The teaching of vocabulary plays an important role in TCFL. At the elementarystage, learners could benefit tremendously by the English translation and explanationof the Chinese vocabulary in a TCFL textbook, which could effectively help to pavethe road for the learners to a good command of the Chinese words, as long as they areproperly prepared.But in real teaching situations, once English used, learners could easilymisunderstand and misuse the Chinese words, as a result of their neglecting thelexical differences between English and Chinese.This paper analyzes the translation and explanation of the vocabulary in a TCFLtextbook and classifies the errors into 8 categories: the sense translated is unrelated tothe context; the basic sense of a word is not introduced; when the correspondingwords in two languages are only partially matched, explanation is not sufficient to tellthe differences; errors in translating the conceptual meaning; translating only theelements rather than the whole set phrase; inappropriate explanation of certaingrammatical structures; failed to differentiate the senses of a word other than theconceptual meaning; translating only the morpheme rather than the word.This paper argues that such a guideline should be established to direct andexamine the translation and explanation: the translation and explanation should besimple and clear, and effective in helping the learner to understand and use theChinese words properly.8 suggestions are offered based on this guideline.
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