The Investigation Of The Association Method Of Teaching Chinese Characters In The Initial Stage Of Chinese Learning

The Chinese character is a major obstacle for Chinese learners, especially those who are non-Chinese cultural background. For a long time, the teaching of Chinese characters have been seriously lagging behind Chinese language teaching. In recent years, the teaching of Chinese character have received increasing attention in the entire Chinese teaching.The initial stage of Chinese characters teaching is the "stepping stone" of the entire Chinese character studying. When the students master a certain amount of literacy, especially after a certain understanding of components which compose Chinese characters as well as the structure of Chinese characters, Chinese characters learning will be easier and easier. The learning of Chinese characters in this stage is of great importance, however,it is relatively difficult comparing to other stages of Chinese learning.To solve the phenomenon of "difficult to learn the Chinese characters",the most effective way is to make use of the characteristics of Chinese characters and improve the teaching methods. Chinese characters are a form of ideogram,having the characteristics of using figure to express meaning. The association method of teaching Chinese characters takes the advantages of components parts teaching of Chinese characters, principles teaching of Chinese characters, subjective interpretation of Chinese characters teaching and the Character-Family teaching theory, trying to building a relationship among the shape,pronounciation and meaning of Chinese characters as well as Chinese characters.To estimate the effectiveness of the association method of teaching Chinese characters,the test selected20characters to do teaching practice among30students of Changsha Medical University. The results showed that this teaching method has certain function in helping students learning Chinese, it should be noted in the initial stage of Chinese characters teaching to develop learners’ awareness of" components parts" as well as to choose a word that contains the commonly used basic components parts; What’s more,it should be preferred in establishing a relationship according to the modern figure of Chinese characters. After the learners having been familiar with the association method of teaching Chinese characters and mastered a certain amount of characters, there is no need to explain every word to the students in this way, especially to students in senior Chinese learning stage, in order not to affect the cognitive of learners on the Chinese character culture, this method should be gradually replaced by principles teaching of Chinese characters.Due to the lack of conditions, the teaching practice and the investigation made for the association method of teaching Chinese characters is just a preliminary inspection of the teaching effectiveness of such teaching. There are still many practical problems, especially the lack of conditions for the Long-term investigation of such teaching.Future research can proceed from this.