Probe Into The Production Of Localized Chinese Textbook For Myanmar Preliminary Schools’ Use Based On The Self

There are presently two modes of teaching Mandarin in Myanmar; teaching Mandarin as a mother-tongue language and Mandarin as a second language. Due to a lack of a localized set of teaching materials for the teaching of Mandarin in Myanmar, most Chinese schools in Northern Myanmar adopt the Taiwanese based textbooks for teaching Mandarin as a mother-tongue language while Chinese schools in Southern Myanmar adopt the People’s Republic of China published textbooks for teaching Mandarin as a second language. Hence, developing a set of localized textbooks that is based on the current state and culture of the country as well as taking into account the learning styles of the students of Myanmar should be the top priority for enhancing the teaching of Mandarin in Myanmar.This thesis shall analyze five sets of primary school textbooks adopted by three countries and China Taiwan region for the teaching Mandarin. These five sets of textbooks can be categorized into two categories. The first would include the sets of textbooks adopted for teaching of Mandarin as a mother- tongue. These include "Yu Wen" written by the People’s Republic of China, "Guo Yu" by China Taiwan region, and "Hua Wen" adopted by the Malaysian Ministry of Education. The second category would include the sets of textbooks for the teaching of Mandarin as a second language. These will include "Han Yu" written by the People’s Republic of China Office of the Promotion of Mandarin among Overseas Chinese and "Xiao Xue Hua Wen" adopted by Singapore’s Ministry of Education. A thorough literature review, critical analysis, quantitative analysis, qualitative analysis and content analysis were performed to create a comprehensive comparative study of the corpus among the five sets of textbooks adopted for the teaching of Mandarin. The set of pedagogical findings should provide a good reference for Myanmar when developing localized textbooks for teaching Mandarin. This paper also goes some way to present preliminary macro comparisons of the adoption of Mandarin textbooks around the world; providing Mandarin education in Myanmar with a set of general foundation characteristics. In doing so, this paper may also serve as a general reference for other Southeast Asian and Asian countries, with similar cultures with Myanmar in their development of localized textbooks for the teaching of Mandarin.This paper developed the "Hanyu shuiping cihui yu hanzi dengji dagang" to be used as the standard corpus in comparative studies on the two categories of texts.Analysis was performed on the use of Chinese characters, vocabulary, and text content of "Guo Yu" set of textbooks through literature review. The design and total number of exercises were analyzed by manual intervention. Pedagogical list of strengths and weaknesses of "Guo Yu" are presented. This thesis also made a comparative study between "Guo Yu", "Yu Wen" and "Hua Wen" textbooks not exclusive to the use of Chinese characters, vocabulary and the content of text with aim at presenting a pedagogical list of the relevant texts’ strengths and weaknesses to serve as a reference when developing localized textbooks for teaching of Mandarin as a mother tongue in Myanmar.Analysis was performed on the use of Chinese characters and vocabulary of "Han Yu" set of textbooks through literature review. The pedagogical design and total number of exercises were analyzed by manual intervention. Pedagogical list of strengths and weaknesses of "Han Yu" are presented. The thesis also made a comparative study on the degree of difficulty of Mandarin characters used in the set of texts of "Han Yu" and "Xiao Xue Hua Wen" by the "Hanyu guojijiaoyu yong fenji hanzibiao" to be used as the standard corpus. A thorough literature review of the texts and manual intervention of instructional design and exercises between these two sets of textbooks were also performed with an aim to presenting a pedagogical list of the relevant texts’strengths and weaknesses to serve as a reference when developing localized textbooks for teaching Mandarin as a second language teaching in Myanmar.In the conclusion, the author recommends adopting six guiding principles when developing a localized set of teaching materials for teaching Mandarin:(1) Content should focus on communications opportunities.(2) Content should take into account available learning hours.(3) Contents can reflect Myanmar’s local culture.(4) Text should be designed to train language skills according to the characteristics and type of students.(5) Differences between Chinese and Myanmar can be highlighted.(6) Myanmar vocabularies should be added.The author also offered the "leap" development model for countries that are at the developmental stage of introducing Mandarin education. The leap model includes five suggestions:(1) Give priority to research and development of textbooks for specialized areas and basic Mandarin.(2) To reform syllabus by producing textbooks; to perfect textbooks by utilizing syllabus.(3) When researching and developing the textbook, one should focus "borrowing ideas from experience" to improve efficiency.(4) Text should include both local and international perspectives.(5) Researchers and developers should accept offered assistance to improve the level of Mandarin teaching. The author notes that the theoretical and research perspectives presented in this paper have not received much attention and importance as compared to similar type of research on Education. The author hopes that the findings and principles put forth can be effective in the development of localized Mandarin textbooks as well as teaching activities.