Teaching Advanced Chinese with Authentic Materials: A Sample

 

Hongyin Tao

 

University of California, Los Angeles

&

 CALPER, Pennsylvania State University

 

The Chinese CALPER project sets out to collect authentic discourse data from native speakers of Mandarin Chinese and, on the basis of this collection, explore the grammar of spoken Chinese and eventually build teaching materials for classroom use and self study. So far we have collection over 60 hours of conversational interaction with a wide range of topics in a variety of communicative settings.

 

In this document I present some sample materials to showcase the advantages of using a large collection of authentic discourse for language learning and teaching.  In the process, some practical pedagogical guidance will be provided. The samples and approaches presented here are not meant to be comprehensive, but rather for the purpose of stimulating discussion and soliciting feedback from colleagues from the field. For a more systematic discussion of the theoretical backgrounds behind this approach, the reader is referred to Tao (2005); for an English model that inspired this project, see Carter and McCarthy (1997).

 

 

A note on conversation topics

 

One of the fruitful results of collecting authentic discourse data for language teaching is the variety of everyday topics that the collection affords. In conversation interactive discourse, while in general speakers have an overarching theme to talk about, they typically move easily from one sub-topic to another. The topicalized fragments provide the language teacher with a large variety of topics to work with for pedagogical purposes. Below is a selected list of some of the topics culled from the collection.

 

A Buddhist Student	一个信佛的学生
American Chinese students	美国的华人学生
American classroom and professors	美国教授
Buying Apples	买苹果
Can you tell people apart	他们是哪个国家的人
Cannot write well in either language	中文英文都写不好
Capitalistic management styles	资本主义的管理方式
Classic literature	古典文学
Computer, DVD, and TV	电脑DVD电视
Describing the foreign visiting teacher	外国老师
Dialects	方言
European and Hollywood movie styles	欧洲和美国电影不同
Fashion trends	流行装
Genius students who got kicked out of school	天才班学生被退学
Global citizens	全世界旅行
How do you feel about shopping at Costco	在Costco买东西
Interior decoration	内部装修
Is life satisfying	生活怎么样才算满意
Insurance abuses	保险欺诈
Juvenile drug use	年轻人吸毒
Las Vegas	拉斯韦加斯
Marketing	推销
Military training	军训
Movie sequels	连续剧
My favorite Chinese dishes	我最喜欢的菜
My impression of the USA	美国印象
Name guessing game	猜猜是谁
Opposite sex attractions	异性相吸
People and personalities	表情与性格
Popular Culture	流行文化
Popular literature	流行文学
Religions sermons	教堂的传教
Remembering youth writing	小时候写作文
Rent an apartment	租房
Research questions and social realities	研究问题与社会现实相脱离
Searching for jobs	找工作
Social development and human psychology	社会发展与人的心理
Social science research methods	社会科学研究方法
Tea lecture	谈茶道
Teaching Chinese to ABCs	给美国的华人小孩上中文课
The God Father	《教父》
There is a famous person	一位名人
This dog is lovely	好可爱的小狗
Travel adventures	旅行奇遇
Travel in Europe	在欧洲旅行
Try our fried rice	尝尝我们的炒饭
Universal Studio	环球影城
What are they doing in the picture	照片里的人在做什么？
What did you learn in a film	从电影里学到什么？
Where is that Chinese restaurant	那家中餐馆在哪里？
Which grocery store do you go to	你常去哪家商店买东西？
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire	电视大奖游戏-百万富翁

 

These topics are not quite the same as most of the topics that are commonly seen in standard textbooks. But these topics have distinctive advantages: they represent the kind of issues that speakers are concerned with in their daily lives. As such they will be readily accepted by speakers. With some effort (elaboration, modification, and guidance) on the part of the teacher/editor they can be easily incorporated into classroom teaching and discussion.

 

In the remainder of this document, I present some case studies that involve a few of the texts listed above (those with hyper links). I will show some of the ways in which advanced language teaching can take advantage of authentic materials. In particular, I will focus on the grammar for interaction, devices and strategies with which speakers conduct discourse, corpus analysis tools and their use in language pedagogy, as well as the need to pay attention to sociolinguistic aspects of language.

 

I welcome any comments and suggestions on the material presented herein.

 

 

Reference

 

Carter, Ronald and McCarthy, Michael. 1997. Exploring Spoken English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

 

Tao, Hongyin. 2005. The Gap Between Natural Speech and Spoken Chinese Teaching Material: Discourse Perspectives on Chinese Pedagogy. Journal of  the Chinese Language Teachers Association, 40.2:1-24.

 

 

Last Modified 4/2006