Chinese as a Second Language. The journal of the Chinese Language Teachers Association, USA - Volume 57, Issue 3, 2022

赵元任1969年提出要用“可说的”中文编写汉语教材，然而，高年级汉语教材，特别是以现当代文学作品为课文的教材，遣词造句常常跟口语习惯相去甚远，相悖甚多。本文将以鲁迅小说为分析对象，从文学批评、语言学、叙事学三个角度考察其中“不可说”部分，试着提出一个针对小说教学的多层级话语分析框架，同时结合教学实际，给出将书面语阅读能力转换为口语表达能力的若干建议。

This paper explores two sets of criteria used to construct pedagogical grammar systems both in English and Chinese. Larsen-Freeman (2001, 2014) built a three-dimensional grammar framework to guide English teachers in constructing an approach to teaching grammar. The three dimensions are grammatical structures (morphosyntactic form), meaning (semantics; it can be lexical or grammatical) and appropriate use in context (pragmatics). Feng and Shi (2011, 2015) proposed a new model of teaching and learning Chinese called Trinitarian Grammar, consisting of three parts: the structure of sentences, the function of the structure and the contexts of the structure and the function used in Mandarin Chinese. This paper, however, suggests a four-dimensional framework for Chinese pedagogical grammar: grammatical structure, meaning (including lexical and grammatical meaning), pragmatic function and a sequence of typical contexts starting with an “optimal understanding model (OUM)”.

The corpus of spoken Chinese interlanguage in this study consists of over one million characters of transcribed student speech from data collected from nearly ten years of study abroad research. The main research method was a comparison with a similar corpus of spoken Chinese by native speakers. Preliminary analyses show that 11 of the top 20 most frequent words in both the learner corpus and native corpus are the same. Learners used some grammatical function words, such as 把 (bǎ), 了 (le), 它 (tā), and 着 (zhe) less than native speakers, while other ones, such as 我 (wǒ) and 的 (de), much more frequently. Possible explanations for these patterns, as well as pedagogical implications and directions for further research are discussed.

Should the writing construct be assessed through handwriting or keyboarding? As the only major language entirely without a syllabary or alphabet, the Chinese writing system is unique among modern languages, thus the question of writing proficiency is complicated by character recall. Most of the testing research comparing text entry methods has been conducted in English and has found that keyboarding and handwriting can be used interchangeably. This paper reports the outcome of a study comparing the results of handwritten and typed versions of the Chinese ACTFL Writing Proficiency Test (WPT). L2 Chinese students (n = 25) with Intermediate to Superior speaking skills were randomly divided into two groups and took both WPT versions in a counterbalanced design. Keyboarding resulted in significantly higher test scores [repeated measures ANOVA F(1, 23) = 62.7, p < .001, effect size partial eta squared = .73]. Keyboarding was on average 1.69 ACTFL sublevels higher than handwriting. Finally, this paper will discuss the writing construct in Chinese along with pedagogical implications around curricular decisions on teaching and assessing handwriting vs. keyboarding.