A Study Of Text Adjustment In The Revision Of Comprehensive Textbooks For Teaching Chinese As A Foreign Language

The text of Chinese textbooks is a teaching reference,which is very important to the implementation and results of teaching.Based on the revised cycle and users’ feedback,the demand for textbook revision is becoming increasingly prominent,and the adjustment of texts is one of the important revision items.This study takes the intermediate comprehensive textbooks Boya Chinese and Developing Chinese as research objects.Through the comparative analysis of the texts,this paper runs researches from five different angels: topics,text structures,sentences,words and difficultities.In terms of topic adjustment,Boya Chinese has removed one text on personal and family topic,added one text related to Chinese society and culture,and the number of other topics remains unchanged.The number of texts in Developing Chinese that revolve around individual and family events,education and work,character stories has increased,while texts related to Chinese society and culture,natural science and technology have decreased.Universal topics have been changed from the old version presented in Volume I to the new version in Volume II.The adjustment of the text structure is mainly to add,delete and combine sentences and paragraphs.The quantity of text structure adjustment in Developing Chinese is more than that in Boya Chinese.Sentence adjustment adopts 3 ways: reducing sentence difficulty,expanding and changing sentence expression.The first and third methods occupy the largest number in these two sets of textbooks.The methods of word adjustment include replacement,addition and deletion,and replacement takes the greatest percent in both textbooks mentioned.In terms of difficulty adjustment,the difficulty of the whole textbooks has been reduced,but the difficulty of the corresponding texts in the old and new versions varies.Some texts have reduced the difficulty,some remain unchanged,and a few have increased the difficulty.Finally,this study has put forward some suggestions for text adjustment in the revision of Chinese textbooks.In terms of topic adjustment,we should make the topic distribution more reasonable and select the content of Chinses culture.About text structure adjustment,we can reasonably add and delete sentences and paragraphs,and enhance semantic coherence.In the aspect of sentence adjustment,we’d better control the difficulty of sentences and standardize the word order.In terms of word adjustment,we should control the word level and standardize the use of words.