In the process of teaching Chinese as a foreign language, the teachers who teach Mandarin language say the error rate of the use of adjectives tends to be high. The highest error tends to occur in the semantic and words collocation of the adjectives not only for the lower grade foreign students and the upperclassmen. In the real teaching process, three aspects must be paid attention to raise the understanding of the use of the adjectives in the sentences.
The first aspect is that the teachers should make clear to the students the grammatical features by the ways of formatting. For example, the teachers should tell the students whether the adjectives can be modified by the word 很, whether the adjectives can be reduplicated and the what the reduplication forms are.
The second aspect is that the teachers should make examples to make the foreign students know the specific application context. If the teachers just follow the general explanation in the dictionary, the foreign students will inevitably make mistakes in the practice. For example, the explanation of the adjective 优美 is like the following. the first is 美好, the second is 美妙,好看 and the third is 优雅而美丽,美好. The explanations are right but the foreign students will not know how to use the adjective since the word is not applied in a particular context. The application of the particular adjectives of the students comes from the understanding of textbooks and dictionaries as well as the teachers. If the explanations in the textbooks or dictionaries can not make clear the context, then the teachers should shoulder the responsibility to make clear the specific occasions of the adjectives. The foreign students in school in Kunming to study Chinese should listen to the teaching of the adjectives by the teachers.
Other aspects include the discrimination of some common-used adjectives whose meanings are similar. The form and function of the reduplication of the adjectives are one of the main tasks in the process of adjective teaching for the foreign students. In the process of adjective teaching, the teachers should tell the students that not every adjective can be reduplicated and that the reduplicated adjectives can be acted as the syntax components. Combined with the situation of the usage by the foreign students, the teachers should make clear the application requirements of the reduplication of different adjectives.