A Contrastive Study Of Topics Arrangement In Primary Chinese Textbooks

The vigorous development of Teaching Chinese as Second Language(TCSL)has put forward higher requirements for the compilation textbooks.It is against the background that a lot of textbook research findings have been produced,but there are few relevant studies on country-specific textbook and general-purpose textbook.The primary comprehensive Chinese textbooks play a fundamental role in the whole learning stage of Chinese learners.As the core of the text,the topic can not only show the theme of the text,construct the context,but also affect learners’ interest in learning Chinese.In response to this,this paper focuses on comparative analysis of topics,and selects two representative textbooks Boya Chinese and Integrated Chinese as research objects.Their topics are analyzed and discussed,so as to explore the commonness and personality,advantages and disadvantages of topic selection in country-specific textbook and general-purpose textbook,in the hope that the subsequent compilation of relevant textbooks can learn from each other and make common progress.The research process of this paper is as follows.Firstly,on the basis of integrating the current domestic well-known and widely used topic classification tables,a suitable topic classification table is formed for this research.With the using the method of statistical analysis and comparative analysis,this paper discusses and analyzes the topic selection and distribution,arrangement order,presentation mode,functional items and scene design of the commonalities and differences.Secondly,the following results are obtained through Chinese Proficiency Grading Standards for International Chinese Language Education and the principles of textbook prepartion: In terms of topic selection and distribution,the two textbooks focus on daily life and almost do not involve the discussion of emotional life.Influenced by the length,the topic category and quantity of Boya Chinese are richer.In the light of topic arrangement order,Boya Chinese is constructed by a winding stair,while Integrated Chinese’s block characteristics is obvious.But their first-level topics are in the same order,from easy to difficult,which is in line with the characteristics of initial learning.Considering presentation,both of them include dialogue and narration,and are mainly in the form of dialogue,which is expressed through face-to-face communication,telephone,letters,diary and other daily communication forms.The transition of presentation mode of Boya Chinese is more suitable for the acquisition order of beginners than that of Integrated Chinese.In the field of topic function items,“Inquiries” and “expressions” functions are repeated more often.Boya Chinese is dominant in the overall number,but the arrangement of Integrated Chinese is more inclusive and contains more functional items among sentence groups.In the aspect of scene design,both of them pay attention to building positive images,highlighting the characters and characteristics of students of different nationalities and cultural backgrounds.However,some images in Boya Chinese are too generalized.The scenes are mainly campus life scenes,which fail to fully reflect the off-campus life.Based on the above analysis,this paper summarizes the two sets of textbooks have the common and different advantages and disadvantages.Among them,the common advantages are reflected in the topic focusing on the perspective of students,close to the actual life,functional items closely related to the topic.The advantages of Boya Chinese are that the topic radiation field is wide and the topic highlights cross-cultural awareness,and the advantages of Integrated Chinese include reasonable arrangement order,rich presentation ways,and diversified character designs.The common shortcomings of the two textbooks include obvious topic repetition,imbalance of proportion,outdated content of some topics,lack of timeliness,monotonous cultural content and emphasis on tradition.The disadvantages of Boya Chinese are it presents in a single way and arranges in an unreasonable order.For Integrated Chinese,the disadvantages are that the topic coverage needs to be expanded and the topic is difficult to adapt to ontology knowledge.Finally,combining the above shortcomings,this paper puts forward some suggestions for improving textbook compilation from two aspects,textbook compilation and teacher teaching,including textbook compilation and teacher teaching.Among them,textbook editors should pay attention to a wide and comprehensive selection,reasonably arrange the proportion of topics.At the same time,they should consciously select part of the topics that are widely concerned with the current era,coordinate the distribution of traditional and modern topics,and finally strengthen the integration of spiral and modular topic arrangement.For teachers,the introduction of topics should strengthen the diversity and interest of the topics,the rationality and practicability of the topics,and the organization of students’ topic exercises should pay attention to the pertinence and systematic.Finally,based on the above discussion,this paper summarizes the shortcomings of the research and puts forward my personal research outlook,hoping that there will be more researches on topics related to different types of textbooks in the future.