Cognitive psychologists represented by Piaget believe that children's language development is closely related to their cognitive ability. "Children's language acquisition is not an instinctive and natural process, but a product of the interaction between natural psychological cognitive ability and objective experience, so the development of cognition determines the development of language." Children's language development and cognitive ability are based on direct and concrete experiences and developed through the accumulation of these experiences. Therefore, people's language ability is not innate. The development of language is based on cognition, develops with the development of cognitive ability, and is acquired through acquired learning.
1 Enlightenment to teaching principles
Teaching principle is the basic requirement to reflect teaching rules and guide teaching work according to the purpose of education and teaching. It reflects people's understanding of the essential characteristics and inherent laws of teaching activities, and it is a guiding principle and code of conduct for effectively guiding teaching work, which should be implemented in all aspects and always in the teaching process.
1. 1 principle of cultivating interest
The primary principle of international Chinese teaching for children is to cultivate and constantly stimulate children's interest in learning Chinese. Teachers should pay attention to cultivating children's oral expression ability, so that children are willing to express themselves, have the confidence to show their learning achievements, and enhance their sense of language and closeness to Chinese. Therefore, whether it is the choice of teaching content, teaching methods or even teaching games, we must adhere to the principle of moderate difficulty, not too simple or too difficult, so as to avoid children's fear and retreat.
Case: Cowboy in the West is a very popular game in the author's Chinese class. The rules of the game are simple and easy to understand: two students stand back to back, the teacher gives each student a new word card, and then counts "1, 2, 3". The students took three steps forward in their respective directions. When they count to "three", the students turn around and read the cards in each other's hands at the fastest speed, and the students with the fastest speed win. Teachers have used this game in every class from grade one to grade five. Students can easily understand the rules, and the game effect and teaching effect are very good.
So, after teaching the color words in the preparatory class for one class, the teacher plans to let the children play "cowboy in the west" for review in the second class. The teacher was in high spirits and thought that the children would like the game very much. As a result, the game didn't go smoothly and didn't achieve the expected results at all. At first, many children didn't understand the rules of the game. Some people stopped walking when they heard the teacher count, some kept walking when they heard "three", some turned around before "three", some turned to look at the cards in their hands, and so on. After several attempts, the children's learners finally got a general understanding of the rules, but they were not as excited as they were at first, and the teachers were a little impatient. After the game officially started, several children who actively tried did not perform well. When they turn around, few people can say the right answer. The teacher's face became ugly, because the students' performance was not satisfactory, and fewer and fewer children volunteered to participate in the game. Finally, the teacher can only let those children who don't raise their hands at all play games, and many children say that they are "unwilling to participate in games". In the end, this "cowboy in the west" game ended tragically in Pre-k class. After one class, both teachers and children looked unhappy.
In the subsequent unremitting attempts, Pre-k children gradually became familiar with the game "Cowboy in the West" and enjoyed it. In the case 1, the timing of the game is obviously inappropriate, and it is too difficult for children to play at this time, which destroys their interest in participating in the game. However, teachers pay too much attention to the game results, and their negative reaction aggravates children's fears, making them afraid to show themselves, which seriously affects their interest and confidence in learning these new words.
1.2 "immersion teaching" principle
"Immersive teaching" creates a learning environment closest to the mother tongue acquisition environment, which can make children's second language acquisition process as easy and natural as possible. However, "immersion teaching" is impossible in many cases. At this time, we should try our best to create a Chinese environment. Teachers should make full use of monologues, questions and answers, dialogue demonstrations, storytelling and other ways to immerse children in the Chinese environment within the limited classroom teaching time. Therefore, strict requirements are put forward for the demonstration, richness and acceptability of teachers' classroom language.
1.3 principles of appreciation education
Cognitive psychology holds that nature and nurture influence each other and work together on almost everything we do, and this interaction is also reflected in international Chinese teaching for young children. Chinese teachers can't ignore the innate factors in children's Chinese learning, but the efforts of the day after tomorrow are also crucial. Teachers should analyze specific problems when dealing with children, encourage and affirm children with insufficient learning ability in time, and let these children also experience the fun of learning Chinese; For children with outstanding learning ability, we should raise the requirements, appropriately broaden the teaching content, deepen the difficulty, and avoid complacency or loss of interest because the learning content is not challenging. At the same time, it can also play an exemplary role for "advanced" children, guide other children to learn from them, and make the whole group in a positive Chinese learning atmosphere. After class, the author first teaches children learners to say "Great" and "Come on", which are often used in preschool and kindergarten. Let children learn to make a fist and shout "Come on" when their peers are not performing well; When your partner behaves well, give a thumbs-up and say "Great".
2 Enlightenment of teaching strategies
"Teaching strategy is a simple integration of teaching ideas, method models and technical means in the teaching process, and it is a method model formed by processing teaching thinking through thinking strategies." '
2. 1 intuitive learning through intuitive images
Let children learn intuitively through actions, expressions or intuitive images. "In children's thinking structure, it is obvious that three ways of thinking coexist at the same time: concrete image thinking is dominant; But when you encounter simple and familiar problems, you can use abstract logical thinking; When the problems encountered are more complicated and difficult, they have to turn to intuitive action thinking. " Because of the characteristics of children's intuitive action thinking and concrete image thinking, they mainly rely on the concrete image, representation and association of representations of things, which are intuitive and vivid. This way of thinking makes it impossible for children to learn Chinese without specific objects, actions and situations. In most cases, they understand and express Chinese through intuitive movements, rich expressions or specific situations. At the same time, this intuitive way of thinking also makes children's Chinese learning natural, and they are not clearly aware that they are learning a foreign language. Therefore, international preschool Chinese teachers should be good at using pictures or objects to actively create scenes and reproduce the life closely related to young children. When teaching new words, the author will try to choose new words that are actually related to children's real life and can be used by them without leaving the outline. For example, when teaching the theme of "food", the author decided to reduce the proportion of food in China and limit it to foods that children can eat when they go to China restaurants, such as "jiaozi", "noodles" and "rice". Facts have proved that when children see pictures of "western food", their reaction is stronger than that of "Chinese food", especially for children who have never been exposed to Chinese food at all, because they can understand and express these Chinese words of "western food" through their real life experiences. At the same time, the author encourages children to express themselves in Chinese as much as possible when ordering in China restaurants. A former K's child once proudly said that he went to a restaurant to eat in China, told the waiter that he wanted to eat "jiaozi" and showed the waiter that he could use China chopsticks! This situation makes the author feel gratified, but in fact, this classmate's memory of "Jiaozi" is the strongest among the children in Pre-K class.
2.2 According to the teaching content to form a knowledge representation
According to Piaget's cognitive development stage theory, children are in the pre-operation stage and their psychological representation ability is gradually developing. The two main forms of expression are words and images, which are different. Some ideas are better and easier to express with images, while others are more suitable to express with words.
According to the different characteristics of teaching content, the author's teaching activities and teaching games are constantly adjusted. Images are more suitable for capturing specific spatial information because they are similar to what they represent. For example, when teaching Chinese words such as animals, fruits and food. The Imitation Game's works such as "Distortionless Reproduction" are mainly used to help children form image representations of these new words. Characters use symbols to represent things, which makes it easier to capture abstract and classified information. Compared with the intuitive teaching content, the teaching of daily greetings, numbers and dates needs teachers to help children form corresponding abstract concepts.
3. Enlightenment to specific teaching methods
Teaching method is the general name of the ways and means used by teachers and students to achieve the same teaching goal and complete the same teaching task in the teaching process.
3. 1 Application of game method
The reason why children like games is that they have a strong interest in the content of the games. Because children's intentional attention is short, the effect is not as good as unintentional attention, so the author mostly needs to use the game method in Chinese teaching in preschool and kindergarten classes, and combine the game with Chinese teaching closely, so that children can learn Chinese in a happy mood. For example, the "fly swatter" is an important game for teachers to deepen children's initial impression of the pronunciation of new words, and they have maintained a long-term enthusiasm for this game. Practice has proved that this game is really helpful for them to remember new words. Even some games with complicated rules, such as "fruit squatting" or "cowboy in the west", children will not perform well at first because they are not familiar with the rules; But as long as they are interested in the game, they are willing to keep trying, and gradually they will become more and more skilled and perform better and better. I'm afraid this is also an effect that traditional teaching can't achieve.
3.2 the use of a variety of teaching methods
First, international preschool Chinese teachers should be open-minded, absorb the beneficial views of various language teaching schools, such as listening and speaking, audio-visual method, communicative method, total physical response, situational teaching method, performance method and game method, and then adopt more effective and specific teaching methods according to the actual teaching content.
For example, the use of demonstration method is very helpful to the Chinese classroom teaching in the author's primary school. When explaining the rules of the game to children, because of their own understanding limitations or China's poor English expression, sometimes children still have a little knowledge for a long time. At this time, the author often asks the children who have already understood to cooperate and show the game process and rules to other children, supplemented by language explanations, so that learners can understand.
For another example, children in China are inspired in the process of learning Chinese pronunciation. The author uses China's teachers or parents' gestures and body language to express tones, which helps children to deepen their impressions and master the methods of four-tone change. American children have no idea about tone, but when I teach new words to demonstrate pronunciation, especially some words with difficulty in pronunciation, I will also use gestures or body language to express tone and demonstrate. On the one hand, this "whole body reaction" makes children move and makes the originally boring pronunciation process interesting; On the other hand, it also subtly gives children some rough impressions of Chinese tones.
3.3 the use of multimedia technology
International Chinese teachers should be good at using multimedia technology to deepen multi-angle teaching. Early childhood has laid the foundation of its advanced emotions, such as beauty. The beauty of children is not only reflected in their love for colorful objects, but also in their love for music, dance and especially singing. Young children especially like to have rhythmic activities while singing. The author's Pre-k and kindergar ten children learn Chinese songs quickly and rarely forget them, and remember the supporting actions of the songs clearly. For example, every time the teacher asks them to sing "Two Tigers", they can show it immediately without recalling it, and they will also actively cooperate with the corresponding actions.
Usually, children prefer music, dance or video with familiar content. For example, they like the story of Cinderella in China ―― Shen Ye very much, and the similarity of the story makes them feel close to this oriental girl soon. Of course, children will also show great interest in novel and unfamiliar video images. They were amazed at the video of "Changing Face" of Peking Opera shown by the author. They were deeply impressed by this brand-new and magical thing.