The Chinese teaching material is the bases of TCFL, and the Chinese classes without the teaching materials are not scientific enough, what’s more, students who had totally discarded the teaching materials while staying to study in China may also are purposeless or not clearly-targeted.
In addition, the quality of the teaching materials bears a significant influence upon the quality of TCFL classes and studies. Since it is well understood by everyone to learn Chinese in China that the horrible teaching materials would not only be unable to help students master the Chinese language, but also be a hindrance and stumbling rock in the students’ Chinese learning, then, people would be able to come up with the question: What is the current status of the Chinese teaching materials in China?
Well, it should be noticed by students expecting to learn Mandarin in China that the Chinese teaching materials lags behind the Japanese teaching materials fifty years, and one hundred years behind that of the English teaching materials. And here are some real cases for consultation.
In the past, I used o buy the Japanese teaching material Standard Japanese in Beijing twice, since it was quite popular then within China, however, when I entered the book store, each of the bookstores in Hong Kong has a whole shelf of Japanese learning materials, readers may be quite familiar with those great variety of Japanese materials when you study Chinese in China.
As students who are puzzled about how to learn Mandarin had expected, I was able to discover a full stack of Japanese materials, ranging from the pronunciation cards, the full-color Japanese etiquette tips, and the explanation of the Japanese grammar in cartoons, all of which are image-rich illustrated instructions. As soon as language learners to learn to speak Chinese in China open the book, they would be swelled with the feeling that the learning of Japanese must be quite enjoyable and easy experience, since even if the language learners may fail to learn it well; they would find it an enjoyment even in the simple reading and appreciation of the short stories on the free circular tour of Japan.
However, to the dismay of the most of the Chinese learners to take free Chinese lessons, people would be able to find the Chinese learning materials in the mainland of China much more boring, since there are invariably overspreading explanations of Chinese grammar, vocabulary builders and sentence pattern collocations, which are totally printed in black and white characters on the thin paper.
Readers in qualified Mandarin program may be able to read through the words on the other side due to the poor quality of it, even if you are lucky enough to come across some cartoon pictures in the book, the Chinese designing of cartoons would be a headache, combining with the hasty and amateurish edit of the photos, people would be hardly be able to arouse their interest facing with thick piles of Chinese learningmaterials of A4 copy paper.
As to the English teaching materials, it is even more incomparable with the Chinese ones in Chinese school in China, since most of them are with coated art paper, which had been meticulously measured. The end of the book are usually designed with an attached with instructional theories within one hundred pages, each page contains a margin space for the students, and each book are attached with a further reading for direction, the above mentioned merits are probably the experiences accumulated through decades of foreign language teaching.
While people would let out a sigh after taking a glance of the Chinese teaching materials, since it is inscrutable for most Chinese language learners to learn Mandarin in China that how could China not be able to produce one or two competitive ones with so much experiences provided by our forerunners and the foreigners for suggestion.
It is true for students who are interested in Chinese culture that China remains in the exploratory stage, however, the widely used teaching materials published by the Beijing Language and Culture University are becoming more dreary, the ones of the Beijing University seems immature, resembling the teaching of theChinese Lessons of the Primary or middle schools, the English translation given in the books seems to provide little information, without enough examples and Pinyin given. The current publishing market is fickle, superfluous in number but no high-quality ones, without foreign market, theoretical basis, low-tech, unaesthetic and unattractive.