Research On Chinese Popular Words In Teaching Chinese As A Foreign Language

Language is a mirror for our society, every sentence and word reflectssocial changes vividly, especially popular words. With the development ofsociety, some popular words are no longer in use while some others enter thelist of basic words. In recent years, more and more scholars have focused onthe subject of popular words, but still there are a lot of shortcomings, forexample, not enough attention has been paid to researches about popularwords in teaching Chinese as a foreign language.In this study, the popular word means the word or phrase which iscreated after1980s, and is widely and frequently used. Numbers andsymbols are not included. In the first part, we concluded causal facts forforming new popular word from three aspects: linguistic aspect, cognitivepsychology aspect and social psychology aspect.In order to understand the necessity for teaching popular words to over-sea students, we interviewed three experienced teachers and sent100questionnaires to over sea students. Both research results showed that it’snecessary to teach popular words to over-sea students, and most teachershave already taken actions.In the end, several suggestions are provided for in-class and out-of-classlearning for popular words.