The Analysis And Evaluation Of AIM (Accelerative Integrated Method) Textbooks

In recent years,the number of overseas Chinese young learners is increasing with the continuous promotion of overseas Chinese teaching.However,the textbooks which authentically consider the characteristics of children's second language acquisition,the features of kidology and the regularity of language learning are still very few.From the author's perspective of Australian children's Chinese language teaching,on one hand,some Australian schools use traditional textbooks from mainland China but most of these materials are based on themes or topics.This led to the formation of an isolated plate in teaching.The cohesion between the texts is weak so it is not conducive to the students to grasp the language output systematically and integrally.On the other hand,influenced by the the model of "no textbooks " in some western countries,some primary schools advocate "learning while playing ","no teaching materials and no homework".In such a teaching environment,it is difficult to achieve the effectiveness of classroom teaching.Even some children's language level is still in the holophrastic stage.Therefore,how to use the critical period of language acquisition and to write a targeted and practical Chinese textbook with a strong sense of student participation,helping students quickly transit to the phase of paragraph expression and finally output the language fluently,has become an important and urgent goal of local Chinese teaching.In the observation of Carey Baptist Grammar School primary school classroom teaching,the author noticed a set of Victoria's new Chinese textbooks for children which use a new compiling models---"Dynamic Story(Children Edition)---the Chick",edited by Wendy Maxwell and Jen Mc Kinney.This textbook which is inspired by AIM teaching method and adopts the writing mode of "story type "rather than "topic type" has achieved a effective teaching result.This article focuses on the "Dynamic Story(Children Edition)---the Chick" as the research object and starts from the aspect of compilation idea,overall design,structural arrangement,corpus and story analysis and the teaching method so as to study the characteristics of this textbook.Moreover,the author aims to evaluate the AIM series “Dynamic Story(Children Edition)---the Chick" in Chinese teaching through the investigation and interview of teachers and the aspect of teaching and learning,such as teaching vocabulary,sentences,texts,exercises,supporting materials,standards of student assessment,etc.The study explores the application of the textbook in teaching Chinese,evaluating their strengths and weaknesses in order to further improve this set of textbooks.Hopefully it can provide reference for the future development of more targeted localized Chinese textbooks for children.This research is divided into six core parts.The first part is the literature review of the relevant teaching methods and materials,the basic content of the AIM teaching method and its series of textbooks "Dynamic Story(Children Edition)---the Chick".It also define the scope of the study.The second part is the investigation of the present teaching situation of 19 primary schools in Victoria.It describes the background of Chinese teaching in primary and secondary schools in Australia and analyzes the problems of the Australian children's textbooks.The third part introduces the framework,teaching arrangement and layout characteristics of AIM textbook "Dynamic Story(Children Edition)---the Chick".The fourth part analyzes the style,form and features of AIM textbook from the aspects of vocabulary,characters,grammar,text,exercises and activities.The fifth part analyzes the characteristics of the "story type" of AIM textbooks and explores the means of story presentation,retelling and creationThe sixth part uses the software SPSS to conduct the quantitative evaluation of Dynamic Story(Children Edition)---the Chick".Referring to the contrast group of non AIM P-1 textbooks,the author summarizes the strengths and weaknesses of AIM textbooks.The last part is offering some suggestions on compiling localized textbooks.