The Study Of Class Activities In Comprehensive Courses On Teaching Chinese As A Second Language To Foreign Middle School Students

Classroom teaching is the most important factor in the process of teaching Chinese as a second language. However, the majority of all the researches on classroom teaching in teaching Chinese as a second language are Qualitative Research. Few of them are Quantitative Research. In addition, almost all the studies aim at the foreign university students studying Chinese as a second language and there are few researches targeting the foreign middle school students who study Chinese as a second language in China. Therefore, the thesis is intended to have an all-around view of the classroom activities in the classroom of Teaching Chinese as a Second Language to the foreign middle school students in China. The study was conducted with the Classroom Observation Scale in order to find out to what degree the Communicative Approach was carried out by the classroom activities, which was of profound significance to the Chinese language teaching.This thesis compared and analyzed student modality, student communicative ability, other topics, ways of participant organization and topic control in three kinds of middle school student classrooms of Teaching Chinese as a Second Language by ways of classroom observation and recording, comparison and having an interview with the Chinese language teachers. Besides, the paper explained the results with the theories of Communicative Approach, Cognitive psychology, Constructivism as well as with the remarks of the Chinese language teachers in the interviews.Therefore, the thesis attempted to fill the blank in the area of researches on the foreign middle school students in China as well as hoped to help the Chinese language teachers to identify the reasonability and inadequacy in the process of organizing the classroom activities. In this way, the thesis hoped to provide reference to the reform of teaching Chinese as a second language.Through the study of scripts, the following conclusions could be drawn:1. In the Chinese classes of the three kinds, singular skill training still played a major part. During the lessons in the International Department of Jingcai middle school, the time spent on the activities of encouraging students to make comprehensive use of the language by listening, speaking, reading, and writing took up the biggest part, while this kind of opportunity for comprehensive ability training in the class from the summer-vacation condense program of the Chicago Confucius Institute covered the least proportion.2. The class activities still focused on the knowledge of grammar. Comparatively, this part in the Comprehensive Chinese lessons of the British International School covered the least proportion of the class time, while the situation of the classes in the International Department of Jingcai middle school was completely opposite. All the three paid inadequate attention to the training of the discourse ability and neglected to cultivate students'social communicative skills.3. The "other topics" which illustrated the communicative characteristics in class took up the most part during the lessons in the British International School, followed by the classes in the summer-vacation condense program of the Chicago Confucius Institute, and the classes in the International Department of Jingcai middle school ranked the third in this respect.4. The activities in class were still teacher-oriented. Only in the class of the British International School were many group activities most adopted, which featured the purpose of communication in the second language teaching.5. Teachers were the process controllers in the Chinese classes from the summer-vacation condense program of the Chicago Confucius Institute and from the British International School, while students had more participations during the lessons of the International Department of Jingcai middle school, which was beneficial to the cultivation of students'communicative abilities.