments were conducted with students who participated inlearning mandarin from Chongqing Normal University (International College ofChinese culture). The teaching model, referred as hierarchical model, was generatedfrom experiments performed in eight-months. Such teaching model assigned studentsinto different levels and then utilized various types of methods to train students fromeach level. Comparing between traditional model and this new one, we concluded thatthe new teaching model allows students to be grouped to create estimates of theeducation and training needs as a whole and estimates of the outlook for students withvarious types of education and training needs.This paper is divided into five chapters:The first chapter, Introduction. This chapter will summarize the major issues in currentstages of teaching Mandarin. In this context, the new teaching model (hierarchicalmodel) is carried on in teaching Mandarin, which is very meaningful in terms ofimproving the efficiency and quality of teaching.The second chapter, literature review. This chapter will analyze and elaborate thecurrent situations of the hierarchical model in national teaching research as well asinternational educational research. The analysis will be based on the origins of themodel, theoretical basis and the future development of the model.The third chapter, strategies. This chapter will discuss in details about how toimplement the hierarchical model. These implementations include how to examine the learners and how to classify them into different categories as well as based on theclassifications of learners, how to set goals and provide contents and conduct practice.The fourth chapter, case studies.This chapter will provide case studies of using the hierarchical teaching andcompare and contrast these cases with the ones taught by traditional educationalsettings.The fifth chapter, summaries. This chapter will provide some future suggestions inthe hierarchical teaching.