The Study Of Chinese Characters Of Primary Chinese Textbooks By Singapore PEP And Beijing Normal University (BNU)

Compiling principles and cognition of characters of the two editions of Chinesetextbooks, the paper revealed the commonness and differences of the two editions oftextbooks. Based on the investigation of the Chinese teaching and learning efficiencyin grade one in primary schools from Singapore and Chinese, the paper analyzed thematching degree of the textbooks and teaching practicability and explored theexperience and deficiencies of the two editions of textbooks in compiling and teachingso that they can seek solutions and programs to solve the problems together.The author held the opinion that the commonness of the two editions of thetextbooks, Singaporean edition published by the People’s Education Publishing Houseand the edition published by Beijing Normal University Publishing Group, mainly layin the processing of textbooks structures, spelling and cognition of characters and therelationship between cognition of characters and reading. They both started from thepractical situations of the first grade. The units’ combination is suitable for theteaching objects of Singapore, while the topics’ combination is suitable for theteaching objects of China. The differences mainly reflected in the following twoaspects: one was the processing of the relationship between spelling and cognition ofcharacters, Singaporean edition published by the People’s Education Publishing Houseadopted the principle of learning spelling first and then cognition of characters, whilethe edition published by Beijing Normal University Publishing Group adopted thestrategy of cognition of characters first and then spelling; the other one was theprocessing of the relationship between cognition of characters and reading, althoughthe two editions of textbooks all adopted the general principle of driving cognition ofcharacters with reading, there were differences in the choice of reading materials andthe setting of reading goals. The two editions of textbooks all emphasized the goal ofcognition of characters in reading, but the edition published by Beijing NormalUniversity Publishing Group attached great importance to the reading itself at thesame time.There are differences in the amount of character recognition and character writingbetween the two versions of teaching materials. The People’s Education Press versionused in Singapore requires the amount of character recognition to be310and the amount of character writing to be132, which is lower than the average of theminimum of600characters but does not meet the requirement for average of themaximum of650characters. The textbook published by the BNU Press requires theamount of character recognition to be736(including18polyphones); namely, even ifthe18polyphones are added (each of all the characters has two phonetic sounds andtwo meanings), it still fails to reach the average of the minimum amount of1600character recognition. The textbook published by the BNU Press requires the amountof character writing to be358(including two polyphones), which is about2.7times asmuch as that of the textbook published by the People’s Education Press used inSingapore. Based on the standards of300-350-characters writing set in the “XiaohuaCurriculum” and800-1000-character writing set in the “Xiaoyu Curriculum”, the totalamount of character-writing required by the textbook used in Singapore is18characters less than the minimum average requirement for character wiring, while thetotal amount of character-writing required by the textbook published by the BeijingNormal University Press is44characters less than the minimum average requirement.Neither has attained the maximum average. However, if we take an overall view of thesame-category textbooks used in grade-1and grade-2(the1stphase of studying) ofprimary schools of both countries, we will find that they both reach the curriculumrequirements in terms of the total amount of character recognition and characterwriting. The difference between1A and1B of the textbooks published by the People’sEducation Press used in Singapore is only four characters, and the difference betweenTextbook I and Textbook II published by the BNU Press is68characters. It shows thatthere is a marked difference in the teaching speed of character recognition between thetwo versions of textbooks for the two semesters of grade-1. In terms of curriculumplanning, the teaching of the amount of Chinese character of the People’s EducationPress textbook used in Singapore is of constant speed while that of the Beijing NormalUniversity Press textbook is of acceleration. In conclusion, each of the two designscaters to students’ learning needs in each of the two countries.The research on teaching and learning efficiency shows, the practicability of thetwo editions of textbooks has been confirmed. The main deficiencies were listed in thefollowing. The content of the Singaporean edition published by the People’s EducationPublishing House related to little knowledge about Chinese history and cultures, onthe whole, it squinted towards the language skills and emphasized the practical valueof Chinese learning. In writing characters, although Chinese teachers consented thefact that students benefited more from observing the character pattern in writingcharacters, few teachers would adopt this method due to the limitation of class period.The cognitive misunderstanding of the Singaporean teachers in teaching students to write characters mainly came from the writing culture and practical experience of theirown.The innovation of this paper is that for the first time, a systematic research on theChinese textbooks of grade one of Singaporean edition published by the People’sEducation Publishing House and the edition published by BNU Publishing Group hasbeen carried out and a relatively systematic conclusion about the system of spelling,cognition of characters and reading of the two editions of textbooks has been made.Although the objects of the study in this paper are the Chinese textbooks ofSingaporean edition published by the People’s Education Publishing House and theedition published by Beijing Normal University Publishing Group, the visual field ofthe study isn’t limited to this but to the history of the compiling of the two countries’Chinese textbooks and the curricular development, as well as the analysis ofCurriculum Standards. Therefore, the visual field is broader than other previousresearches on the similar problems.