Teaching Vocabulary in International Chinese Education: Characteristic, Content and Methodology

This article discusses reasons why vocabulary teaching has not received adequate attention in international Chinese education. It analyzes some of the general characteristics, principles, and major concerns in Chinese vocabulary teaching, and discusses some of the teaching procedures and methods. The author suggests that teachers should explain the meaning of a vocabulary item in a simple way and examples should be provided in a context. To help students avoid mistakes, a new word can be taught along with its collocations. In vocabulary practice, repetition and review are always necessary. Teachers should make particular efforts to use new words in questions, which can be conducive to more active uses of them among students. Teachers should also try to highlight key issues with vocabulary items, especially those of high frequency use and those with no exact correspondents in students’ native language. Finally, a student’s proficiency level should be evaluated not only by the quantity but also by the quality of the vocabulary he or she has mastered in both oral and written modalities. These may be some of the possibly effective approaches for teaching vocabulary.

Keywords

Teaching Vocabulary Characteristic Content Methodology

source

International Journal of Chinese Language Education; Dec 2018; Issue No. 4; p.53 - 68

Publisher

Department of Chinese Language Studies, The Education University of Hong Kong
Chinese Language Program, Columbia University
Chung Hwa Book Co. (H.K.) Ltd.

Language

Chinese

ISSN

2520-7733 (Print); 2521-4241 (Online)