An Investigation Of Language Functions About “Helpless” In Teaching Chinese As A Second Language

The primary function of language teaching is the function of social communication.The fundamental purpose of teaching Chinese as a foreign language is to enable learners to master the ability to use Chinese appropriately for communication.The functional approach,founded by Wilkins,put language meaning in the first place,emphasizes the functionality of language expression,the authenticity of the context of use,the communicative nature of the teaching process,and focuses on comprehensive language communication training,which can effectively cultivate learners’ language communication ability and cross-cultural communication ability.Therefore,it is necessary to take a function as the outline and examine functional items in detail."Helpless" is a common expression of emotion in communication.This paper takes the principle of "structure-function-culture" as a guide and selects the functional item of "helpless" in teaching Chinese as a foreign language as a research object,and analyzes the four common expressions of "helpless" from three planes: form,semantics,and pragmatics.This paper is divided into four parts.The first part is the introduction,which summarizes the definition of "functional items" and the current situation of research on functional items in teaching Chinese as a foreign language.It explains the main content,research methods,and significance of this paper.The second part is a thematic study,which analyzes each type of topic in terms of form,semantics,pragmatics,and error,focusing on pragmatics,and sets up concrete and realistic communicative situations,and proposing effective teaching suggestions.The third part compares the formal,semantic,and pragmatic differences between several expressions and their sub-structures,and identifies the similarities and differences.The fourth part is a summary and reflection,which summarizes the whole text and makes reference teaching suggestions.It is expected to provide some help in teaching Chinese as a foreign language in the classroom.