The Analysis And Design Of Communicative Exercises In Intermedia And Advanced Chinese Speaking Materials

The ultimate aim of second language teaching is to foster and improve learners’communicative abilities. Without exposure to real social environment and communicativetraining, this ability cannot be formed. Therefore, communication is both the goal and the meansof language teaching. As the bond of teachers, students and class, Chinese material isirreplaceable in Chinese language teaching.“Language is mastered not by teaching, but byusing.”With the development of foreign language teaching theories and Chinese languageteaching researches, people put more and more emphasis on real language context andcommunicative exercise to foster learners’ability to communicate. Communicative exercise alsohas the duty to make it easy for teachers and students to achieve this goal. This paper probes intothe design of current communicative exercise by interview and questionnaire.The paper mainly consists of five parts. In the beginning, chapter 1 introduces thebackground, presents the research goal, method and respondents. These are followed by theliterature review, which were conducted from three aspects. Firstly, by studies of Chinesematerials and exercises, the author finds that both the idea of“learning language by doing”andthe real context of exercises are more and more important; secondly, this chapter alsosummarizes researches on how to develop Chinese communicative abilities; and lastly, theauthor focuses on studies related to this paper, the communicative exercises, summarizes whatothers’have and haven’t done. Chapter 2 first gives a definition of this paper’s communicativeexercise. Then, it mainly identifies two theories, one is communicative ability, and the other oneis communicative approach. This chapter analyzes the requests for communicative exercise fromboth goal and means. Chapter 3 takes both quantitative and qualitative approaches. The papercollects opinions from teachers and foreign students by interview and questionnaire, and thenanalyzes them. The whole research is composed of two phases. In phase 1, the author figures outa frame, which are goals, contents, form, and feedback of communicative exercise, byinterviewing 5 teachers. Phase 2 of the research involves foreign students’questionnaire, andthen compiles and analyzes students’opinions. Chapter 4 deals with the problems of currentcommunicative exercise by explaining with examples, and gives advices respectively. Accordingto the theories and reaches, chapter 5 provides a primary frame of communicative exercise andfurther explains each step with details.This paper is a preliminary exploration into the field of Chinese communicative exercise. Ittakes communicative approach as means and communicative ability as goal, analyzing some problems and solutions of current Chinese communicative exercise. However, the paper needsmore studies and researches to make Chinese materials more systematic and perfect.