An Exploration of Pragmatic Competence and Instructional Objectives of Chinese Textbook for Children

With the cultural globalization and the promotion of language education, it has witnessed an obvious trend that foreign children who study Chinese are getting younger and the number of young learners of Chinese language is growing. This study took the Chinese version of “Sunshine Chinese” as the research object, with an emphasize on the exploration of the pragmatic competence, instructional objectives and pragmatic function of Chinese textbook for children, and analyzed the contents of teaching materials from the perspectives of different pragmatic acts and intercultural communication. The conclusions of this paper are that “situational expression”, “social expression” account for 48% contents of the textbook, and among which “inquiry and request”, “introduction and greeting” are the most prominent pragmatic acts. According to the language acquisition order, “wh- question” takes precedence over other types of questions, which was evidenced by the analysis of teaching materials. Secondly, children’s cognitive development from “egocentric stage” to “non-egocentrism” is also reflected in the speech acts of “introduction” in teaching materials, and there are pragmatic differences in intercultural communication. Finally, the merits and demerits of the textbook were examined in accordance with the principles of textbook compilation.

Keywords

speech acts intercultural communication pragmatic instructional objectives

source

International Journal of Chinese Language Education; Dec 2021; Issue No. 10; p.121 - 138

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)