Research On The Grading Of Beijing Literature For Euro-American Learners

Reading is one of the necessary ways of language learning.Thus,reading literary is a necessary training for middle and advanced Chinese learners.It can not only improve their Chinese ability,but also help to draw closer to the students and the emotions of where they live.Beijing Literature,with local characteristics,is an indispensable reading material for foreign students in Beijing.However,it is difficult for foreign students to directly read the original texts.Therefore,it is necessary to grade the literary works in order to better serve the international students.Grading literary works need to consider not only the word factors,but also the depth of content,structural complexity,language transparency,and the background knowledge of the readers themselves.Based on the analysis of text difficulty and different adaptation methods,Hu(2018)preliminarily formulated the grading standards and adaptation suggestions of Beijing Literature.This study,based on the advanced experience of European and American countries,combines the characteristics of Chinese and the personality of Beijing literature to further improve the standard and adaptation methods.This study combines quantitative and qualitative analysis methods to verify the feasibility of grading standards and adaptation recommendations:(1)adapted selected literary texts;(2)invited 30 native speakers to complete the cloze,using the original word scoring method to calculate the correct rate;(3)randomly selected 8 European and American middle-level Chinese learners to participate in the think-aloud experiment,collecting and classifying the experimental results;(4)issued the questionnaire,asking the teachers and the experts scored the difficulty of the text and proposed amendments.Through the above research,we found that the grading standard is basically accurate,but the standard rules should be further modified:(1)reducing the difficulty value of the Chi-editor;(2)using the writing style,genre and teacher score as the indicators to measure the text difficulty;3)embodying the cultural content.At the same time,we put forward some additional opinions on the adaptation methods:(1)illustrating the words with direct and indirect methods;(2)adopting side notes and after-reading exercises to explain the difficult words/sentences;(3)diversifying the pre-text content;(4)readjusting the position of different kinds of background knowledge.In addition,this study also proposes improvements to the supporting application,including determining the reader level by vocabulary,providing 3 article versions,excerpts,adding audio and video materials and teacher operations,so that it can better serve readers and scholars.Hu(2018)initially conducted a study on the grading of Beijing literature in a qualitative way.This study used empirical methods to validate and improve the relevant standards,and is a re-attempt of the grading standards.