A Comparative Study Of "Gateway To Mandarin Chinese" & "Speak Chinese

The ultimate goal of Chinese learning is to develop the ability of using Chinese as a communicative tools in real life.If students can't learn to actually use them in life,then such learning will be meaningless."The purpose of teaching Chinese as a foreign-language is to cultivate students' communicative competence." This belief has become the motto of teaching Chinese as foreign language,and every scholar will definitely agrees with.For this reason,the textbook as the first tool of students' learning material should also implement the goal of cultivating communicative competence and reflect the communicative function in all aspects in the text book.This thesis will analyze from the perspective of cultivating students'communicative competence for two Chinese oral textbooks used in Sabah,Malaysia-"Gateway to Mandarin Chinese"&"Speak Chinese—an Introductory Course to the Chinese Language",and explore whether the two textbooks show communicative functions in all aspects then summarize which textbooks shows more communicative functions.The introduction part explains the reason and significance of this thesis,the literature review sort out the research on communicative competence theory in China and abroad,the scholar evaluation of Teaching Chinese as Second Language(TCSL)text book and the current status of Malaysia TCSL textbook writing.The first chapter introduces the theory of communicative competence and the factors that influencing communicative competence.From the theory,author explains the relationship between communicative competence and TCSL text book writing,then proposes some principles of TCSL textbook writing for the purpose of cultivating students communicative competence.The second chapter compares and analyzes the topics of texts,communicative roles and functional items in the two textbooks.The third chapter discusses the vocabulary of the two textbooks,the vocabulary change trend and the vocabulary recurrence rate to explore which textbook compilation is more in line with the purpose of cultivating students' communicative competence.In the fourth chapter,author compares the exercises of textbook,types and contents of the two textbooks,and analyzes how the exercises of the two textbooks reflect the communicative function in terms of scientific,pertinency,practicality and playfulness.In the fifth chapter,the author compares the cultural contents of the two textbooks,and classified the cultural content of the textbook into knowledge culture and communicative culture,and discusses how the textbooks reflect communicativeness in terms of culture.Finally,the author summarizes the advantages and disadvantages of the two textbooks,and make some suggestions for the textbook writing in order to improve communicative competence,providing some insights for future Malaysian TCSL textbook writers.In the conclusion part,the author summarizes the advantages and disadvantages of the two textbooks in text topics,communicative roles,functional features,vocabulary,exercises and culture,and draws a conclusions on which textbooks are more communicative.