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Authors: Yang Zhou
Keywords: applied cognitive linguistics, Chinese classifiers, image-schema, teaching Chinese as a foreign language
Abstract: For students whose L1 does not require lots of classifiers, such as English and German, a translation approach to teaching Chinese classifiers does not work well. To be specific, if German students are asked to translate ein Schirm into Chinese, they may say 一伞 ‘one umbrella’. However, the indispensable classifier between the numeral and the following noun has been lost, because they should say一把伞 ‘one CLASSIFIER umbrella’. In the situation, Chinese classifiers become untranslatable in phrases or sentences, where the translation approach meets a dilemma. If the teacher uses a purely communicative approach, the problem will probably not be solved. Because the missing of classifiers may not lead to the breakdown of communication, students will pay little attention to the classifiers. Some teachers ask their students to memorise “numeral + classifier + noun” structured phrases in Chinese as collocations. Given that different Chinese nouns can follow different classifiers, or even one noun can follow different classifiers, in the meantime, Chinese has hundreds of classifiers. Thus, there are innumerable collocations involving Chinese classifiers, which becomes a heavy burden for L2 learners of Chinese.
In the project, Cognitive Linguistics has been applied to teaching Chinese classifiers, with the hypothesis that students will acquire Chinese classifiers more efficiently if they know the image-schemata of the classifiers. Therefore, the efficiency of the cognitive linguistic approach has been tested, compared to rote memorisation (i.e., the traditional approach).
In previous studies, most attention of studies has been paid to adult learners, whereas children learners attract little attention. Therefore, children learners of Chinese are chosen as tested students, to fill some of the gaps. Meanwhile, there have been few studies combining Cognitive Linguistics with teaching Chinese as a foreign language (TCFL). Even though a couple of studies mentioned applying Cognitive Linguistics to TCFL, what they presented is too abstract to use for teachers. In the condition, the other task of the project is to show an explicit way in which Cognitive Linguistics and teaching Chinese classifiers can be combined, which is also the methodology for data of the project, presented in Part 1 -- teaching plans. And Part 2 will be the analysis of data, i.e., the analysis of students’ exam reports, followed by Part 3, the conclusion and suggestions for further research.