Comparison Between Homographs In Chinese And Japanese And The Teaching Of Chinese As A Foreign Langauge

It’s well acknowledged that there are a bunch of homographs in modern Chinese and modern Japanese. For Chinese learners of Japanese origions, those homographs can not be considered a strength as they appears. Instead, learners of Japanese origions have to relearn these homographs being different in different lanauge and the differences make the process confusing. To make it worse, in modern Chinese there are also many heteronymic characters which have two or more pronunciations and meanings. They can be called heteronyms for short.For the Chinese, the process of learning heteronyms in Chinese is not rosy and prone to mistakes and errors. This situation is still true of the Japanese.This thesis is made up of four chapters.Chapter One is the introduction. In this part, the author presents the objective and significance of this study, gives a brief introduction to the research status of homographs in Chinese and Japanese at home and overseas and defines the scope of and the approach to this paper.Chapter Two is a summary of homographs in Chinese and Japanese which includes their origions and connotations. At the meantime, it counts the homographs included in three reference books, i.e. Handbook for heteronyms Learning, Dictionary of Synonyms, Antonyms andHeteronyms and the latest Common Chinese Characters in Japanese and the number amounts to 167.Chapter Three focuses on the heteronyms in Chinese and conducts a comparative analysis of homographs in Chinese and Japanese.Systematically, it analyzes the similarities and differences between homographs in Chinese and Japanese mainly from the pronunciation,character pattern and meaning.Chapter Four is based on the previous chapter and explores the teaching of Chinese polyphones to the Japanese. It’s found that the discrepency shall be the focus of teaching and the disadvantage for the learners. The similarities are advantageous to learners of Japan. At last,this thesis makes a simple teaching design for heteronyms that appear in Way to Success 1: for Beginners, a comprehensive course for teaching Chinese as a foreign language.