A Comparative Study Between Two Different Intermediate Chinese Reading Textbooks

As the basis of teaching and learning, material plays an important role in thewhole development of teaching and learning Chinese.Relevant scholars and teachingworkers have been working on it all the time.This paper has selected two extensive reading textbooks as the subjects. One is“The Chinese Reading Course”(Grade II), the other one is “Read Chinese EverydayIII”. The former was put out in2002by Beijing Language and Culture UniversityPress, representing the concept, content and methods of teaching Chinese at that time.The latter was published by Peking University Press in2011. Generally speaking, wecan see the development of teaching Chinese as a foreign language from these twobooks which are written by different experts, and published in different periods.The above–mentioned two textbooks have been analyzed and compared in thispaper from the aspects of writing style, topics, vocabulary, exercises and layout. Twosurveys have been conducted in Indonesia with findings as follows. Firstly, studentshave strong interests in traditional Chinese culture, but know a little about China’smodern culture. Secondly, compared with the old edition, the newly-publishedtextbook covers appropriate exercises to build up students’ communicativecompetence, and is more aware of the layout.