Acceptance Analysis Of Chinese Images In American Chinese Language Textbooks

As the main authoritative source for overseas Chinese learners to understand China,Chinese language textbooks are undoubtedly an important channel for building the image of Chinese people.According to reception theory research,students’ understanding of the characters in textbooks is open,and different cognitive levels,educational backgrounds,learning methods,and other factors can lead students to draw different conclusions about the same paragraph of text content.However,previous studies have mostly focused on the researcher’s personal understanding and defined character images in different scenarios.In fact,they have mapped existing understanding of Chinese images to the content of the textbook,which matches existing stereotypes with the content of the textbook.This study takes the most direct users of overseas Chinese language textbooks-teachers and students-as the research object,and uses the personal image of Chinese people reflected in the dialogues,situations,and actions in the textbooks as a representative of the national image to analyze the acceptance of the image of Chinese people by overseas Chinese language textbook users.This study selected 30%of the dialogue,situation,and action behavior texts that reflect the image of the Chinese people from the three volumes of the Princeton series of Chinese language textbooks,Lesson 116,as survey materials.First,three overseas Chinese language teachers were invited to read the text and conduct interviews to summarize the image of the Chinese people perceived by the teachers.Then,the study distributed 50 questionnaires to non Chinese language learners living in the United States,Summarize the respondents’ perceptions of the image of Chinese people through their descriptive words.The study found that the acceptance of Chinese images by teachers and learners is not entirely consistent,and the proportion of positive evaluations by learners is higher than that of teachers;The proportion of positive and negative evaluations of the image of Chinese people in the three textbooks is roughly the same,but there are certain differences between the volumes.Particularly important is that learners’ acceptance of the same text is also different:first,cognitive convergence,in which the descriptive words provided by the interviewees are both positive or negative;The second is cognitive opposition,which means that the descriptions given are diametrically opposite.This is somewhat related to the type of text itself.In scenes about Chinese values and moral qualities,respondents tend to have completely opposite positive and negative evaluations,while in scenes about Chinese behavior habits,respondents’ perceptions are more consistent.Understanding the similarities and differences in the acceptance of Chinese images among overseas teachers,students,and learners can provide richer ideas for the use of textbooks and the design of classroom activities,as well as provide practical reference for textbook compilation.