Practice shows that if the orientation of Chinese character teaching is vague, it will interfere with and deviate from the direction of Chinese character teaching and affect the effect of Chinese character teaching.
2. The purpose of Chinese character teaching. The so-called modern Chinese character teaching in teaching Chinese as a foreign language refers to a teaching activity that takes foreigners as the object, takes modern Chinese characters as the content, and uses foreign language teaching methods to master the skills of using Chinese characters. The fundamental purpose of Chinese character teaching is to clarify the form, sound and meaning of modern Chinese characters, help students read and write Chinese characters, learn Chinese and master the written Chinese language; Of course, in the process of learning Chinese characters, students inevitably have to contact and learn Chinese character culture. Undoubtedly, this is the objective effect of Chinese character teaching, and there is no need to pursue it deliberately. It must be emphasized that Chinese characters are morphemes, and how many Chinese characters a student can master is not only related to the students' oral Chinese level, but also the key to learning Chinese written language well.
3. The present situation of Chinese character teaching. Modern Chinese character teaching should be close to the reality of the teaching object. Our teaching objects can be divided into two categories: one is students from Europe and America, who know neither Chinese nor Chinese characters, and are completely different from Chinese characters in language family and writing system; The other is Japanese and Korean students who belong to the cultural circle of Chinese characters. Although the latter knows some commonly used Chinese characters, they can't speak Chinese, and Japanese and Korean are not related to Chinese in language family. Comparatively speaking, it is relatively easy for Japanese students and Korean students to learn Chinese characters, because Japanese students will learn 65,438+0,945 commonly used Chinese characters in Japan and Korean students will learn 65,438+0,800 commonly used Chinese characters in middle school, regardless of pronunciation. This will help them learn Chinese vocabulary. However, because the meaning of Japanese and Korean Chinese characters is different from that of China Chinese characters in connotation and extension, it is easy for them to read the meaning of the text and produce negative effects. A famous example is that Japanese "toilet paper" is equivalent to Chinese "letter", while Chinese "dim sum" is equivalent to Korean "lunch". From the perspective of learning Chinese characters, the students in China cultural circle are sure.
Therefore, when Japanese and Korean students study Chinese characters in China, they should learn Chinese characters as a foreign language. Otherwise, they can't learn Chinese well In fact, perhaps because of cognitive bias, Japanese and Korean students do not necessarily learn better than European and American students, because they know the advantages of Chinese characters, especially in oral expression.
Of course, learning complicated Chinese characters is by no means an easy task for European and American students in their twenties, and it is even worse to remember them. As far as I know, most schools in China pay more attention to the teaching of Chinese characters and make better arrangements. In primary school, some schools also offer Chinese character classes and arrange Chinese character writing exercises. In the intermediate stage, Chinese character teaching is put into text teaching, and Chinese character teaching and Chinese vocabulary teaching are carried out simultaneously. The advantages of doing so are as follows. But if it is not handled properly, it may also lead to disadvantages. Vocabulary teaching will replace Chinese character teaching. Because teachers usually pay attention to the reading and understanding of texts and the teaching of words and grammar in classroom teaching. Chinese characters are only taught to students as a lexical unit, so it is easy to ignore the teaching of Chinese characters. Therefore, some people say that the so-called Chinese character teaching is only in the primary stage, and it was unconsciously cancelled after the intermediate stage. It is hard to say that there is a strict sense of teaching Chinese characters as a foreign language. In my opinion, Chinese character teaching should run through the whole process of basic Chinese teaching. When students see "beauty", they should first check the English translation: there are so many beautiful things that a person can't take into the shopping mall at all. Or too beautiful to get rid of.
They learn the meaning of this idiom from English translation, but they don't pay much attention to the shape, pronunciation and meaning of the four Chinese characters in this idiom. They usually use graphics to read Chinese characters and take pictures of Chinese characters, while ignoring memory. If the teacher does not emphasize and prompt, it is difficult for students to distinguish the components and strokes of Chinese characters, so they often forget to write. Usually, there are many people who learn Chinese in the first day of each school, but there are also many people who try. Give up halfway when you encounter difficulties. "After ten years of cold window life, only a few students are left to climb the peak of master's or doctor's degree." (Peter Cobb, 1997) As far as I know, even these excellent students rarely write their graduation thesis in Chinese, but usually in their own mother tongue. They speak Chinese fluently, but some of them still have many problems in reading, especially writing. There is still a long way to go from the so-called "language proficiency", "cultural proficiency" and "China proficiency". "The most obvious reason is the difficulty of Chinese characters." (Peter Cobb, 1997) They often lack the ability to judge Chinese characters and can't distinguish "bottle, arm, narrow, sharp, block, fork and fork. The typed words are also strangely wrong. This is the present situation of Chinese character teaching.
There are many reasons for this.
On the theoretical level, some people think that language comes first, then words, and words are only symbols that record language, and symbols can be separated from ontology. John de Francis, an American structuralist, can best embody this idea. His Primary Chinese Reader, Intermediate Chinese Reader and Advanced Chinese Reader are divided into pinyin and Chinese characters. He advocates teaching Chinese first, then Chinese characters. Chinese characters may not be taught to people who just want to learn conversational skills. This view and practice is very popular in Europe and America. This view has also deeply influenced European and American students, who generally have a tendency to emphasize oral English, light Chinese characters, light reading and light writing. From a philosophical point of view, I think it is undoubtedly correct that language precedes writing. However, once a language has vocabulary, the reaction of vocabulary to language can not be ignored. In particular, morpheme words such as Chinese characters have a remarkable response to Chinese, reaching an alarming level. It is Chinese characters that retain the words of ancient Chinese, the quotations of ancient sages, excellent ancient poems, aphorisms and idioms, and the unique grammatical format of ancient Chinese. And kept some in modern Chinese. Chinese characters and Chinese are inextricably linked. If an international student really wants to learn Chinese well and become an advanced Chinese talent, I think it is impossible not to learn and master Chinese characters, and it is not advisable to set Chinese learning against Chinese character learning. In fact, Chinese characters have become a specific part of Chinese, and learning Chinese characters is learning Chinese. If you want to learn Chinese well, you must learn Chinese characters.
On the operational level, some people think that Chinese characters are China culture from the perspective of homology. When teaching Chinese characters, they often talk about the evolution of Chinese characters, cultural investigation, customs exploration, calligraphy art appreciation and so on. If we understand the teaching of Chinese characters in this way, people can teach the word "tea" in this way: "Tea, bitter tea, comes from Yu Sheng and Cao Cao". Ping Macheng. Re-discussion on three ways to write the word "tea", namely, tea, tea and tea. According to Tang Lu Yu's "The Origin of Tea Classics", the word "tea" is taken as "tea", and its word comes from the phonetic meaning of Kaiyuan; From wood, it is a "tree", and its word comes from materia medica; The combination of vegetation and trees is considered as "tea", and its word comes from erya. Explain the folk meaning of "tea" again: "The old name of bride price, such as three teas and six gifts, is to receive tea. "Chen Ming Wen Yao's Tea in the Sky": "Every tea tree must be planted, but it will not revive after transplantation, so the average employed woman must take tea as a gift. "What kind of tea is Qingpingtang?" Let's talk about the types of tea, the functions of tea, tea sets, tea ceremony and so on. The speaker is well-intentioned and tries his best to promote Chinese character culture, but the listener is like falling into the clouds and fog and getting nothing. Is this the teaching of modern Chinese characters in teaching Chinese as a foreign language? Of course not. The correct way is to clarify the shape, sound and meaning of "tea" and tell students the usage and writing of the word "tea". Also, teachers can practice with words, such as "black tea, green tea, new tea, aged tea, teahouse, tea ceremony, refreshments", and test whether students remember them at regular intervals. It's that simple!
In my opinion, only by reaching an agreement in concept and operation can we carry out modern Chinese character teaching in a real sense and realize the goal of Chinese character teaching.
Modern Chinese characters are different from ancient Chinese characters. TCFL Chinese character teaching should focus on modern Chinese characters. Although modern Chinese characters are the development of ancient Chinese characters.
However, after the official transformation, the shape of Chinese characters changed from round to straight, and the function of expressing meaning by shape was greatly lost. Chinese characters have gradually divorced from the meaning of pictures and become symbols of recording languages. This is a sign of the maturity of Chinese characters. Although the traditional theory of "Liu Shu" has something in common with modern philology, it can not be fully applied to the analysis of modern Chinese characters. For example, the pictographs "Sun, Moon, Mountain, Water, Hand, Heart, Child, Woman, Bow, Arrow, Knife, Lattice, Hu and Zhou" in the Six Books no longer have the pictographic features of modern Chinese characters, but have become symbolic characters. The word "sun" is used in "sunny, bright, blue, faint, sunny, bright, bright". Such as "treasure, pen, dust, brush, tear, extinguish, stove" and so on. The so-called pictophonetic characters in ancient Chinese characters, such as "river, river, bucket, cloth, sculpture, snake, frost, escape and drunkenness", have become semi-signifiers and semi-symbols in modern Chinese characters. Father Niu also. From the sound of Niumiao, disciples can get the gist. "Father Cow" means "Bull", but now it means "Special". The meaning and sound symbols have changed and become combination symbols. Although the teaching of Chinese characters cannot be completely divorced from ancient times, it is necessary to distinguish ancient and modern Chinese characters conceptually.
5. Teaching Chinese characters as a foreign language. Chinese character teaching is a practical science. Teachers who teach Chinese as a foreign language should have rich knowledge of Chinese characters, but they should not instill all this knowledge into students. On the one hand, they should strengthen their own research on modern Chinese characters and use other people's research results in Chinese character teaching; On the one hand, we should also study the teaching methods of Chinese characters, understand the reality of students, choose the key points and difficulties suitable for students to learn Chinese characters, and carry out visualized and hierarchical Chinese character teaching through repeated practice.
First of all, make clear the nature of modern Chinese characters. Chinese characters are morphemes, not pinyin characters. A Chinese character consists of three parts: form, sound and meaning. Shape and sound can be changed, but the basic meaning is generally unchanged. For example, "female", "Shuo Wen Jie Zi": "Female is also pictographic. Wang Yu said that all women are women, and Nero is also a car. " However, the basic meaning of this word is the same. There are 244 combinations of "female" in Shuowen alone, such as "surname, marriage, wife, aunt and sister". As a basic morpheme, "female" can form a multi-word knot, which is preceded by "daughter, woman, worker, queen, woman, woman, lady and strong woman"
There are 3500 commonly used Chinese characters in modern Chinese. According to the practice of teaching Chinese as a foreign language, 3,500 commonly used Chinese characters have been fine-tuned. According to the Outline of Chinese Proficiency and Chinese Character Grades, there are 800 first-class Chinese characters, 804 second-class Chinese characters, 500+ 1 1 for third-class Chinese characters and 2864+4 1 for fourth-class Chinese characters.
Secondly, analyze the font structure of modern Chinese characters. The whole characters of modern Chinese characters can be divided into two types: letter combination words and synthetic words. Liu Shu's hieroglyphs and signifiers are all combinations of letters, while ideographs and hieroglyphs are combination characters. Most of the letter combinations in modern Chinese characters come from ancient pictographs and indicators. The former is "man, hand, water, fire, sun, moon, rice, field, well, insect". Some synthesized words have been simplified and letter combinations have been entered, such as "dragon, expert, door, book and life". Most of the compound words of modern Chinese characters come from ancient cognitive characters and pictophonetic characters: the former is like "Hugh, Lin, Gong, Xing, Gai and Yan", while the latter is like "Bud, Reason, Jane, Ge, Mu, International and Sheng". A few of them come from ancient pictographs and signifiers: the former is like "Yan, Fish, Spring and Fu", and the latter is like "Yi". (Su Peicheng, 1994, pp.70) Students should know that independent characters are not only commonly used Chinese characters, but also components that make up composite characters, and they have strong word-formation ability, so they must be firmly remembered. Through the analysis of compound words, we can understand Chinese characters rationally. In the process of word formation, "some words are reasonable, some words are unreasonable, and some words are partially reasonable." Some words were not justified when they were produced, and some words were justified and lost in the process of development. " (Su Peicheng, 1994, pp.8 1) Therefore, it should be particularly emphasized that memorizing Chinese characters requires tricks and methods. This point should be repeatedly explained and emphasized to European and American students who have no habit of reciting!