The College Chinese Teaching Material Research

A textbook is an important part in teaching and learning activities, textbook development is also an important foundation for international promotion of Chinese language. The circle of international Chinese language teaching attaches great importance to the development of teaching materials; however, with the emergence of the worldwide enthusiasm of Chinese learning and the tendency of internationalization of Chinese teaching, we find that the existing Chinese teaching materials and research work gradually fail to catch up with the pace of the language’s international promotion. After the event of9·11, language has been treated as something to do with national security, which makes Chinese teaching in the United States develop rapidly in recent years. However, most Chinese teaching materials used in the United States appear to be relatively unsystematic, outdated in contents and disjoint from Chinese contemporary culture. It seems really hard to find suitable textbook for class use. According to this situation, this thesis is going to summarize the characteristics and shortcomings of popular textbooks used in U.S. colleges, and to analyze the factors that affect the compilation of teaching materials in the hope of providing a reference for the production and studying of Chinese textbooks used in the United States.Firstly, this paper is going to discuss the role and function of textbooks in teaching on theoretical ground, and make a distinction between ontological study and non-ontological study of Chinese textbook, foreign language teaching materials and international Chinese teaching materials. Then the paper presents three dimensions of the study of Chinese textbook which includes:"basic theory","content and structure of choreography" and "elements". This paper is going to adopt several methods to investigate the Chinese textbook used in American colleges and universities, such as questionnaires, individual interviews, literature review, and network information searching and collecting.Secondly, based on the above findings, the paper selected the most widely used and representative Chinese teaching materials in American colleges to establish a "Chinese Teaching Materials Database for American College and University". By using statistical methods, we are going to analyze and summarize the similarities and differences between the materials. This paper argues that the localization of Chinese teaching materials in American colleges is mainly characterized by:1) A wide range of diversity;2) Reflects the "student-centered" philosophy of education3) The criteria for syntactic items’selection, sorting and interpretation are too flexible and not unified;4) Extensive use of the medium of English to reduce the Chinese language learning difficulty;Pinyin as an important auxiliary means of learning Chinese;5) Using simplified and traditional Chinese characters in one book, focusing on one kind of characters;6) Selecting from the community issue, highlighting Sino-US differences, focusing on ideological.Thirdly, an idea about the factors that affect the Chinese textbooks’ quality in American colleges has been put forward in the paper, which are the U.S. foreign language policy, methods used for teaching materials’ assessment, American standard of Chinese proficiency and popular teaching methods adopted in the United States. The US foreign language policy is established with the motive of national security with corresponding effect from/on its English policy, as has been made the guiding principle of the country for Chinese textbooks’compiling in domestic colleges, which guarantees financial support and determines the organizational forms that the textbook-making should match. American textbook’s evaluation modes determine that the teaching material is supposed to be harmonized into disciplinary requirements, student-centered, in consideration of teacher’s needs for it. The evaluation is to pose requirements on the textbook’s structure and components. The Chinese evaluation criterion serves as a standard for the classification of textbook, and determines that the purpose of producing a textbook is to enhance a language learner’s ability of listening, speaking, reading and writing. Popular American teaching methods provide a theoretical basis for the compilation of teaching materials, the framework of the overall design and structure.At last, these analyses come to an enlightenment:1) For "no syllabus" nations, the most important task is to design and set the Chinese teaching syllabus at national level. Then by the standard of the nation-unified syllabus, outlines for courses, language elements such as characters, vocabulary, grammar and culture can be framed and set. The government should play an important role in leading the syllabus designing and writing. It can also be implemented in reliance upon governmental promotion, joint promotion of the government and non-government, and absolute non-governmental promotion.2) In a multicultural nation, the composition of a language textbook should show respect to cultural identity of the country and provide appropriate access to Chinese culture.3) To use and play the role of the "elite effect" of famous collages can activate domestic elite’s advantage in the teaching of Chinese and promote the development of international Chinese teaching materials.4) Post-method theory guide textbook writing to break the boundary of teaching method.5) Optimality Theory demands to use comprhensive, generality, and diversity to evaluate a textbook.