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Fund for the Development of Teaching and Learning
Centre for Teaching Chinese as
a Foreign Language
Institute for
Chinese Studies
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Reading: Guide for Teachers
Although
the objective of this session was to teach ab initio students, we
decided to make use of original newspaper articles from as early a
stage as possible. After the first few preparatory weeks we took
unedited articles from newspapers published in China, Taiwan and Hong
Kong. The 17 articles selected deal with social, educational,
economic, political, military and foreign relations topics. When it
came to the vocabulary lists based on the articles we included only
the most regularly used expressions for students to learn, in attempt
to encourage them to make good use of their dictionaries. The
Vocabulary Index, Sentence Pattern Index and Tips Index
are therefore suitable for most newspaper revision classes at
intermediate level.
The
meanings of single characters are explained in the right hand boxes
within the vocabulary lists for each lesson, and are designed both to
help students remember new expressions and also to help them become
aware of how Chinese words are formed. Grammar points are highlighted
in red in the reading passages and are explained in the Sentence
patterns and function words section of each lesson.
Please
note that as the teaching of reading skills alone is not a
conventional way of teaching the language it is essential that the
following reading and reading-related skills are covered.
- 1. The use of dictionary
is one of the essential skills for reading, and is often neglected in
conventional teaching. In the first 3 weeks the following skills must be taught.
·
Recognition of radicals and components of characters
·
Counting
of stroke order
·
Recognition of pinyin (learning the pronunciation of Chinese words can help
students to remember vocabulary, but accuracy of pronunciation should not be
over-stressed for reading skills)
- 2. Remembering regularly
used words is important
for building up reading speeds. Students should not only be asked to
learn and remember the words on the vocabulary list but also should be made
aware of the related words. For instance, when they learn a new verb they should
also pay attention to its object. Teachers in the class should check these words
regularly.
- 3.
Analysing sentences
and extracting the gist
of a paragraph is also an important skill to teach. Students should be able to
identify the basic sentence pattern of a long sentence and find the subject,
main verb and object.
·
The grouping of words
and identification of how expressions are put together should be taught
during the reading practice.
·
Recognition of writing styles
of
(such as colloquial
or formal) should be taught. Four character expression patterns should also be analysed in the class.
·
Reading speeds
very much depend on how much
vocabulary students have learned. It does not take long to teach newspaper
reading analysis. Therefore the most important thing
is to help students to remember as many as
possible of the most regularly used newspaper words.
The material can be covered within
127.5 contact hours. In the first 10 weeks the main texts are printed out in
simplified characters and for the last 7 weeks in full-form characters. The
first 3 hours of each week are used for teaching new words and revising the
words and sentences from previous weeks, followed by teaching new sentence
patterns and passages.
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