| This thesis progresses from the premise that there exists a profound need to support the teaching of Modern Standard Chinese to English-speaking tertiary learners with well-designed, effective and user-friendly language textbooks which can motivate students and will thus enhance the language acquisition process of beginning learners.;The thesis therefore examines the role which language texts play in presenting the language to the beginning learners of Modern Standard Chinese. It looks first at foreign language acquisition theories and their application to the teaching of Modern Standard Chinese, and investigates language teaching methodologies and classroom strategies, the formulation of goals and objectives for language instruction and their measurement; the results of teaching experiments and a number of Modern Standard Chinese textbooks for English-speaking, beginning tertiary learners.;In order to define the function and nature of effective language texts, the thesis surveys the current teaching of Modern Standard Chinese to English-speaking tertiary learners at Australian and overseas institutions. It evaluates the comments received from students about learning difficulties and the perceived deficiencies of language textbooks used to support the language acquisition process. Teachers' comments about textbook validity are also sought and considered.;After discussing the findings from this investigation the thesis proceeds to establish a set of criteria relating to the content of instructional materials used for the teaching of Modern Standard Chinese to beginning English-speaking tertiary learners On the basis of these criteria the thesis then progresses to report on the evaluation of a range of existing Chinese language textbooks from different sources.;On the basis of the various findings, the thesis concludes by making a number of recommendations about the effective design of Chinese language textbooks and classroom teaching strategies. |
