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The Basis of Formulating Teaching Principles in Teaching Chinese

There are more and more foreigners coming to study Chinese in China. When teachers teach Chinese to foreigners as a foreign language, they should formulate the proper teaching principles to make sure students can learn Chinese better. And how to formulate proper principles is the topic of this article.

The first basis of carrying out the teaching principles should be the teaching aims. Students who study in China all know that the teaching aims are the starting point and ending point for teaching language. Only when teachers have the aims can they have uniform requirements and standards to do course teaching, teaching evaluation, learning results checking, and so on. The aims decide the teaching contents, methods, and process as well as the teaching principles.

The course objective of teaching Chinese as a foreign language is to train students’ ability to do social communication in the Chinese language. That is to say, students should attach more importance to the use of the language when they learn Mandarin in China. By formulating the teaching principles according to this aim, it can show the specific characteristics of Chinese teaching to foreigners. Therefore, it is impossible to have the same teaching principles as others subjects.

In addition, we should also formulate the principles on the basis of the nature and characteristics of the subjects. Most of the foreigners who study Chinese in China know that teaching Chinese as a foreign language is a kind of language teaching which regards Chinese as a second language to teach. Therefore, it should obey both the regular patterns of the second language or foreign language and that of the Chinese language itself. We should follow the features like practicality, sociality, instrumentality, and so on to formulate teaching principles.

The learners’ characteristics of learning psychology have a very important significance to the whole teaching process. Therefore, another basis should be the psychology of learning. In Mandarin Chinese language courses, teachers always take learning psychology into consideration when they prepare the teaching such as setting the teaching goals, teaching requirements, teaching contents, teaching methods selection, and of course, formulating teaching principles.

The object of Chinese language teaching as a foreign language is the foreigner. They all have various learning aims and motivations when they learn the Chinese language. However, they all want to learn it better in a relatively short time, more importantly, understand and put it to practical use. This kind of learning psychology decides that teachers shouldn’t center on language lecturing when they teach Chinese. The point should be the training of language skills and communicative ability to promote comprehensive language ability.

There are many factors inside the subjects and the contradictory interrelations among them are also the key basis for the teaching principles making. From the view of the contents of teaching Chinese to foreigners, students should learn many kinds of knowledge when they study Mandarin Chinese such as the knowledge about the language culture, the skills to listen, speak, read and write as well as the contents in affection and learning strategies and so on.

There are more factors that should be taken into consideration. From the perspective of the teaching approach, teachers can teach in and out of class. There are two aspects namely contents and forms in listening, speaking, reading, and writing. All of those factors are existed and combined in the Chinese teaching to foreigners. In order to teach the Mandarin language better, teachers should deal with the relations properly.

Last but not least basis for carrying out proper teaching principles is the development of educational theories and educational technology. As we all know, educational theories and educational technology are developing with the development of society’s science and technology. Therefore, it gradually forms some new ideas, concepts, and theories to teach and learn Mandarin Chinese.

On one hand, the Chinese teaching practice can provide lively and vivid content for the research of teaching theories. On the other hand, the new educational theories and technologies instruct the development of the Chinese teaching practice. Foreigners can see the close relationship between the theories and practice when they learn to speak Chinese. What’s more, it is more constructive to use the existing teaching theories and educational technologies to formulate the teaching principles.

Altogether we have discussed five bases in different aspects to carry forward the teaching principles. If teachers can make teaching plans according to those rules, they can teach better in Chinese teaching as a foreign language.

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