| The large-scale communication between Europe and China during mid-16th century served as a prelude to Westerners’learning and research of Chinese characters. During Ming and Qing Dynasties, on the one hand, the Chinese characters, which are different from the Latin alphabets, aroused widespread interest in the West. On the other hand, they also became big challenges for westerners to learn Chinese. Because of the scarcity of Chinese experts, the limited contact between Chinese teachers and westerners and the lack of Chinese teaching materials, westerners experienced long-term self-exploration and development in learning Chinese, especially Chinese characters. Many western scholars’ works, teaching materials during Ming and Qing dynasties have revealed their understanding of the Chinese characters. Based on the "Xi Guo Ji Fa", "Relacao Da Grande Monarquia Da China", " China illustrate" and " The Middle Kingdom" and many other works, I found that western scholars view Chinese characters in their particular ways, creating characters mnemonics, analyzing characters from Solitude perspective, conducting comparative studies and longitudinal studies, and separating Chinese characters into radicals.In addition, based on five representative teaching materials in three historical periods as " Arte de la lengua mandarina ", "The Notitia Linguae Sinicae of Premare", "A Grammar of Chinese Language", "Easy Lessons in Chinese:Or Progressive Exercises to Facilitate the Study of That Language" and "Yuyan Zierji", I found that western scholars failed to find the importance of Chinese characters in the very beginning, and then characters were introduced as a part of Chinese cultural in teaching materials, finally the radicals, the characters system, exercises and other ways were introduced in teaching materials. At the end of my thesis, I summarized the revelation of those materials to contemporary teaching of Chinese characters. |
PDF Full Text Request