The Study On Colloquial Rhetorical Question And The Application In Teaching Chinese As Foreign Language

The basic purpose of Teaching Chinese as Foreign Language is cultivating students with their ability of using proper Chinese in different communicative activities, which includes the ability of choosing the right language and expressions to handle different social circumstances and topics. Rhetorical question is one of the widely spoken sentences in oral Chinese and it has attracted researchers from grammar,pragmatics and rhetorics to pay much attention on it. At the same time, the rhetorical question also plays an important role in Teaching Chinese as Foreign Language. Some researchers do the research and have got achievements by combining the conclusion of the research on rhetorical question and Chinese teaching. But few expects do the research on the field of colloquialism. This study firstly focuses on the different types of rhetorical question on their syntactic structure and pragmatic features in colloquialism. Then the author provides some advices on oral Chinese teaching and textbook compilation.This paper starts from the conclusion on syntactic structure, pragmatic features and the correlated study from teaching Chinese as foreign Language from previous research.Chapter Two analyzes the structure of the colloquial rhetorical question. By separating the rhetorical question into four types,which are WH-rhetorical question, yes-or-no rhetorical question,selective and positive-negative rhetorical question and other rhetorical question,the thesis has analyzed their structures and semantics. It has pay much attention on the special fixed rhetorical question among these above mentioned rhetorical question, which is commonly used in oral Chinese communication. The thesis also do some research on the different rhetorical level of rhetorical question. The research finds that some factors could effect the rhetorical level, just like negative words, modal verbs and some adverbs that can emphasize the rhetorical level. Chapter Three is going to analyze the pragmatic functions according to the theory of adaptation based on the previous research in chapter two. There can be separated into two broad categories according to the physical environment and mental environment of the two sides. One is the adaptation to the positive emotions while the other is the adaptation to the negative emotions. There is a typical characteristic of the use of Chinese colloquial rhetorical question, which shows the pursuit of modesty, harmony and gentility in Chinese communication.Several issues have been occurred by inspecting the series of school textbooks and syllabus in chapter four. The main issue is that the rhetorical question of the textbooks selected has more difficult than the rhetorical question in syllabus. While the not fully explained note about the function of rhetorical question is another issue that is existed in this series of school textbooks. And finally is the sum-up about the issues.