help bg
Go Back

Teaching by Distinguishing in Context and Questioning by Comparison then Explain

There are many language phenomena in Chinese language that are very difficult to tell apart. Therefore, students who come to learn Chinese in China may find it is difficult to learn. For better Chinese learning, students can learn distinguish the meaning differences in real context and ask questions by making comparison then explain them.

Some people believe that Chinese language is a kind of “vague language” because it has no change of form and case. Sometimes, the parts of speech of certain words can’t be confirmed quickly. Therefore, when foreigners learn Mandarin Chinese, they should consider more things and consider the context to find some internal relation.

Some single sentences are misunderstanding. However when put them into a certain specific context, the ambiguous meanings are gone. Therefore, the best way to eliminate the misunderstanding for those who study in China is to put them into the real contexts. In oral language, they can distinguish it according to the language stress.

The followings are some examples to explain how foreign learners tell apart them when they study Mandarin Chinese. There are two different interpretations for the sentence “他和她的老师来了”, namely, “他和她的/老师来了” and “他和/她的老师来了”. So, only when we put it into the practical situation can we know which meaning is expressed.

In addition, when students study Chinese at school, they know that teachers often apply the method of comparison between the learned and new knowledge to the classroom teaching. There are many ways of comparing, one of which is to ask questions by comparing and then explain. For the application of adding “一” before the verbs, teachers can firstly list two groups of phrases like “开门看看” and “开门一看”.

Then the students are supposed to think about the difference between them. In the next, teachers should complete the two phrases into two sentences like “我开门看看是谁来找我” and “我开门一看,原来是小王来找我”. After comparison, students who learn Mandarin may find that the subjects of the former condition is the contents of “看”. However, that of the later one is the result of “看”.

The two methods mentioned above are beneficial in teaching foreigners to learn better. Therefore, teachers should summarize and apply them to the classroom teaching properly.

Please use vertical scrolling on your mobile device.