A Phase-based Analysis Of New HSK Reading Input Materials

In 2009,the new HSK was officially launched,with the goal of "promoting teaching through examination and promoting learning through examination".However,in all kinds of new HSK official guidelines,the description of language competence objectives of different levels and dimensions is relatively general.Therefore,even under the guidance of various syllabuses and competency standards,it is still not easy to realize the effective connection between HSK test tasks and teaching practice.On the other hand,among all the levels,the new HSK Level 5 serves as the benchmark for Chinese learners to move from intermediate to advanced language level,highlighting the improvement of students’ phase ability through question types.And the cultivation of this competence has always been a knotty part in teaching to students of middle and advanced levels.Therefore,it can be regarded as an effective way to explore the cultivation of paragraph ability by interpreting the requirements in the test to guide the teaching practice.In order to find the breakthrough point of the new HSK test in guiding and transform the test competency standards into operational teaching objectives,this paper selects the input materials of the new HSK level 5 as the research object and attempts to explain the paragraph competence emphasized by this level.Based on the theory of systemic functional linguistics and generalized topic theory,this paper researches on the corpus which is constituted by the paragraphs in the second part of the new HSK5 Reading,which shows the phase ability requirements of the new HSK5 and can be used as a model for research.Mainly through the ways of quantitative description and text analysis,this paper interprets the specific expects raised by HSK5 in discourse ability with the specific description and summary of typical language features and certain rules of the linguistic data,to dig out its inspiration and guidance for teaching.Thus,the new HSK test can better serve the teaching Chinese as a foreign language,especially to the paragraph teaching.During the study,the author firstly makes a brief analysis of the corpus from three aspects of the content,structure and linguistic form of the corpus,and presents the characteristics of the corpus as a whole.Then,considering the conventional way of paragraph teaching,this paper takes paragraph style as the classification standard,focuses on the comparison of liguistic features among different styles,and makes the analysis and summary.Next,in order to further link with the teaching practice,the study takes the argumentative segments in the corpus as an example to present an operable explanation of the requirements for new HSK level 5 language competence.The explanation is connected with the teaching content and methods to explore the ways to "combination of examination and teaching".Finally,according to the research analysis and results,this paper puts forward some suggestions on the cultivation of Chinese learners’ paragraph ability,respectivly from the aspects of teaching materials and teaching patterns.For example,teaching material should pay attention to the proportion and depth of different topics,train the students’ discourse ability consciously through a variety of exercises,and emphasize the "discourse ability" of certain words.What’s more,teachers should deconstruct the paragraphs and emphasize the features of paragraphs of differnt styles during teaching,such as pointing out the progressive modes of various segments with mind maps.The main conclusions of this paper are as follows:（1）HSK5 level input materials have a certain tendency in the choice of discourse topics,focusing on daily life,culture and other aspects which are mainly related to students’ using needs and language levels.（2）HSK5 requires the examinees to use Chinese for defining and procedural explanation and dialectical discussion.Therefore,in terms of style,most of the HSK5-level paragraphs are expositive and argumentative.（3）The features of paragraphs of different styles are distinctive.The matching degree between them and different topics,as well as the linking with the choice of generalized topics,thematic structures and connectives,are all worthy of teachers’ careful consideration and analysis,so as to realize the combination with teaching practice.（4）The requirements of "fluency","smoothness" and "accuracy" of argumative paragraphs in various syllabuses of HSK can be found in their linguistic features.Teachers should further interpret the requirements of language competence in syllabus so as to make them operable in teaching.