Teaching Strategies Of Intonation In The Preliminary Stage Of Teaching Chinese As A Foreign Language

The teaching of phonetics is one of fundamental steps of the process of teaching Chinese as a foreign language, in which the intonation is an important part. The teaching of intonation has often been adopted in the the senior stage of teaching Chinese as a foreign language, however, its importance should not be neglected in the primary stage, it should be said that the intonation teaching in the primary stage is also worth our attention and research. When foreign students practice Chinese listening and speaking, foreign accent are often be heard, especially among elementary Chinese learners, it is no doubt that different means expressed by different intonations bring confusion and obstacles to them. To solve this problem, teachers are supposed to seek teaching methods in more effective ways for summarizing strategies of teachers’ teaching and students’ learning. It appears particularly important in the primary stage of the teaching, since only the solid foundation can lead to a successful start to senior stages.This paper is divided into four parts which respectively discuss the related issues of intonation teaching and probe into some instructional theories and practices in the primary stage of the teaching.The first part of this paper introduces the origin, the purpose and the significance of the study and describes the related study at home and abroad, the present situation of research, the research content and method, the intonation of universality and the nature of the Chinese intonation. So we can come to the conclusion that related issues of the study of intonation in the primary stage of teaching Chinese as a foreign language, a lot of problems are still to be solved and discussed by us.The second part emphasizes the analysis of the problem of intonation teaching of Chinese beginners including its relationship with four tones, semantic relevance, and contact with the context. According to the investigations of the students, it discusses the semantic obstacles for Chinese beginners caused by problems of intonation, and analyze the reason of causing obstacles more deeply from the complexity of intonation, negative transfer of mother tongue, cognitive factors and emotional factors.In the third part, based on the expressing function of the intonation, it clarifies the importance of intonation teaching in the primary stage and emphasizes the fundamental effect taken by it to senior Chinese learners. Focusing on the questionnaire survey for Chinese beginners and specific mistakes they’ve made, it suppose some means of solve problems caused by intonation through research on teaching strategies. The research is taken in three different curriculum types:the spoken Chinese class, listening course and integrated programme. It aims at enhance the effective of teaching and learning to help foreign students learn and love Chinese more favorably.The fourth part is the summary of the thesis. It concludes the main point and the outline, besides, it points out the deficiency in the research and shows the great potential for developing the intonation teaching.