The Study Of Morden Chinese Core Vocabulary For The Second Language Acquisition

Core vocabulary is the main component of speech in a language. It is the most basic, most widely used group of words in the process of information exchange. In a language of diverging linguistic fields and differing linguistic styles, these words are the common core of the vocabulary, may it be common speech or the literary form. Therefore, they have rightfully become the core of the Lexical Semantics System. From a rhetorical point of view, the core vocabulary is a set of words completely comprehensible and functional for an adult native speaker of a specific language. If we were to go beyond the realm of cultural communication, it can be said that to an extent, core vocabulary is the "universal vocabulary" of a certain language. Whereas, on the basis of the sequences in second language acquisition, core vocabulary is the set of words that are suitable for the beginners level while studying a foreign language. It is the estimated limit of words to be learned for basic, everyday communication.There is no clear boundary between the core vocabulary and the non-core vocabulary. Both have an intermediary relation with each other. The integral vocabulary system is the gradual transition of the core vocabulary to the non-core vocabulary. This is why the core vocabulary is divided into two categories, viz. Classic category and Marginal category. Hence, it is more apt to describe the core vocabulary in terms of degree of affinity towards the core of a language.The core vocabulary list for Teaching Chinese as a Second Language has been constructed on the basis of Modern Chinese Core Vocabulary Index. The target of this lexicon is any beginner learner for whom Chinese is a second language. Apart from this, it is essential to consider the factors like age, nationality, social status, objective of learning, learning atmosphere (target language country or non-target language country), and learning style (Standard School training or self-study) of the student, for the extensive applicability and suitability of the core vocabulary.In a Zipfian distribution, the most common item has twice as many occurrences as the second most common, three times as many as the third, a hundred times as many as the hundredth, a thousand times as many as the thousandth, and a million times as many as the millionth. This shows that as long as one masters a small proportion of the most frequent terminologies in a language, it is possible to understand a considerable amount of the content of a language. Modern Chinese Vocabulary Distribution law indicates that the appropriate value of core vocabulary for Modern Chinese is3000terminologies. It covers about75%of the total corpus. Hereafter, the growth of the integral language coverage frequency decelerates remarkably.The main mission of Primary level of Chinese Education is formal spoken training. In comparison to the Integral Modern Chinese vocabulary distribution law, the high frequency words of Survival Spoken Chinese Corpus are much more concentrated. Thus, the core vocabulary concerning Chinese education as a second language should be less than3000, the optimal range being2300to2800high frequency words.The Standard analysis for core vocabulary has two distinct angles:superficial level and internal level. Frequency, Equality and Stability are superficial standards. They are the external characteristics of the core vocabulary. Universality on the other hand is an internal standard, also an essential attribute of the core vocabulary.The development of the core vocabulary of Teaching Modern Chinese as a Second Language can be divided into three respective layers. The first step is Contrast-extraction method. This method includes the extraction of the most frequent words from three of the balanced Modern Chinese Corpus. On this basis, the suitable core vocabulary according to the universality standard and the normalization principle are selected. Finally, after ample consideration of the Second language Acquisition Law, the universality of Modern Chinese core vocabulary list should be optimized on the microscopic level. Furthermore after proper evaluation of acquisition factor,2397core vocabulary words for the Modern Chinese lexicon should be constructed.In the process of the development of the Core vocabulary list, the following statements can be postulated:1. The scientific development of a vocabulary depends on its relativity. On one hand, the stochastic nature of the lingual symbols confirms that the Corpus statistics is only a "general condition". While on the other hand, Corpus is inevitably subjected to the social and cultural factors. Thus, the vocabulary extracted from the Corpus cannot attain the absolute "Purity".2. Most of the time, the problems arising in building the vocabulary is due to the scientific nature and the applicability of the Corpus itself. All in all, even increasing associative linkage cannot properly overcome the limitations of the word frequency statistics. While increase in associative linkage is based on the range of the meaning of the words, it still does not reflect on the degree of frequency of a word. Moreover, considerable amount of facts have already proven that the standard of meaning is not quite reliable. Based on the objective fact that lexical statistics of the Corpus is more consistent in comparison to the associative linkage in a language, the scientific development of the vocabulary should focus again on the construction and selection of words.3. Listening, Reading, Speaking and Writing are completely different processes. Even among the frequently used words, the spoken corpus and the literary corpus have plenty of distinctions. Similarly, the study of core vocabulary in a second language has its own unique characteristics. The main mission of the initial phase of teaching Chinese as a second language is teaching standard spoken Chinese. Accordingly, the corpus used in the preparation of the core vocabulary for the primary level and the senior levels of teaching Chinese has its differences. The extraction of the primary level vocabulary should be themed on the balanced standardized spoken corpus, not the balanced corpus of general significance.