Ancient Chinese

Author: Ding Wenlou
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2003-02-01
Features: The Preparatory Department of Minzu University of China has been engaged in teaching Chinese to ethnic minority students since the early 1950s. Over the past four decades, thanks to the efforts of several generations of teachers, it has not only made significant contributions to cultivating a large number of talents proficient in Chinese in ethnic regions but also continuously explored and researched in curriculum design, textbook development, and teaching methods. According to teaching needs, a variety of textbooks of different types have been compiled and published, a large number of research achievements have been published, and relatively rich teaching experience has been gained, laying a solid foundation for the future development of Chinese teaching. Teaching ethnic minority students such as Uyghurs and Kazakhs in Xinjiang has always been one of our important teaching tasks. Although the teaching has changed over different periods based on the needs of ethnic regions, it mainly consists of high school graduates entering key universities, with a two-year program (changed to a one-year program starting from the summer vacation of 1994). It is clear that the teaching nature is basically pure preparatory education, where students learn Chinese as a tool for studying their major (including science and engineering, agriculture and medicine, liberal arts, etc.), and our teaching objectives and content are designed to help students acquire the necessary listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills for university major studies.
Looking back at the path of Chinese teaching over the past four decades, it can be roughly divided into three stages:
First Stage: From the mid-1950s to 1966 before the Cultural Revolution, the textbooks and curriculum design were relatively simple, and teaching methods were traditional grammar-translation methods, focusing on grammar theory, with an emphasis on grammatical patterns and function words. Both grammar and vocabulary explanations were conducted in students' mother tongues, and textbooks were bilingual (Chinese and ethnic languages).
Second Stage: From 1972, when enrollment resumed after the Cultural Revolution, to 1984, influenced by structuralist language teaching methods, textbooks remained single and comprehensive, but sentence pattern teaching was widely adopted, changing the past classroom-centered approach. To help students improve listening and speaking skills, some oral textbooks were also compiled, paying more attention to the combination of language skill training and mastery of linguistic rules.
Third Stage: Starting from 1984 to the present, functional teaching methods were introduced, transforming the past single lesson types into different types based on language skills. From comprehensive general textbooks, they evolved into specialized series textbooks. The lesson types are now set as: intensive reading (essentially grammar lessons), writing practice, extensive reading, and language practice (second-year liberal arts students also take selected readings and ancient Chinese), with science and engineering classes adding science and technology Chinese.
The series of textbooks now about to be published is the crystallization of teachers' continuous practice and summarization during this period. In the textbook compilation, new language teaching theories and methods were adopted, attention was paid to the combination of structure, function, and cultural factors, and the layout focused on scientificity and practicality, while the content emphasized ideological, knowledge, and entertainment aspects. Some textbooks, after long-term use and repeated revisions, have shown significant teaching effects and are very popular with students.
It is worth mentioning that in 1988, our department launched the An Ziji Language Teaching Experiment Class. To support the teaching, Professor Ma Shujun edited the New Chinese Coursebook (published by Guangming Daily Press in June 1990). This textbook introduced An Ziji's language teaching philosophy while summarizing our department's many years of teaching experience, well reflecting the following guiding principles: 1. Simplifying grammar teaching; 2. Highlighting Chinese character teaching; 3. Promoting simultaneous development of oral and written language. After its publication, the textbook was widely used and achieved good teaching results. Its teaching principles are also worth further research and reference in the future.
As this series of textbooks is about to be published, we cannot forget several esteemed teachers such as Ma Shujun, Pan Zhenyu, Li Jin, Chen Jun, You Zhiren, and Dong Wenfang. They were pioneers of Chinese teaching in our department's preparatory division, dedicating their youth and lifelong efforts to this cause. The development of our Chinese teaching today owes much to their hard work and contributions. Their spirit of dedication to the Party's ethnic education and their rich teaching experience are worth our study and learning.
The publication of this series of textbooks has been supported by the leadership of the Education Department of the National Commission for Ethnic Affairs, Vice President Zhu Mahong Niya of our university, Teacher Ma Jialin of the university press, and the leadership of the Academic Affairs Office. We are also deeply grateful to Ji Da, a former leader of the preparatory division, for his great help.
Textbook compilation is a crucial part of the overall teaching process, and the quality of textbooks directly affects teaching success or failure. Teaching Chinese to ethnic minority students is a second language teaching, as a new discipline, with its own unique characteristics and rules. Although we have been engaged in this work for many years and have accumulated some experience, research on a series of disciplinary theories is still insufficient, and the teaching syllabus used as the basis for textbook compilation is still weak. At the same time, as a series of textbooks, while maintaining vertical independence, they must also have close horizontal connections. There are still some issues in this regard.
In short, due to our limited level and the fact that some textbooks were compiled in a relatively rushed manner, errors and shortcomings are inevitable. We sincerely hope that fellow experts and readers will provide criticism so that we can continuously revise and improve the textbooks.