To use the focus literacy method in the child initiation stage is a good tradition of Chinese characters teaching in China. The famous teaching materials of focus literacy method with profound influence are Three Character Primer, the Book of Family Names and One Thousand Character Primer. The experimental use of the focus literacy method has achieved good results in many schools. However, many domestic schools still use the scattered literacy method to learn the characters appeared in books one by one. As a result, it becomes a question that whether the focus literacy method or the scattered method should be applied to the Chinese teaching to the foreigners.
In the Chinese language teaching books before the 1980s, the method of learning characters according to the text was popularly used. That is to say, the words appear in the books are those the learners need to master. But it brings much difficulty to the Chinese language learners. For example, if the points of the first lesson are 你好、谢谢and再见, the learners need to master the five characters你、好、谢、再and见. The foreigners who just begin to learn Chinese will feel it is just like drawing when learning those characters, thus producing the feeling the Chinese language is difficult to learn.
Such contradiction between characters and words is firstly the inner contradiction of the language and also expressed as the contradiction between language element teaching and language skill training. In order to solve this problem, some teaching materials use the method of learning pronunciation, oral expressions and vocabulary first without showing the new words or writing the characters. Gradually, some simple characters will gradually appear in the following texts. However, it might be difficult for foreign learners to connect the elements of meaning, pronunciation and structure if they have no basic knowledge of Chinese language.
To deal with the contradiction between the focus literacy method and the scattered literacy method, teachers are suggested to process the teaching in the structure of characters and words as well as the words meanings network, combining both methods together. If the foreign students who study in free Chinese lessons have applied the scattered literacy method for a long time, the characters appear without order and they need to recognize and memorize the isolated characters individual repeatedly so that to improve the efficiency of learning.