Study Of The Role Of Chinese Characters In Teaching Chinese As A Foreign Language

For a long time, by following a word-based approach to learning, patterned after Western language dialogue, the semantic and phonetic features of individual Chinese characters have been widely neglected-steepening the teaching curve of TCFL(Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language). Consequently, the advantage of these systematic features have instead become a burden for CFL learners because of dependence on stroke-by-stroke and word-by-word memorization. The object of this dissertation is to propose a return to the traditional strategy of character-centric instruction-also known as "knowing characters before reading". Encouraged by the exploration of both Chinese characters and the "Motivational Coding Scheme of Chinese", students will rapidly expand their vocabulary, dispel the complexities of characters, and foster a "Chinese mentality" invaluable for advanced studies into the language. With many important and practical applications for TCFL instruction, especially for teaching of the Chinese characters. At a time of such popularity in learning Chinese among foreigners, there is no time to lose in reviewing the current method.