A Case Study On Practicability Of Overseas Country-specific Chinese Textbooks

Teaching materials play a very important role in the classroom,they directly influence the teacher?s teaching methods and the content the students are learning.In the compiling of a country-specific Chinese oral textbook,the practicability is the most important principle.This paper is a case study of Conversational Mandarin Chinese 1,a Chinese oral textbook from MARA University of Technology in Malaysia(UiTM).Through analyzing this textbook,surveys,interviews and so on,it examined the practicability of the Chinese oral textbooks used in Malaysia and are able to put forward some useful workable advice and proposals for textbook compilation which can be applied to future editions.By analyzing the surveys from teachers and students,a positive overall evaluation on the textbook is found.The satisfaction for the teacher version is rated higher than the student?s.Some students? responses showed they still have some questions after learning from this textbook.The teachers and students? responses in the part-by-part evaluation for “Learning Focus” and “Annotation” sections are lower compared to the other parts of the chapter.This paper is based on the principle of practicability and proceeds to analyze UiTM?s country-specific textbooks targeted for special requirements which include the learning environment and the student?s purpose of learning.This paper contains advice mainly for the “Exercise” and “Annotation” section of the chapter.In addition,it also suggests the editors to prepare a teacher?s handbook as well.