A Comparative Study Of The Chinese/English Address Forms In Second Language Teaching & Learning

This paper probes into the teaching and learning of Chinese'Englishaddress forms in Second Language Teaching and Learning(SLT&L), trying to seek outthe problems in teaching Chinese(Chinese address forms) as a second language(TCSL)to European/American students and teaching English as a second language(TESL) toEnglish learners of native Chinese speakers. The thesis compares the two addresssystems, trying to reveal the differences between Chinese culture and western culturehiding behind the phenomenon, and analyzes their pragmatic characteristics, pragmaticdifferences and pragmatic principles, in hopes to find out effective ways to improve theteaching and learning of Chinese/English address forms.Investigations were conducted on the basis of questionnaires and interviews weredone: The Chinese investigation was carried out among European/American students,while the English investigation was done among English learners of native Chinesespeakers, including non-English and English majors; the interviews were done to theTCSL and TESL teachers. The questions in the questionnaires include: (1) the subjects'application of Chinese/English address forms in cross-cultural communication; (2) thesubjects' problems in learning and using Chinese/American address forms; (3) theChinese'English address forms the subjects use most often in cross-culturalcommunication. The interviews involve: the phenomenon of pragmatic failure amongthe European/American students and the English learners; the strategies the teachers useoften use in solving the problem of pragmatic failure; the arrangement ofChinese/English address system teaching, etc.The findings show that the European/American students have a better commandof the Chinese social appellations than the kinship terminology(KT). Among theEnglish learners of native Chinese speakers, the English majors of the second yearperformed better than the other students, i.e. English majors of the first year and all thenon-English majors. Also there is a very apparent phenomenon of pragmatic failureamong all the subjects, because they depend too much on their mother language. Inaddition, the European/American students are more conscious of cross-cultural communication than the English learners of native Chinese speakers, because theEnglish learners lack a very good English study surroundings.The interviews imply that the TCSL teachers paid more attention to Chineseaddress forms teaching than TESL teachers did to English address forms teaching.Then, we analyzed two sets of teaching books. One is TCSL teaching bookChinese Made Easier(Shaanxi Normal University Press, 2002); Another is TESLteaching book Go for It(People's Education Press, 2003). We intend to find out theadvantages and disadvantages of the books and give some constructive suggestions toChinese/English address form teaching and teaching-book writing, hoping that in thefuture effective methods can be applied to improve the students' cross-culturalawareness, and cultural barriers can be overcome by the students and theircommunicative abilities can be developed. We expect this study can attract more peopleinvolved to make more contributions to the improvement of Second Language Teachingand Learning.