A Study On The Interesting Interests Of Elementary And Advanced Chinese Textbooks

As one of the most important principle for the compiling of Chinese teaching materials, interestingness is also or more important to the compiling of primary and comprehensive teaching materials for Chinese as a second language. For students on the primary level of Chinese learning, Chinese teaching materials with interestingness can stimulate their learning motivation and keep them concentrated on studying. This paper chooses two primary and comprehensive teaching materials for Chinese as a second language:one is the primary and comprehensive textbook for Chinese as a second language which is compiled under the ideals of the Chinese Language Teachers Association, USA and overseas students oriented; the other one is the primary textbook for Chinese for college students. With interestingness as study line and the two textbooks as study targets, the author did a comprehensive study of the textbooks’ contents and forms by way of statistical analysis, drawing a conclusion of how to increase interestingness in the primary and comprehensive teaching materials for Chinese as a second language.By analyzing the textbook’s contents, Chinese Course has a proper amount of new characters on terms of corpus. On terms of phrases, the two textbooks both have phrases from simple to difficult levels and with simple ones as the majority. The two textbooks both have proper length of sentences which is suitable for primary students. On terms of culture, Learning through Practice for overseas students has more contents concerning culture and richer expression of culture. In regard to topics, the two books both choose topics related to students’ daily life and hobbies. With respect to characters, characters of Chinese Course are more stable, typical and vivid than those of Learning through Practice, which is helpful to students’ understanding of contents.By studying the form of two textbooks, the author found that form is of great importance to not only contents but also to teachers. Illustrations in primary and comprehensive textbooks can play an auxiliary role in Chinese teaching. Illustrations in Chinese Course to explain grammars make an explicit explanation of grammars and make grammars easier to understand. Learning through Practice has abundant illustrations which is rich in form and interesting.The covers of the two textbooks are with Chinese characteristics. The design of covers is artful and beautiful, which is helpful to the popularization of Chinese textbooks. On terms of layout of the two textbooks, editors are so ingenious in choosing typeface, type size and font color, which brings students with enjoyable and comfortable feeling and adds interestingness to the textbooks.Textbooks with interestingness, finally, are in the service of teaching and the value of textbooks can not be realized without teachers. The paper puts some advices for the use of textbooks with interests:teachers should make the best of interesting points in textbooks. For example, illustrations in textbooks often play an explanation role for words. Teachers can make their classes alternate between illustrations and teaching, which can provide possibility for classes with interestingness and help students tap their inner motivation of Chinese learning.