The Study On Teaching Material Of Advanced Chinese Newspaper Reading As A Foreign Language

Chinese newspaper and periodical reading is a course offered in the advancedstage of Chinese learning, aiming at cultivating Chinese learners’ language skills andnewspaper and periodical reading ability so as to help them understand China andcultivate their cross-cultural communication ability. The textbook of this course isprovided for learners with higher level of Chinese who can use it for school learning,self-learning or further education. In real teaching, the inappropriateness of thetextbook is one of the reasons for the difficulties in the teaching and learning ofChinese newspaper and periodical reading course.The features of the textbook of Chinese newspaper and periodical reading areindicated by: newspaper and periodical language form, newspaper and periodicalreading skills, China’s national conditions and relevant social cultural backgroundknowledge. The compilation of the textbook must comply with the general principlesof the compilation of textbooks for teaching Chinese as a foreign language;meanwhile it should also conform to the special principle of “paying attention to theindication of the teaching objectives of newspaper and periodical reading course andthe characteristics of the textbook”, namely, the principle of corpus compilation andlayout and the basic principle of notes and exercises compilation.Taking Learning Chinese by Reading Newspapers (an advanced course-to-be)and Times Newspaper Reading Course of Advanced Chinese as examples, this articleanalyzed the compilation style, intensive reading texts, extensive reading part,vocabulary, sentence patterns of newspapers and periodicals, background knowledgeand exercises of the two textbooks, and pointed out the advantages of them on thebasis of comparison and analysis:(1) the style is complete and the structure is proper;(2) the coverage of texts is wide and attention is paid to the interestingness andtimeliness of the subjects;(3) attention is also paid to the features of newspaper andperiodical language;(4) the knowledge involved is rich; emphasis is made onbackground knowledge, and the texts’ cultural connotation is reflected;(5) exercisesare appropriately arranged and highly targeted;(6) intensive and extensive reading arecombined, which can improve students’ reading level effectively. Meanwhile, thedisadvantages of the two textbooks were also stated:(1) some texts are too long;(2)some texts lack interestingness, practicality and continuity;(3) vocabulary is notarranged reasonably;(4) the textbooks lack guidance on newspaper and periodicalreading;(5) notes are not comprehensive. In the end, rational suggestions were madeon the compilation and use of the textbooks.