A Study Of Beijing Ji Wen From The Perspective Of Chinese International Education

Beijing Ji Wen is a Chinese reading textbook compiled by a Japanese scholar named Okamoto for Japanese students to learn Chinese.The corpus of this textbook are selected from the articles of the day in Youth Daily.The author of the textbook was not only kept the articles of that age in the textbook,but also compiled it in Beijing dialect,so as to constitute the very text form:the contrast between the article and the dialect.There are totally two hundred texts in this book.As a reading textbook for teaching Chinese as a foreign language,Beijing Ji Wen has its unique features.On the one hand,it provides important materials for scholars to study Beijing dialect in the late Qing Dynasty,and on the other hand,it also retains valuable corpus for learners to study the articles of that age.Through the analysis of the Beijing Ji Wen,we would provide constructive suggestions for the compilation and design of the reading textbooks for Chinese as a foreign language as well as the teaching of reading courses.The study of Beijing Ji Wen in this paper includes the following aspects:(1)The analysis of the linguistic features of Beijing Ji Wen:This paper mainly analyzes the linguistic features from the perspectives of vocabulary and sentence pattern.In terms of vocabulary,the texts in Beijing Ji Wen were organized in the format of contrasting the articles and the dialects,which reflects the stylistic difference,namely the differences between the written language of classical Chinese extracted from the newspapers of that age and the spoken language of Beijing Mandarin in compiled version.Ming-e Chen called the stylistic differences as "the difference between classical Chinese and modern Chinese" in The Study on the vocabulary of Beijing Ma ndarin textbooks in Meiji period of Japan.In this paper,the vocabulary differences between the two kinds of style were also named "the vocabulary differences between classical Chinese and modern Chinese",and a part of the differences between classical Chinese and modern Chinese in Beijing Ji Wen was contrasted and listed,for the sake of analyzing the stylistic differences between the classical Chinese of the newspaper at the end of Qing Dynasty and the spoken language of Beijing Mandarin in compiled version with the colloquial and regional vocabulary of the texts as the analysis points.Furthermore,we chose the Beijing dialect words of special and representative meaning,which is comprised of "r"-retroflexed words and separable words in Beijing Ji Wen.The analysis of "r"-retroflexed word consists of its language function,semantic function and lexical meaning.As for the analysis of separable word,it is carried out from the respects of its structure and lexical meaning.In terms of the sentence pattern,Chinese passive sentence and Ba-sentence in Beijing Ji Wen were dissected,which put the emphasis on the object,predicate structure and other points of Ba-sentence in order to study the structural characteristics of Ba-sentence at the end of Qing Dynasty.In addition,the "Jiao"sentence in this paper was also analyzed from its classifications,"Jiao" sentence was divided into three categories:basic meaning sentence,causative sentence and passive meaning sentence,and then parse out the syntactic structure of the three categories respectively and amply.(2)Textbook analysis of Beijing Ji Wen:The analysis was conducted from three aspects,including the content and organization,the setting of the degree of difficulty and the knowledge of cultural factors in the textbook.Beijing Ji Wen is informative in content and diversified in subject.The language materials were selected from the articles of the day in Youth Daily.The author kept the articles of the day in the textbook while compiling it with Beijing dialect,so that the textbook presents a unique form text of "the contrast between the article and the dialect".Accordingly,the setting of the difficulty degree of the textbook follows the language rules of learners to learn Chinese.The texts in this book were arranged according to the principles that from the simple to the difficult and from the short to the long,which abides by the principle of rationality and scientific nature.What’s more,Beijing Ji Wen attaches great importance to composing the cultural factors and knowledge,including the current political situation,commerce and trade,social communication,mode of life,local conditions and customs and so on in the Beijing city at the end of Qing Dynasty,which are the important corpus to study the social situation of Beijing in the late Qing Dynasty.The layout of the cultural factors in Beijing Ji Wen adheres to the principles of practicality,interest and typicality,as well as offers a wide range of cultural knowledge for learners to learn the Chinese culture.(3)The implications of Beijing Ji Wen to today’s reading teaching for Chinese as a foreign language:In this book,the teaching material presented the following features:bountiful and special Beijing dialect words,multiple themes,diverse scene,the close integration of language and cultural factors.Teachers for the Chinese as a foreign language should set clear goal,be familiar with the teaching material,provide students with the context of the target language learning by making use of the modern multimedia technology,so as to make the reading class informative and interesting,stimulate learners’ learning initiative as well as light their passion.(4)The implications of Beijing Ji Wen to today’s design of reading textbook for Chinese as a foreign language:Beijing Ji Wen is a reading textbook for Chinese as a foreign language,which has many advantages and disadvantages,and the analysis of them has enlightening significance for current modern teaching material.For instance,the current modern reading textbook for Chinese as a foreign language should attach importance to the diversification of subject,cultural orientation,the rationality of the vocabulary,variety of the exercises form,coordination of the text arrangement or length and so on.