The Imposed Effects Of Fundamental Differences Between Putonghua And Cantonese On Putonghua Teaching In Hong Kong

Putonghua is the national common language of Chinese, Cantonese is one of the seven major dialects of modern Chinese. Due to historical reasons, Cantonese had been the official language, the major language for work, education and the mass media in Hong Kong before the 1997 hangover. Hence, Hong Kong people is strange to Putonghua. With the switch from "bi-literacy and bi-lingualism" to "bi-literacy and tri-lingualism", Hong Kong people from all walks of life have to learn and speak fluent Putonghua. At the same time, learning Putonghua has become an important part of civic education.Putonghua education has already been developed for about 20 years. Huge resources and manpower from government and the public have been allocated to learning Putonghua. Unfortunately, the result and the effectiveness are not satisfactory. Therefore, Putonghua teachers need to look into the teaching methodology, and to develop effective language learning methods with theories.This thesis focuses on phonics, grammar and vocabularies of contemporary Putonghua and Cantonese. It is supported by the theory of contrastive linguistics for second language teaching and the theory of interlanguage linguistics. Combined with linguistic surveys and hands-on teaching experience, the similarities and differences on phonics, grammar and vocabularies between contemporary Putonghua and Cantonese are studied. Its effects on students learning Putonghua as a second language and the overall effects on teaching Putonghua in Hong Kong are also presented in this thesis.From the aspect of phonics, this thesis has analysed the difference of Putonghua and Cantonese in vowels, consonants and intonation, and their consequences. From the aspect of grammar, this thesis has highlighted the common differences, and also the consequences, in sentence structure, and the differences in positions for some adverbs and adjectives when they act as time adverbials. From the aspect of vocabularies, the differences in Cantonese and Putonghua formation morpheme, word structure and word meaning are also highlighted. "Interlanguage" due to these differences and its effects in Putonghua teaching are explored. This research aim at upgrading the Putonghua standard among Hong Kong citizens.