A Study Of Chinese As A Second Language Level Readers

The main objectives in teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language (CFL) are to nurture the students'listening, oral communication, reading comprehension, and writing abilities. The teaching and cultivation of the students'reading ability go beyond classroom instructions as they need to understand and wield the language in practical settings. Consequently, it is of paramount importance to study CFL reading materials and to analyze their reading difficulties in order to increase teaching quality and efficiency of CFL lessons.This study investigates Chinese level readers use in mainland China. It focuses on seven sets of mainland China CFL level reads. In total,50 books are studied from the perspectives of appropriate content, reading difficulties, and supplementary exercises. In deciding what is considered to be "appropriate content", this study focuses on the topics, narrative structure, and the interest levels of the readers. In reading difficulties, it focuses on the length of the reader, reading difficulty level, and the amount of vocabulary word per reader. In supplementary exercises, it focuses on the number, the type, and the objective of the questions. This study seeks to understand these topics using both quantitative statistical and competitive analytical methodologies.Using the aforementioned methodologies, this study wants to demonstrate that these 50 books can be divided between those readers appropriate for children and teenagers to those that are for adults. Each set of level reader has its style, reading difficulty, and exercises. Furthermore, it concludes that the topics of the readers need to be narrative in focus and uses interesting topics related to everyday living. At the same time, reading difficulty, as reflected in vocabulary words, needs to take into account the students'age and practical needs. Lastly, supplementary exercises should complement the readers'difficulty levels instead of focusing on the number of questions or types.