Yuen Ren Chao And The Chinese Language Teaching In The United States Of America

Yuen Ren Chao, the most famous and influential linguists in the 20th century, who has the extraordinary achievement in Chinese Phonetics, Chinese Grammar was highly thought of by domestic and foreign academia. These also lead to the main focus of research toward him, however, despite of language study, he also conducted Chinese Language teaching and made contributions to Chinese spreading in the USA, which contributes to the key study object of this paper.The first chapter reviews the living and study experience of Yuen Ren Chao's childhood, particularly the situation of Chao's exposure and acquisition of different dialects, and also introduces the experience that Chao studied in America, teaching experience in China and the first time he taught Chinese in Harvard, explains the probability and necessity that professor Chao became interested in Chinese Language Teaching and Study and turned his research field on it.The second chapter firstly reviews the situations of Mandarin Movement and dialect investment which Yuen Ren Chao participated during 1925 and 1938 and then explores the back ground of Chinese language teaching of the USA in the early part of 20th century and teaching activities of Professor Chao taken in the University of Hawaii and Yale.The third chapter is focused on the reason and situation of foreign language teaching in the USA boosted the World Warâ…¡, Chinese Language teaching included. And the significant contribution Professor Chao had made, for instance, editing Chinese dictionary, conducting the Chinese lessons of ASTP in Harvard, andother contributions.The last chapter mainly introduces the situation of American Chinese Language Teaching after 1958 and the Chinese Language teaching and study of Yuen Ren Chao after his residing in United States.