| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立屏東大學 === 華語文教學碩士學位學程 === 103 === The recent years showed a trend for the teaching of Chinese language to even younger learners. Demand for Chinese language textbooks for children massively increased and many textbooks designed for teaching Chinese to younger learners (preschool, children, and teenagers) have emerged in the market. Unfortunately, Chinese language textbooks for overseas elementary and high school students are sadly lacking. The task of publishing Chinese language textbooks for children is wrought with a multitude of difficulties; for instance, the research work on the subject matter is scarce; the faculty resource is inadequate, and the lessons are abstruse and not geared for practical use. Moreover, it is necessary to respond to the rising clamor for the reactionary and analytical review of traditional textbooks, such as, concerns on the integrity, authenticity, and communication skill development capacity of the whole language concept perspectives employed by whole language academicians.
Furthermore, the emergence of situational language teaching also compelled many academicians and experts and even classroom teachers to pay attention to whether the situations provided in textbooks are related to the actual living circumstances of the students for the facilitation of their learning process. On the other hand, a number of sociologists have criticized the abundance of ideological views contained in textbooks as these ideologies infused into the textbooks form a hidden curriculum that imperceptibly affect the students’ learning conditions. The foregoing factors motivated the author to delve more deeply into the attributes of Chinese language textbooks created for children, and through the three types of reactionary and analytical review stated earlier, evaluate the Chinese language textbooks created for children to determine whether the textbooks were created from the angle and perspective that cater to the developmental attributes and learning interests of children, whether the situations therein provided are abundant enough to foster the development of the child’s communication skills, and whether they contain hidden ideological views that may detrimentally affect the children’s learning.
The following conclusions were obtained from the study findings: 1) Chinese language textbooks for children should contain multicultural and highly authentic information to enable children to apply what they learn from textbooks onto their daily lives and should aim to enable children to read the various forms of written materials they may encounter and to use acquired language skills to communicate with others. They should also be able to stimulate the children’s interest and inclination for learning language skills. 2) Chinese language textbooks for children should contain diversified and highly applicable communication skill training to equip them with adequate language skills, thus children shall be able to easily communicate and socially interact with others, thereby resolving the problem of applicability of subject matter to life. 3) The vocabulary employed in Chinese language textbooks for children should be attuned to the cognitive skills of children, that is, from few to many and from simple to complex. Moreover, textbooks should emphasize connectivity of the old and new experiences of children. 4) Chinese language textbooks for children should contain a diversity of situations; specific attributes of which should include a coordination of text and graphics for the teaching of social interaction and textbook subject matters. Moreover, word-constructed psychological diagrams should select common scenarios required in the social interaction of learners to induce learners to correlate the scenarios with their actual living circumstances. 5) Chinese language textbooks for children should have the even presence of middle class and the working class to enable children from different social levels to recognize the different social cultures with a greater sense of diversity. Likewise, the textbooks should contain an even share of oriental and western culture related information to enable children learning second languages to understand a diversity of cultures and to respect the cultures and sentiments of other peoples.
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