Methods of improving linguistic skills in teaching the reading of Chinese texts to students of linguistics

Abstract

Reading in Chinese is habitually treated as a skill derived from command of the character system, whereas the gap between recognising a sign and actually understanding a connected text remains poorly conceptualised for students majoring in linguistics. The paper discusses why the customary reliance on word-by-word translation impedes the formation of a mature reader and which linguistic skills should be deliberately improved when working with a Chinese written text. The aim is to substantiate and describe a methodology built around a level-based typology of difficulties and a three-stage organisation of work with the text. The material comprised programme documents, learning texts of various registers and a body of observations of advanced-stage students' reading; conceptual-categorial analysis, systematisation, modelling and the comparison of methodological positions were applied. A classification of difficulties along four levels is proposed – graphic-character, lexical-semantic, grammatical-syntactic and discursive-cultural; it is shown how each level corresponds to a particular group of skills and a particular set of techniques. The dominant features of different reading modes are distinguished as applied to a character text. A system of pre-text, text and post-text tasks is described that shifts the emphasis from decoding towards prediction, segmentation and semantic interpretation. The results are applicable in designing practical Chinese courses, developing teaching aids and assessment materials for language programmes.