| A Course of Lessons in Spoken Mandarin: Based on the Gouin Method was written by the Canadian missionary James Endicott, and was published by Canadian Methodist Mission Press in 1908. These courses were intended for the students of the language in West China, and featured teaching Chengdu dialect and Western Mandarin in one book in the early 20 th century. The textbook is guided by Gouin?s method, and its texts, notes and idioms in connection with each lesson are worth studying. This thesis can present some specific situations about teaching Chinese to speakers of other languages in Chengdu 100 years ago and provide some reference for the compilation of spoken Chinese textbooks in current times. Besides, it can also help to enrich the study of the history of Chengdu dialect.There are 6 parts in this thesis as follows: Chapter 1 is an introduction about its object, significance and innovations of the subject, literature review and research methods; Chapter 2 is an overview of this Spoken Mandarin as well as the life of James Endicott and his family, especially James Gareth Endicott, who made a great contribution to China. Chapter 3 tries to reveal the philosophy of textbook and affirm the significance and value, in connection with the Gouin Method. Chapter 4 focuses on topics, situations, functional items and language features of the texts; Chapter 5 analyses notes and idioms of each lesson; Chapter 6 draws conclusions about the overall evaluation of Spoken Mandarin, talks about its strengths and weaknesses and gets revelations for the compilation of current Chinese books. |
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