A Quantitative Study Of The Words In Phonetic Symbols In Chinese Tutorial

With the increasing’Chinese Fever’among the world, it goes without saying that teaching Chinese as a foreign language is now playing a significant role. Whereas as the base of teaching Chinese as a foreign language, phonetic teaching has undoubtedly become a top priority. Since teachers and students to a very large extent rely their teaching and learning on textbooks, their importance to phonetic teaching is supposed to be given special attention. The layout of the phonetic section in a textbook reflects the writer’s overall design philosophy and at the same time, whether it is scientific and systematic directly affects teachers’in-class teaching and students’ practical application of it. In this sense, the phonetic study in a textbook should be concerned in a detailed and systematic way.There are recently quite a few researches in academic circles about phonetic teaching in teaching Chinese as a foreign language. However, most of the researches are focused on the phonetic factors such as consonants, vowels and tones as well as the country specific thing. It is a shame that textbooks about teaching Chinese as a foreign language, which serve as the most important tools for foreign students learning Chinese, their overall phonetic features of the applied characters and terms fail to receive much attention.Given what is demonstrated above, I would base my study on the previous researches and Teaching Chinese As A Foreign Language for the Undergraduates-Chinese Tutorial (a revision of Jizhou Yang’s work, published by Beijing Language and Culture University Press in 2006), a series of textbooks, which are most widely used and well welcomed by both students and teachers. Basically, my article would cover four main topics--Firstly, all the Chinese characters and glossaries in the whole series of textbooks would be included, whose overall outlook and basic features are hopefully presented with the help of the Method of Measurement System; furthermore, I would count and analyze the frequency and distribution of the application of tones and pronunciation as well as the allocation of consonants and vowels. I would also research the features and frequency of use of the phonetic factors, the load capacity of syllables, polyphonic words, homophones and homographs and so on in order to have a comprehensive understanding about the overall features of the phonetic section of textbooks about teaching Chinese as a foreign language. All of those help to highlight the frequently used phonetic factors and therefore could strengthen foreign students’ phonetic acquisition; thirdly, I would have a close look at the goodness of fit between Teaching Chinese As A Foreign Language for the Undergraduates-Chinese Tutorial VS International Chinese Competency Standards & International Chinese Teachers Standards. Fourthly, I would try to combine the textbook compilation and foreign students’ Chinese learning acquisition, during which process problems are likely to be detected and amendments proposed. In this way, I might be able to provide references for the compilation of textbooks and in-class teaching of Chinese as a foreign language. At the end of my article, recommendations regarding the compilation of textbooks, the development of curricula for Chinese phonetic teaching for foreigners, in-class teaching of Chinese phonetics and etc. would be raised according to my research.