Comparison Of American Secondary School TCSL Textbooks

The number of TCSL (Teaching Chinese as a Second Language) teaching materials isincreasing rapidly in recent years. But only small quantities of the various kinds areexcellent. Most of them don’t have clear targets and can’t adapt to the overseas Chineseteaching very well. This thesis is based on Happy Chinese (Volume1) and MandarinTeaching Toolbox (Level A). Both of them can be used for the beginners who learn Chinesein American secondary schools. Both of them are jointly designed by China and foreigncountries and rated as excellent teaching materials by Hanban. But they are different.Happy Chinese is published in China in2003and has complete supporting materials. It isused widely all over the world. Mandarin Teaching Toolbox is newly published in Canadaand is spreading in North America. This article compares Happy Chinese with MandarinTeaching Toolbox from the writing design and main content, including writing principles,reference outline, text, vocabulary, culture, etc. Through the comparison, first describingtwo textbooks comprehensively and analyzing the advantages and disadvantages.In thisway, the overseas Chinese teachers can understand the concept and content better and usethem to teach Chinese language in American secondary schools more appropriately. So theteaching quality overseas will be improved. Second, considering the Chinese teachingsituation in USA, it’s necessary to design different teaching materials for differentcountries. The comparison conclusion can give some advice for writing American TCSLteaching materials.