The Research Of Teaching Idioms In A Course In Chinese Colloquial Idioms

Spoken Chinese idioms is widely used in our daily communication because of its strong effect of spoken, concise form and rich connotation. It is very easy for Chinese native speakers to use idioms, but for the overseas students who learn Chinese as second language, its deep meaning under the literal meaning makes it hard to learn and use. The overseas students often make mistakes when they use the Chinese idioms. They know the meaning of every words in the idioms, but when the words combined they can’t know the real meaning. But just because of the characteristics that contain various of Chinese culture, Chinese idioms attracts more students to learn. This paper describes Chinese idioms in meaning, semantic feature, pragmatic feature, grammar feature and sources from the research of ontology. By using the questionnaire to the students, it is found that the selection of teaching materials, the time students learn Chinese and whether there is context are three important aspects in acquisition of Chinese idioms. This paper analysis the questions of semantic, pragmatic, grammar showed in the questionnaire by using the theory of second language acquisition. From the analysis we can find that semantics and pragmatics are the two aspects which often cause errors when students use idioms. And the different reasons appeared when the students use the idioms are analyzed by the factors of culture, learner, teacher, guidance from teaching materials. Finally, through the interviews of the teachers, the experience from my teaching and the principles of step by step, main explanation with more exercises and advancing with the times, it is summarized that teaching Chinese idioms should focus on teaching material with supplementary details and introduce some Chinese culture. This paper will help learners to have the concept of "idioms family" and give advises about the teaching strategies of the errors in semantic, pragmatic and grammar.