The Analysis On The Characters’ Selection And Sequential Arrangement Of The Primary Chinese Characters Textbooks

Currently, the primary Chinese characters textbooks for foreigners who treatChinese as a second language selects characters generally refer to The ChineseProficiency Level Outline of Vocabulary and Characters. However,the outline rankedthe characters on the basis of vocabulary’s level.This method,to some extent,neitherconsiders some characters own unique features,nor takes full account of foreignlearners’ cognitive rules.Combining the previous studies on principles of selecting characters speciesand arranging their sequence with experimental results about factors that affectcharacters’ learning,this paper comprehensively analyzes factors which exertinfluence on characters’ acquisition from three aspects:pattern,sound andmeaning.Those factors consist of stroke, components, structure, characters’frequency,meaning-items,word-building capacity and the link between characters’pattern andits’ pronunciation or meaning.As some former studies have concluded inconsistentresults,in addition,the assessments,which were about influential force of variousfactors on characters’ learning,were not that objective. Therefore, we conducted aquestionnaire survey on99foreign learners. Based on their objective appraisals ofthe seven factors and widely accepted theories, we sort out five factors which reallyaffect characters’ acquisition: the number of strokes, the number of components,characters’frequency, word-building capacity and the link between characters’patternand its’ pronunciation or meaning. We choose them as characters’ selecting standardand establish grades for Corresponding data. In addition,through statistical analysisof the factors’ influential force on learners,we assign appropriate weight ratio for thefive factors,then obtain a kind of relatively rational and intuitive calculation methodof optimizing characters’ selection.With Chinese Characters Easy to Learn：Beginners working as an example, we analyze characters selected by this textbook from above-mentioned five factors, and build a characters’ sequence table. What’smore, in order to test the textbook’s characters-option is reasonable or not,wecompare its selected characters with the characters from vocabulary outline from TheChinese Proficiency Test Syllabus（level1——level3）.As to the arrangement of primary Chinese characters textbook’s characters,this paper combines learning strategies，teaching methods and arranging approachessummed from four representative primary Chinese characters textbooks, and thenfounded a set of choreography principles.Based on the established characters’sequence table, we choose the top100Chinese characters from it and design theirorder of appearance according to our principles.Methods of selecting characters species and arranging their sequence providedhere takes characteristics of Chinese characters themselves, learners’ cognitive rulesand primary teaching strategies into account.It’s convincing and feasible withadequate examples for explanation.We hope this paper could act as a reasonable andpractical reference for the future primary Chinese characters textbook’s design.