The Horse New Primary School Chinese Textbooks Culture Factors Survey And Compare

To learn a language, knowing the culture hidden in a language is necessary because both language and culture are closely relevant with each other. Deeper understanding of the culture in a language can facilitate communication. Teaching Chinese as a Second Language aims to foster cross-cultural communication among learning groups. Introduction of the cultural factor, an essential component of teaching Chinese as a second language, can improve the command of Chinese among learning groups. Preparation of teaching material is of priority in order to integrate teaching with cultural propagation. Teaching material, a main component in education, is an important tool to accomplish an educational goal. The circle of Teaching Chinese as a Second Language has reached consensus to emphasize the cultural factor in the teaching material.With wide propagation of Chinese throughout the world, the suitability of a cultural factor included in a teaching material and the way to allow a teaching material to appropriately play a role of cultural communication have become a new issue and challenge. To optimize the teaching outcome, we need to conduct concrete research and analysis of the cultural factor found in overseas Chinese teaching material. This can help distinguish regional difference among learning groups, writing Chinese teaching material and cultural reading material suited for different ethnics, and set up cultural course in different countries.Hence, by taking consideration of group difference among learning groups, this study will focus on the research and analysis of the cultural factor found in the two sets of primary school Chinese teaching materials from Malaysia and Singapore. Although learned as a second language in the both countries, the majority Chinese learning group consist of Malay ethnic in Malaysia and Chinese ethnic in Singapore, showing a remarkable group difference of the learning groups.This study consists of five chapters. Chapter One will introduce the background, significance and the current status of teaching Chinese. Chapter Two will elucidate the theory and concept of group difference of learning groups. This chapter will also discuss the targets, scope and sampling methodology of this study. Chapter Three will examine the cultural factors in the two studied set of teaching materials by referring to the cultural background of the two learning groups and classify them into cultural knowledge information and cultural communication information. Chapter four will discuss the comparative study on the two sets of teaching materials based on three aspects:(1) content selection,(2) content presentation and explanation and (3) content organization. Finally, Chapter Five will conclude the result of this study and provide relevant comments.The result of this study shows:(1) the manifestation of cultural knowledge information and cultural communication information in the teaching materials written for different learning groups;(2) the notable difference of content selection, content presentation and explanation, and content organization in the two sets of teaching materials written for different learning groups. We deem the teaching material written for Malay ethnic should strengthen the cultural comparison throughout the material in order to sort out the distinctive difference in both cultures which may easily incur communication misunderstanding between the two ethnics. This further contextualizes the cultural factor in the teaching material. At the same time, teaching material written for Chinese ethnic also need to emphasize on the cultural element. Hence, the two proposed measures mentioned above, we believe, will make the cultural factor included in the teaching material become more practical and contextualized.