As the development of Chinese fever in the whole world, there are more and more overseas students choosing learning Mandarin, for they want to learn more about China and Chinese culture. Some of them even want to learn Chinese in China. In order to attract more students to learn Chinese in China, our researchers and professors have done more efforts on teaching pattern and the compiling of Chinese textbooks. The teaching environment of teaching Chinese as second language is related with teaching pattern. Since the conception of teaching pattern was brought from western academic fields in 1980s, teaching pattern has no clear boundary between teaching approach and the related explanation on the characteristics of teaching pattern are different.
Recent years, the research on the teaching pattern of teaching Chinese as second language has been paid more attention to and produced successively results. It reflects the developing tendency of teaching scale and enlarged population of learning Mandarin.
In the background of international promoting Chinese, overseas Chinese teaching scale expands quickly. To meet the requirements of people who are learning Mandarin, all kinds of teaching patterns have appeared. The research and practice on the teaching pattern of TCSL bring new tasks for academic field and cause the examination and thinking of researchers.
According to the characteristics of global Chinese teaching, we classify cultural background into cultural circle of Chinese characters and non-cultural circle of Chinese characters. Both of these two cultural circles have relevant closed native language cultural environment, which is called O-environment. This environment presents the characteristics of local mainstream culture, in which the students of learning Mandarin are called Japanese students, Korean students and American students.
The two cultural circles have C-environment, which is influenced and infiltrated by parts of Chinese culture. This environment has the characteristics of binary culture, in which the students of learning Mandarin are called Chinese Japanese students, Chinese Korean students and Chinese American students. Both the two cultural and the two cultural environments have differences with target language culture in some degree.
If we use cultural distance to measure the cultural background, we can see that the difference of distance between them and target language culture is obvious. Cultural circle of Chinese characters and C-environment is close to target language culture and has the function of close immigration to students of learning Mandarin, while non-cultural circle of Chinese characters and O-environment will have the influence of far immigration to students of learning Mandarin. Here the “close” and “far” refer to the easiness and difficulty of grasping language key points and the most important is the influence of different culture value to education form and even to the teaching patterns.
As for the culture value, individualism is the core of western culture value and its influence to education is individual teaching design and the encouragement to students’ self-consciousness; collectivism is in the dominated position of eastern culture and its influence to education is collective teaching design and the encouragement of common spirit of students who are learning Mandarin.
For the influence of the difference between eastern and western culture values to teaching patterns, some researchers think that teaching pattern based on western culture is much more suitable for learning science but will last a long time and hardly get an agreement; the teaching pattern based on discovery and discussion can arouse students to learn basic knowledge; the teaching pattern of spreading directly can structure converged thought of students who are learning Mandarin and encourage the agreeable consciousness of students of learning Mandarin and study more efficiently.
The above views directly describe the influence of different cultural backgrounds to the structure of teaching patterns and indirectly prompt us that the difference of cultural circle of cultural cognition and cultural orientation is the basic difference of teaching patterns. When we are researching or imitating a certain teaching pattern, we must think about its cultural background, for the influence of culture values in different cultural circle on target language culture is a great variable to the teaching pattern of teaching Chinese as second language.