A Study On Classroom Communication Of Chinese Immersion Projects In American Primary Schools

The mode of foreign language teaching with immersion originated in the 1960s. In recent years, it has developed rapidly with the application in American primary schools. This thesis is based on the problems in the communicative interaction within the Chinese teaching of the primary school in America, and then makes a conclusion about the characteristics of the Chinese immersion project, analyzes the advantages and existing problems, hoping to supply an enlightenment to the teaching Chinese as a foreign language.This research takes the teaching videos of five language courses and four non-language courses of three teachers from an elementary school in Minnesota as the study object, the videos of which lasts around 200 minutes, and takes the method of qualitative and quantitative methods to study the observations of communicative interaction situation. Through the factual transcribing of those teaching videos and studying on the 180 interaction units, from the dimensions of interaction types, this thesis ascertains the ten dimension, like the interaction types, the interaction content, interaction goal, input and output, numbers of turns, interaction triggers, the means to trigger interaction, interaction control, the using of teaching instruments, the aims of using Chinese to express or transmit information, etc.This thesis consists of five parts. The first chapter mainly introduces the reason to choose this topic and the significance of this study, and summarizes those document related; The second chapter explores the purpose and the object of this research, the research method and transfer rules are also expounded in this chapter; The third chapter is mainly about the research of language class with Chinese language immersion program in the American primary school, giving an analysis of five lessons and providing the results of the analysis which is based on the 10 dimensions; The fourth chapter is about the research of the non-language class with the Chinese language immersion program in the American primary school, mainly introducing four lessons and providing the results of the analysis which is based on the 10 dimensions; Based on the observation results from the last two chapters, the fifth chapter summarizes the characteristics of the Chinese language immersion program in the American primary school and gets inspirations from them, putting forward some suggestions on the demonstic teaching Chinese as a foreign language.