The Evaluation And Development Of The Reading Material For Teaching Chinese As A Second Language

The International Curriculum for Chinese Language Education illustrated the teaching objectives for teaching Chinese as Second Language (CSL) as the language knowledge, the language skill, the learning strategy and the culture awareness. Among them, reading skill is one of the most important ones. The fundamental function of the Chinese reading material is, first to train the reading skill of learners, and second to carry the necessary information readers search for. Therefore, the reading skill is determined, to some extent, by the teaching materials applied. There has been considerable research and study on the development and evaluation of language teaching and the learning materials, while study specialized in the reading material for CSL is limited.The current reading. material for CSL are generally categorized by the background, motivation, goal, and the phase of the learners. Accordingly, the procedures for developing teaching materials and the texts should be verified and embody different teaching goals and principles.Based on the features of the Chinese language, the reading process of CSL, the teaching philosophy, the teaching model, etc., having reviewed the criteria for evaluating reading materials of second languages, the paper proposed a systematic framework for the evaluation of the reading materials for CSL. The evaluation criteria for the reading material for CSL are as follows:the preparation, the teaching theory, the teaching principle, the selection of reading text, the design of exercises, the providing of notes. The criteria are specified under each item. The paper aims to provide practical and useful reference for the modification, study, selection, use, and developing of the reading material for CSL.