A Study of Vocabulary Teaching in Junior Comprehensive TCSL Courses

Guo Lisha

Sichuan University

Abstract: Vocabulary teaching is an integral part of teaching Chinese as a second language (TCSL). Based on a collection and analysis of words that foreign students at the junior level usually get wrong,① Errors analyzed in this paper are collected from regular assignments and final exam papers of six classes at the School of Overseas Education, Sichuan University in the semesters from 2012 to 2014. Totally 116 students at junior level 2 were involved. this paper suggests that TCSL teachers should make sure that new words in textbooks are explained accurately and foresee the words that students may misunderstand during vocabulary teaching. In addition to conceptual meanings, they should analyze and explain affiliated meanings, grammatical functions, and common collocations with other words through typical sentence examples. They should also pay attention to the potential role played by the semantic transparency of words in understanding, acquiring, and selecting the meanings of such words. The teaching of separable words should focus on their pragmatic forms. Simple conversations can be made to strengthen students’ memorization, while quantifiers can be taught via their etymology to help students develop a reasonable understanding of the collocation rules between quantifiers and corresponding nouns.

Keywords: Teaching Chinese as a Second Language (TCSL); junior level; vocabulary teaching

Introduction

Though phonetic and grammatical systems feature complicated constituents and rules, the number is not limitless, so that regularity and systematicness are obvious. Comparatively speaking, a vocabulary system can seem to be sporadic to learners due to its open-endedness.

Currently, TCSL vocabulary teaching is often conducted by means of teachers’ preferences and without an established framework. Errors in students’ practice are mostly due to direct analogy of the target word with the native word without comprehending its meaning and usage. The target word may not have a one-to-one correspondence with the native word in terms of entries, collocation, emotional connotation, and register. For some target words, there are no equivalent words in the students’ mother tongues. All these situations require TCSL teachers to make some efforts to compare and analyze such differences and explain these words in detail. Since new words in TCSL textbooks are often explained in English, teachers should pay special attention to the differences between a target Chinese word and its English meaning. For instance, a new word “舍不得” (she bu de) is presented in Lesson 11 of Volume 2 (II) of the revisedHan Yu Jiao Cheng(Chinese Course), hereinafter referred to as “HYJC.” In the coursebook, the word is explained as “verb, to be loath to use or part with; to grudge” (Yang, 2006). Although “舍不得” does contain such unwillingness or dislike to use or part with something, it is due to love or the feeling of cherishing. In terms of an emotional connotation, “舍不得” is a commendatory word, while the English meaning (to be loath or to grudge) given in the coursebook is derogatory. It is worth noting that the English meaning deviates from the target word “舍不得” both in connotation and denotation. If students apply this meaning directly, they may compose incorrect sentences such as “这家餐厅的菜不好吃，我舍不得吃” (The food in this restaurant is so bad that I hate to part with it), “我不喜欢那件衣服，所以我舍不得穿它” (I don’t like that garment, so I’m loath to part with it). Moreover, the phrase “be loath” falls into the formal register and is often used for description, while “舍不得” is quite colloquial, so the two are quite different in the register as well. In fact, native English speakers often use other expressions to convey the meaning of “舍不得.” For instance, to express “这是我爸爸给我的，我舍不得扔” in English, it would be “My father gave this to me, I can’t bear to throw it away,” or more directly, “My father gave this to me. I cherish it so much that I can’t throw it away.” Therefore, when teachers tell students the usage of “舍不得,” they should take into consideration the difference between the Chinese word and the native word. After elaborating on its part of speech and syntactic position, teachers should provide a wealth of contexts for students to comprehend and practice. For TCSL teachers, it is also worth exploring and discussing how to teach special Chinese words such as separable words and quantifiers.

Literature Review

Previous Studies on TCSL Vocabulary Teaching Principles from a Macroscopic Level

Li Rulong and Wu Ming (2005) proposed the principles for distinguishing frequencies and analyzing morphemes. The former principle suggests arranging the teaching of entries of polysemous and polyphonic words by frequency of use, and the latter principle emphasizes the combination practices for words and the learning of semantic aggregation with the help of morphemic analysis in vocabulary teaching. Li Shaolin (2010) holds that in TCSL, analysis of word meanings should give more importance to the analysis of the target word than to that of the ontological meaning of the Chinese word.

Previous Studies on Basic Units of TCSL Vocabulary Teaching

Such studies mainly fall into three categories that are based on word, character, and morpheme, respectively.

The word-based approach is quite conventional, calling on using grammar and text as the mainstay for word selection. For this approach, words are annotated in a one-to-one or one-to-many way, and discussions on teaching methods are its research focus. For instance: Huang Zhenying (1994) introduced seven frequently used methods to teach vocabulary for junior levels, including presentation, description and expansion. Hu Mingyang (1997) proposed to divide vocabulary teaching into different stages for which methods should vary. Chen Xianchun (1999) holds that intensive reading courses should be canceled, and when students reach the intermediate level, it is helpful to classify 20,000 words by semantic field to provide intensive teaching and strengthen the teaching effect. Hu Hong and Chu Peiru (1999) proposed to classify communicative Chinese words into a variety of big sets, including sets of numbers and appellations, to help students expand their vocabulary with sentence patterns and exercises. Zhang Hesheng (2007) pointed out that for junior-level students, frequently used words with strong, cohesive semantic features, such as “learn” and “week,” can be taught as a whole. Li Tong, Jia Ying, and Ren Hulian also favor word-based teaching.

Character-based teaching was first proposed by Joël Bellassen, a French sinologist. Xu Tongqiang, a Chinese linguist, emphasized the theory of character-based teaching in his monograph－On Language. Scholars that have applied this theory to TCSL vocabulary teaching include Liu Xiaomei (2004), who proposed to focus on characters and combine the teaching of vocabulary with that of characters. Li Qing and Wang Feihua (2004) also hold that “Vocabulary teaching should be based on characters and bi-syllable words should be split into monosyllables in TCSL teaching” (Li & Wang, 2004).

Sheng Yan was the first scholar to propose “morpheme teaching.” Based on a statistic that identified 3,000 frequently used words, Wang Youmin (1994) selected 1,337 monosyllables that must be mastered first and proposed a vocabulary teaching method for the junior level, featuring “monosyllable (Chinese character)－grammar (morphology)―integration of compound words.” Li Kai (2002) summarized the morphemes of 1,033 Level-A words in theSyllabus of HSK Vocabulary and Chinese Character Leveland concluded that the sequence of vocabulary teaching should be determined by the analysis of semantic composition. Wang Zhouyan and Qing Xuehua (2004) think that monosyllabic morphemes with strong wordbuilding capability should be taught first in morpheme teaching, which should also be emphasized to distinguish homonyms and near-synonyms.

Some other scholars studied Chinese vocabulary teaching from the perspective of semantic and lexical systems. For instance, Wan Yiling (1997) proposed a method for teaching word meanings by each entry. Zhao Guo (2001) classified Chinese vocabulary into three categories by semantic transparency and collocation capacity of morphemes and offered respective suggestions for each category. Shao Jing (2002) tried to help students explore ways to master entries and usage of words from the perspective of semantic valence.

Some other scholars also suggested breaking through the boundaries among word, character, and morpheme-based approaches and integrating them instead into a basic teaching unit. For instance, Li Fangjie (1998) pointed out that Chinese character teaching should be combined with vocabulary teaching at the TCSL junior level to align the teaching of words with that of characters. Jia Ying (2001) also proposed to follow lexical rules of Chinese to conduct a systematic vocabulary teaching as the fundamental and teach Chinese characters and compound words simultaneously.

From the above opinions on the basic unit of vocabulary pedagogy, it can be found that those points are not polar or utterly independent from each other. Take character-based pedagogy as an example. Though it is based on Chinese characters, its fundamental purpose is to realize students’ mastery of words, so it is actually closer to a monosyllable or morphemebased approach.

Previous Studies on Theories with Significant Referential Value on Teaching Methods

Yan Decai (2006) holds that important theories of cognitive psychology, including the associated semantic theory, the spreading activation model for semantic memorization, the theory of semantic fields, the semantic spreading theory, the set-theoretic model, and the domain theory, all shed light on TCSL vocabulary teaching.

After reviewing the findings of domestic and overseas researchers on second language vocabulary acquisition, Sun Xiaoming (2007) pointed out that TCSL vocabulary teaching can learn significantly from the “lexical threshold for communication” hypothesis of Laufer (1991) and the vocabulary acquisition development stage model of Jiang (2000), (i.e., the formal stage of lexical development－L1 syntax and lemma mediation stage－L2 integration stage) as well as other vocabulary learning methods and strategies proposed by foreign scholars, such as keyword, association, and guesswork methods.

Zhu Weijuan and Xie Baiyu (2011) proposed that vocabulary teaching should start with words’ primary meanings and then expand to other meanings or implications and should select input methods by differences in the reusability of near-synonyms under the concepts of cognitive linguistics, such as category, prototype, finely tuned input, and roughly tuned input.

Meng Dehong (2018) conducted qualitative research and quantitative analysis to study several theoretical issues for vocabulary teaching by taking “要” (yao, meaning want) as an example. His study is based on the sixth edition ofThe Contemporary Chinese Dictionary(CCD), Contemporary Chinese Corpus of National Language Commission, and five juniorlevel Chinese textbooks.

Previous Studies on Specific Teaching or Exercising Methods

Liu Lianli (1994) believes that keywords should be distinguished from general words, and only about three keywords should be taught for every two periods and less than 10 keywords for each lesson. She also pointed out that teaching and practice of words can be made within contexts and proposed methods such as sentence-making, paraphrasing with designated words, completing sentences with specified structures and answering questions with selected words.

Cui Yonghua (1997) put forward an integrated teaching method that features monosyllable (Chinese character)－grammar (morphology)－compound words.

Cemehac A. (1998) pointed out that attention should be paid to collocation rules of words, ways of word formation, and the vocabulary system to explain in detail antonyms, analyze synonyms in a systematic way, and identify their links. He also enumerated a variety of ways to practice, including translation, selection, and writing of synonyms or antonyms.

Hu Hong et al. (1999) emphasized collective vocabulary teaching, i.e., dividing Chinese vocabulary into various sets and subsets by appellation, time, and number according to relevancy among word meanings. He also believes that learners should be guided to make analogies and extensions through common morphemes shared by members within a set.

Xiao Xianbin (2002) also suggested applying morpheme pedagogic analysis to separating morphemes (characters) from words and combining them with other morphemes on the premise of not changing their entries to consolidate learned words and acquire new words.

Liu Qian (2004) showed the process of teaching with morpheme pedagogics through the word “急救” (first-aid). She also proposed that the method of teaching the whole meaning can be applied to opaque compound words, empty words (including some adverbs), set phrases, and idioms. Yu Haikuo and Li Rulong (2011) also suggested learning bi-syllables with morpheme analysis.

Zhou Jian and Liao Shuye (2006) think that attention should be paid to the ties among the forms, pronunciations, and meanings of a monosyllable and that between the monosyllable and related components, while morpheme analysis should be emphasized for the teaching of compound words. Morpheme analysis is also stressed by Yang Jie (2006), who pointed out that “for TCSL junior level, ‘morpheme pedagogics’ is aimed to help students establish the concept of morpheme” so “a number of exercises for practicing word substitution and expansion should be designed as much as possible to help students understand and comprehend the generation rules of Chinese vocabulary to reach the goal of morpheme pedagogics” (Yang, 2006).

Yan Decai and Hu Xiaoqing (2007) pointed out that the design for vocabulary exercises should be diversified, covering not only the practice of pronunciation and writing but also drills at grammatical, semantic, and pragmatic levels.

Zhou Fengling (2008) enumerated common ways of paraphrasing, including translation, conjecture through meanings of morphemes, perceptual intuition, and inference from comparison. She also introduced several types of exercises that are commonly used, such as intuitive exercises, inductive practice, sentence exercises, correcting exercises, topic-based exercises, reading new words aloud, and dictation of sentences using the new words.

Yan Wenjing (2011) listed vocabulary teaching strategies commonly applied for the TCSL junior level, such as using objects or stories to explain culture-loaded words. She mentioned that when near-synonyms are compared, teachers can clarify the differences between them from such aspects as the focus of meaning, scope, hypernym/hyponym relation, collocation, emotional connotation, concreteness/abstractness, and usage. Understanding of new words can be expanded if necessary by introducing synonyms or summarizing words with the same morphemes.

Ding Wei (2013) took “爱” (love), a high-frequency word, as an example to propose the strategy of “seeking common ground while reserving differences” for teaching polysemy.

Wang Yanjun (2013), with his studies on the teaching of culture-loaded words, proposed that several teaching strategies based on the semantic field theory should be adopted to enhance foreign students’ actual capability of using Chinese in typical Chinese cultural scenarios.

Xue Xiaofang and Shi Chunhong (2013) suggested establishing a Chinese chunking hierarchy system based on analyzing chunk connotations and properties. Scholars including Li Hui (2013) and Wang Wenlong (2013) also studied chunks in Chinese textbooks.

Liu Wei (2015) proposed that vocabulary teaching in comprehensive TCSL courses should take into consideration many factors such as grammar, semantics, pragmatics, phonetics, and culture.

Chen Lin, Wang Linli, and Wu Menji (2016) conducted experiments to explore the outcomes of semantically related and unrelated teaching in TCSL vocabulary teaching. They concluded that semantically unrelated vocabulary teaching could be more conducive to junior students’ learning.

Zhao Guo (2017) put forward that from the perspective of comparing words in different languages, since some polysemies feature language universality, they do not need to be taught separately while some other polysemies are specific to Chinese and therefore should be taught alone.

Suggestions for Teaching

To be specific, we think that TCSL teachers can improve their teaching from the following aspects:

First, to supplement inadequate English definitions of new words in textbooks and modify incorrect or strange English definitions to prevent students from misunderstanding due to negative transfer of their mother tongues and overgeneralization of the target language. For example: In Lesson 6 of Volume 2 (I) of HYJC, the word “商量” (shang liang) is defined as “to consult; to discuss; to talk over with sb” (Yang, 2006). Due to the conflict implied by the above three parts of the explanation, students still made such wrong sentences as “老师和我商量我的学习” (The teacher consulted me about my study) even after irrelevant entries were excluded and the teacher told them that the collocations withshang lianginclude “和/跟/同/与……” (with). The reason lies in that both “to talk over with sb.” and “to discuss” contain the meaning of “speaking or arguing with others about” while for a compound word like “shang liang,” its meaning is actually derived from the literal meanings of the two juxtaposed morphemes “shang” and “liang.” “shang” means to calculate and estimate, while “liang” means a tool to determine or measure the quantity, length, height, thickness, or distance of something. Conceptually, “shang liang” differs from “谈论” (discuss) and “议论” (argue) in that the parties are engaged in a conversation for an agreement or outcome, and it is more colloquial compared with the latter two words. If the teacher does not explain the implied meaning (to get an outcome) of “shang liang” and just adopts the English definition directly in the textbook or the Chinese explanation (“to exchange ideas”) in CCD (Lexicography Office, 2012), it stands to reason that foreign students would compose incorrect sentences, like the one above. Another example is the new word “主持人” (zhu chi ren) in Lesson 10 of the same textbook, defined as “host or hostess; anchorperson”(Yang, 2006). Host and hostess, however, are polysemies with many entries. Although “anchorperson” is added to help students confine the semantic meaning to the scope of “human being,” host and hostess in English can also refer to “a person who receives or entertains guests socially; a place or organization that provides facilities and services for an event or function; an army hotel; a boss” and so on. Then students are likely to compose incorrect sentences like “I’m the host of this house” or “Today is my birthday, so I’m the host,” which should be expressed as “Today is my birthday, so I’m the host of my birthday party.” If the teacher can explain the two words “商量” and “主持人” respectively as “to exchange opinions to come to a conclusion” and “host or hostess for a program, meeting or broadcast,” then the above errors can be avoided.

Second, teachers should be able to predict what kind of words students may make mistakes about so they can analyze and explain affiliated meanings, grammatical functions, and common collocations through typical sentence examples in addition to their conceptual meanings.

In TCSL, the scope of synonyms should exceed that of synonyms in mother-tongue teaching. For primary school students in China, although they have not established a clear understanding of the meanings of each morpheme and grammatical functions of words, they have developed a mental lexicon composed of a certain number of words before school due to a native language environment. Grammatical categories of most of the high-frequency words and common collocations have already been acquired, even if only subconsciously. Foreign students, however, often make mistakes about words that have false analogies with those in their mother tongues due to the lack of a mental lexicon and understanding of grammatical categories and common collocations of high-frequency words. Take a new word “却” (que) in Lesson 9 of Volume 2 (I) of HYJC as an example. Foreign students often consider it a synonym of “但是” (but) based on its English explanation (but; yet). Without doubt, wrong sentences such as “大家都来上课了，却我没来” (Everyone came to class, I but didn’t)” can easily be heard.

Moreover, synonyms in TCSL may go beyond words and include phrases and even sentence patterns. Take the sentence pattern “一边……一边……” in Lesson 18 of Volume 2 (II) of HYJC as an example. The English explanation is “at the same time” (Yang, 2006). The Chinese sentence pattern, however, also means “同时；一起” (at the same moment; together) and “尽管如此；虽然；但是” (in spite of the fact, even though; however) and so on. Students would compose incorrect sentences such as “他一边是老师，一边是我的朋友” (He is my teacher. At the same time, he is my friend) or “汉语课一边很难，一边很有意思” (The Chinese class is very difficult. At the same time, it is very interesting) under the influence of negative transfer of their mother tongues if they just align “一边……一边……” with its English meaning “at the same time” directly. It can be seen that word errors do not simply involve the comparison of meanings, and a fairly large number of them even extend to the category of grammatical functions. Therefore, the learning of words is not clearly separated from that of grammar but is closely linked to it. This requires teachers to take into consideration a word’s grammatical function and common collocation in explaining its meaning. In a nutshell, vocabulary teaching shall go hand in hand with grammar teaching.

Third, teachers should pay attention to words’ semantic transparency, which means the potential role played by each morpheme’s semantic relevance to the compound word in semantic understanding, acquisition, and selection to avoid the tendency of aligning word frequency only with its difficulty. In terms of factors affecting the recognition of Chinese characters and words, some scholars have pointed out, through an experiment on Chinese adults, that “Word frequency and transparency will both affect the recognition of words” (Gao, B. & Gao. F., 2005). The influence from transparency is not significant to highfrequency words but obvious to low-frequency words, thus showing the transparency effect. Xu Caihua and Li Tang (2001) conducted an experiment on primary school students in China. The result shows that the semantic transparency of a new word affects children’s acquisition of its meanings. When a word has high semantic transparency, children with high language competence can get its meaning with the clue from semantic transparency no matter whether they are familiar with the word. The experimenter also inferred that grade 2 children with high language competence could draw on this feature effectively to understand a new word. Relevant TCSL researchers pointed out foreign students at the junior level have developed initial awareness of morphemes and can infer the meaning of a new word with its morphemes to understand it (Xu, 2004). This informed us that word frequency is not absolutely directly proportional to difficulty, and semantic transparency of words has a significant influence on their difficulty. In this sense, for words with high semantic transparency, teachers should guide students to make inferences of the word’s meaning from the meanings of its morphemes―by induction. For a bi-syllable near-synonym with the same morphemes, teachers should make full use of the clue from the meaning of each morpheme to guide students to induce and compare word meanings. For words with low semantic transparency, teachers can guide students to analyze and understand a new word within a context to avoid taking the word too literally.

Fourth, TCSL teachers should pay attention to the correspondence between each entry of a word’s meaning and that of the native word of students to avoid the effect of negative transfer of their mother tongues in teaching polysemy. Due to the limited vocabulary of junior students, it is not appropriate for TCSL teachers to display all the entries of a polysemant at the same time. Instead, only the basic meaning and those related to the text should be taught with sentence examples. In this way, students will have less pressure caused by too many entries, and the learning process will comply with the cognition rule, i.e., to learn from the easier to the more advanced.

Since a word often evolves with changes in its entries, some words that seem very simple to native speakers could have too many entries, which usually become obstacles in foreign students’ learning of vocabulary. For example, the new word “就” (jiu) that appears in Volume 1 (I) of HYJC is shown in CCD with four different parts of speech: verb, preposition, adverb, and conjunction. Except with only one entry as a conjunction, it has five entries as a verb, two entries as a preposition, and eight entries as an adverb (Lexicography Office, 2012). If we teach all the entries at one time without any differentiation, then the teaching effect cannot be ensured and could even be counterproductive. Therefore, teachers should classify the entries of new words by frequency of use and teach the basic meanings first. If we go back to the above example, “jiu,” by referring to theSyllabus of HSK Vocabulary and Chinese Character Level, we can find it has three levels by word frequency. Its adverb and conjunction entries are taken as Level A, preposition entries as Level B, and verb entries as Level C. To teach this word, teachers should identify first that its different parts of speech feature different frequencies, so entries with high frequency should be taught before those with low frequency. “jiu” appears in Lesson 20 of Volume 1 (II) of HYJC as an adverb, meaning “exactly; precisely” (Yang, 2006). In Lesson 22, it also appears as an adverb, meaning “already; as early as” (Yang, 2006). In Lesson 28, it is compared with “才” (cai) to show that “jiu” means “going to happen very soon” while “cai” means “just happened a moment ago;” “jiu” indicates that something happens early, fast, and easily, or goes on smoothly while “cai” shows something that happens late, slowly, difficultly or does not go well (The meaning of “jiu” here is actually a further explanation of its usage in Lesson 22). Then what follows is the usage of “jiu” as an adverb in a sentence pattern “要是……（的话），就……” (“If…, then…). We can see that so much usage of “jiu” is included in just one textbook and all belong to Level A. It is therefore indispensable to explain with typical sentence examples and point out the key features of these sentences to help students differentiate meanings of “jiu” and use it appropriately in different contexts. For example, as an adverb, one of the meanings of “jiu” is “already; as early as.” In addition to the sentence example in the textbook “我来中国以前就对书法特别感兴趣” (I had been interested in Chinese calligraphy even before I came to China), teachers can supplement with other sentence examples like “早上五点他就来教室了” (He came to the classroom as early as 5 o’clock in the morning) or a dialog－A: “你什么时候走？” B: “我一会儿就走。”(A: When will you leave? B: I will leave in a minute.) In this way, students can be guided to extract the common features of those examples－all have parts relevant to time like “before I came to China,” “5 o’clock in the morning,” and “in a minute.” Students can be further inspired to understand the meanings of the complete sentences by placing “jiu” into the contexts with such key features. Then more contexts can be provided for exercises in pairs or between the teacher and students to make sentences or dialogs with “jiu.” Finally, students are encouraged to create contexts to communicate with “jiu.” During this process, the teacher should also remind students that “jiu” is an adverb, which should be put after the subject and before the verb so as to avoid incorrect sentences that students may make like “就我一会走” (Just I in a minute). Another way is to provide wrong sentences first to inspire students to make corrections by themselves.

In teaching extended meanings, metaphoric meanings, or the meanings shown by the extended or metaphoric usage of morpheme meanings, teachers should inspire adult students through contexts to find and perceive the relationships between basic meanings and extended or metaphoric meanings through logical thinking and inferential capabilities to avoid pure rote memory and to classify and summarize these meanings at a proper time. Since equivalents of words with ethnic, social features cannot be found in students’ native languages, students often encounter problems if they still try to understand these words simply by combining the basic morpheme meaning. Therefore, teachers should pay special attention to such kinds of words. For example, the new word “落汤鸡” (literal meaning “a chicken in the soup;” metaphoric meaning “soaked through”) in Volume 2 (II) of HYJC is understood by most junior students as the name of a dish. Although this kind of word does not appear very often at the junior level, it is rather difficult to understand the meaning. If teachers can help students apply abstract or imaginary thinking to find the relationship between a basic meaning and an extended or metaphorical meaning as well as the relationship between a morpheme meaning and a word meaning in a context through pictures, PPT or other ways if necessary, it is not only useful for them to understand and consolidate the meaning of the learned word, it can also lay a foundation for them to analyze and use correctly more words of the same kind at the intermediate level.

Fifth, separable words have been studied by many scholars from different perspectives, either in the field of ontological research on Chinese or in TCSL. However, no consensus has been reached till now regarding the naming of it as a “separable word” and the defining of its nature “as whether it is a word or a phrase, or a part between word and phrase.” Since this paper aims at studying teaching strategies, and the majority of separable words feature a verb-object construction, I put forward some opinions on separable words with verb-object construction from the perspective of teaching.

The difficulty of separable words does not lie in their meanings but their morphology. On the one hand, the meaning of a separable word is integral, but its usage can be extended to that of a phrase. On the other hand, TCSL teachers teach separable words with strategies based on personal preference, and currently, in TCSL, no complete classification system is available for separable words, nor is any special explanation about them given in textbooks in general. All these factors result in foreign students’ frequent mistakes in using separable words due to their inability to understand the condition of “separation.”

In view of the application requirement of TCSL courses, we start with the grammatical feature of separable words－whether they can be followed by any object－and divide them into two categories: transitive and intransitive. If we check the textbooks－HYJC for junior levels 1 and 2, we can find that separable words mainly include:①Separable words in this paper refer to words with structural expandability and semantic integrality but exclude phrases in verb-object construction.毕业 (graduate), 打针 (give an injection), 考试 (examine), 录音 (record), 跑步 (run), 起床 (get up), 请假 (ask for a leave), 散步 (take a walk), 上课 (have a class), 上网 (surf the Internet), 睡觉 (sleep), 跳舞 (dance), 离婚 (divorce), 问好 (greet), 住院 (hospitalize), 做客 (be a guest), 倒霉 (be unlucky), 担心 (worry), 结婚 (marry). Except for “担心” (worry), all the others are intransitive verbs. In this sense, separable words mainly consist of intransitive verbs. In terms of meaning, most relate to daily life; in terms of register, they belong to common speech or colloquial words; in terms of frequency, most are high-frequency words. Therefore, separable words are words with high frequency and error rates for foreign students. Considering that TCSL courses are targeted at foreign students who study Chinese as a second language and our research is aimed only at students of junior levels 1 and 2, we think there is no need for teachers to clearly differentiate verb-object separable words and bi-syllable verb-object separable phrases since their pragmatic forms are the same. Instead, we should focus on the correct application, i.e., different pragmatic forms when those words are “separated.”

By drawing on previous research findings and combining the grammar points taught in the textbooks for junior levels 1 and 2, we classify the pragmatic forms of separable words in the textbooks into seven types as below: (i) to show a tense with the form of “v.+着/了/过+o.” (e.g., 跳着/了/过舞 [dancing/danced]); (ii) to show quantity and time with the form of “v.+ quantity phrase/time phrase +o.” (e.g., 跳一次/两个小时舞 [danced once/for two hours]) and the form of “v.+v.+o.” (e.g., 跳跳舞 [danced for a while]); (iii) to show a person or pronoun with the form of “v.+ personal pronoun /noun +o.” (e.g., 见他的面 [meet him]); (iv) to show the modal with the form of “v.+ interrogative pronoun +o.” (e.g., 跳什么舞 [dance what])①This type can be divided into two sub-types: one is to express the speaker’s discontent and disapproval or to utter doubts, e.g., “跳什么舞” (to dance for what), “请什么假” (to take leave for what); the other is to express the speaker’s tone of discontent or disapproval only, e.g., “着什么急” (why so anxious), “见什么面” (why to meet).; (v) to show the result and process of the action with the form of “v. + result complement +o.” (e.g., 见上/着[zháo]/到面 [have met sb.]); (vi) to describe the object with the form of “v+ adjective +o.” (e.g., 帮大忙 [do a big favor]); (vii) overlapped verb morpheme with the form of “v.+o.+v.+得+adjective” (e.g., 跳舞跳得很开心 [very happy to dance/dance happily]). Four out of the above seven categories have high frequency and error rates for students of junior levels 1 and 2. They are: v.+着/了/过+o., v.+ quantity phrases/time phrases +o., v.+ personal pronoun/noun +o., and v.+o.+v.+得+adjective. We suggest teachers start with grammatical forms to identify the v.+o. structure of separable words. If an object is to follow, it cannot be put directly at the end. Then teachers should further explain the position of objects and some collocations that are often used. After that, the above-mentioned four types of pragmatic forms should be displayed clearly with examples for students to learn directly. Finally, these pragmatic forms can be organized into coherent dialogues for students to memorize in application in a Q&A manner. Take the Level A word “见面” as an example since its error rate is quite high. After explaining the syntactic structure of v.+o. and the collocation of “和/跟/……见面” (meet sb.),②Considering the teaching is aimed at junior level 1 and 2 students and “同/与……见面” is more formal and less frequently used than “和/跟/……见面,” we suggest that at this stage, teachers should only introduce the collocations between prepositions (“和,” “跟”) and “见面.” The collocations between “同,” “与” and “见面” should not be taught until students finish their study of junior level 2.teachers can guide students to make the following dialogue:

师：你和XX同学以前见过面吗？(Teacher: Have you met XX before?)

生：我和他以前见过面。(Student: I have met him before.)

师：你和XX同学见过几次面？(Teacher: How many times have you met him?)

They cut Cassim s body into four quarters, and nailed them up inside the cave, in order to frighten anyone who should venture in, and went away in search of more treasure

生：我和他见过X次面。(Student: I have met him X times.) /我和他一次面也没见过。I have never met him before.)

师：你来中国以前见过老师的面吗 (Teacher: Had you met your teacher before you came to China?)

生：我来中国以前没见过老师的面。(Student: I hadn’t met my teacher before I came to China.)

师：如果你今天打算去我家和我见面，但我不在家，你可以怎么说？(Teacher: If you planned to go to my home and meet me, but I was not at home. How will you express this?)

生：我没见到/着你。(Student: I didn’t meet you.)

Then teachers can ask students to have group dialogues following the above pragmatic forms. By applying the frequency effect reasonably, students learn new separable words based on the words already learned. After a certain period (e.g., one month), teachers should summarize all the separable words that have been taught and ask students to choose two or three words to express verbally or to write in paragraphs.

Among the errors regarding separable words, a fairly large number of them are caused by negative transfers from foreign students’ native languages. For example, the equivalent of “见面” is “meet” in English, “会う” in Japanese, and “” in Korean. All of them are transitive verbs. So, under negative transfers from their native languages, it is very likely that students would make such a collocation as “见面你” (meet you). Therefore, it is essential to compare such separable words with their equivalents in the students’ native languages. During this process, teachers can also provide students with mistaken forms to identify the errors so that correct pragmatic forms can be emphasized.

Sixth, as to quantifiers, foreign students usually learn by rote memory, and teachers generally do not give necessary explanations of quantifiers’ etymology. This leads to the fact that the teaching of quantifiers has always been the most difficult part of vocabulary teaching and has the highest occurrence of errors. Since most of the quantifiers are derived from nouns and a few from verbs, “many of them retain the features of their previous meanings when they act as another part of speech during their evolution process and even after the process has been completed. These features require that the things they quantify should have characteristics consistent with theirs” (Chen, 2002). From the perspective of cognitive linguistics, this consistency confines the features of the quantified things to the same category in which the members share certain similarities, i.e., family resemblance. The quantifiers in junior levels 1 and 2 are all typical individual or collective quantifiers, or quantifiers of weights and measures. Collocation rules are also limited to the structure of “numeral + quantifier + noun” and a few constructions of “verb + numeral + quantifier.” Generally speaking, the structure of “numeral + quantifier + noun” only involves the collocation between quantifiers and concrete nouns, which means that emphasis should be laid on form features of quantifiers rather than their emotional, stylistic, and cultural connotations. According to the statistics of this paper, there are a total of 102 quantifiers in the textbooks of junior levels 1 and 2, and 93 of them are noun quantifiers. Considering all the above facts, we hold that TCSL teachers can leverage reasoned thinking of adults and start with the etymology of quantifiers with the assistance of ancient scripts or pictures to inspire students to find the scope of typical nouns in collocation with quantifiers and the shared semantic features (i.e., similar points in their family resemblance). Students can then be guided to induce the collocation rules between quantifiers and nouns so that they can finally obtain rational knowledge of quantifiers.

For quantifiers that students may overgeneralize by analogy, such as mistaken use of *①Sentences marked with “*” are all wrong sentences (the same below).“onegeyear” (a year), and *②Ding Shengshu (1999) takes “year” and “day” as quasi-quantifiers and “month” as a noun. Scholars like Lu Jianming (1987) and Deng Siying (2012) regard “year” and “day” as quantifiers and “month” as a noun.“onegeday” (a day) by the analogy of “onegemonth” (a month) and “onegeweek” (a week). Teachers should be able to predict this and remind students that the collocation withgeshould not be applied to “year” and “day” when they are learning words like “month” and “week.” Regarding this, scholars generally agree that “year” and “day” belong to quantifiers while “month” and “week” are nouns after conducting comparative studies on collocations with cardinal and ordinal numbers, “今” (now), “前” (before), and reduplication patterns.①Ding Shengshu (1999) takes “year” and “day” as quasi-quantifiers and “month” as a noun. Scholars like Lu Jianming (1987) and Deng Siying (2012) regard “year” and “day” as quantifiers and “month” as a noun.Considering that TCSL differs from ontological research on Chinese, we do not suggest that the difference in the parts of speech of “year,” “day,” “month,” and “week” should be stressed in teaching while attention should be paid to collocation with quantifiers and that with ordinal numbers with or without “第” (di).

Seventh, some word errors are pragmatic. Please take a look at the examples below:

Example 1 *老师，你今年几岁了？(Hello, teacher. What age are you at?)

老师，你今年多少岁/多大了？(Hello, teacher. How old are you?)

Example 2 师：我昨天感冒了。(Teacher: I had a cold yesterday.)

生：*对不起。(Student: * Sorry.)

Example 3 *昨天我的小猫去世了。(My kitten passed away yesterday.)

昨天我的小猫死了。(My kitten died yesterday.)

In Example 1, both the wrong word “几” (ji) and the target word “多少” (duo shao) are interrogative pronouns, but the former is often used to ask about numbers within ten while the latter is to ask about numbers above ten. Therefore, different interrogative pronouns should be selected by the age scope of the person being asked. Otherwise, the communicative principle may be violated. Since the English equivalent of bothjiandduo shaois “how many/how much,” foreign students may usejito ask about numbers above ten due to the influence of negative transfer of their mother tongues, resulting in the above error. Another reason for making such a mistake is due to students’ inadequate knowledge of the target language, as they cannot distinguish the target wordjifromduo shao.

European and American students would say “sorry” if they heard someone talk about their troubles (mostly a health issue). This is mostly due to the influence of negative transfer of English culture. In English, “sorry” can be used to express apology or to show one’s concern upon hearing that the other party of the conversation does not feel well, but the Chinese equivalent of “sorry”－“对不起” (dui bu qi)－is only used for the first circumstance. In Chinese culture, when someone tells us his or her unhappiness, we would generally console him or her by showing our compassion or offering some advice, but we would never usedui bu qi(sorry). Foreign students align “sorry” withdui bu qiin Chinese and apply it exactly as they would do in an English scenario, resulting in a pragmatic error, as shown in Example 2.

The target word “死” (si) in Example 3 is a taboo word in Chinese culture. As taboo words are an integral part of language and culture, many TCSL teachers would make an introduction to them in class. They would also introduce some euphemisms for such words, for example, using “去世” (qu shi) (pass away) instead of “死” (pass away), but they seldom point out clearly thatqu shihas a different pragmatic context and emotional connotation－a commendatory implication which makes it only suitable for describing the death of adults, mostly elderly people. Unaware of this difference, foreign students replacesiwithqu shiwhenever they have to express death, leading to too generalized a use ofqu shi.

Personal and demonstrative pronouns are also the aspects in which students often make pragmatic errors. For instance:

Example 1: *（打电话）你好，这是安美。[(Calling) Hello, this is Anmei.]

那是小李吗？(Is that Xiao Li?)

（打电话）你好，我是安美。[(Calling) Hello, I’m Anmei.]

你是小李吗？(Are you Xiao Li?)

Example 2: *……那就是我的好笑的故事。(That is my funny story.)

……这就是我的好笑的故事。(This is my funny story.)

Influenced by common sentence patterns used in conversations over the phone, such as “This is…” and “Is that…?” most European and American students would translate these two patterns literally into “这是……” and “那是……吗？” leading to pragmatic errors. In English, when someone makes a call, the demonstrative pronouns, i.e., “this” and “that,” are used from the perspective of the caller. As the person makes a self-introduction over the phone, “this” (这zhe) is used to refer to himself or herself which is near, while “that” (那na) is used to refer to the party on the other end of the line, which is far. In Chinese, however, we refer to the caller as “I”, and the called as “you” when we make phone calls.

For anaphoric reference in Chinese, what we have mentioned just now is regarded as something that just happened, so we often use “这” (this) to refer to it, while in English, what has happened belongs to the category of “far,” so “那” (that) is often used. The cause of the above two errors mainly lies in the tendency for foreign students to apply their English ways of thinking and expression when they communicate in Chinese.

For such errors, teachers should focus on the influence on words from such comprehensive factors as cultural elements, social habits, and mental profiles. When they teach words, they should go beyond the lexical level and put words in context so that students can identify the scenarios for using these words and communicate properly with the right words. It is also essential to compare the pragmatic rules and cultural conventions of Chinese words with those of the mother tongues of students. Considering that the majority of Chinese textbooks explain words with English paraphrasing and the extensive use of English worldwide, teachers should pay special attention to comparing pragmatic rules and cultural conventions of Chinese words with those of English to avoid negative transfer of English. By respecting the cultures of students from different countries and leveraging culturally loaded words and phenomena, teachers can strengthen students’ experiences and comprehension of the target culture, cultivate their awareness of Chinese culture, and enhance not only their language skills but also their cultural awareness.

Conclusion

No matter how extensive and complete teaching theories have become nowadays, teaching practice is still the decisive factor. For teachers and students, the target of teaching is the final results which are achieved through teaching efficiency. During teaching research, analysis of errors often made by students can not only help teachers have a clear understanding of the nature and features of the course they teach but also enable them to choose more targeted teaching methods. It is the intent of this paper to trigger more thoughtful and relevant approaches for TCSL teachers regarding their teaching.