Chinese writing

Author: Wang Qinxiao
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2003-08-01
Features: The Preparatory Department of Minzu University of China has been conducting Chinese language teaching for ethnic minority students since the mid-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 researched and explored aspects such as 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 language teaching. Teaching ethnic minority students such as Uyghurs and Kazakhs has always been one of the important teaching tasks of our department. 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. 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, humanities and social sciences, etc.). Our teaching objectives and content are also designed to help students acquire the necessary listening, speaking, reading, and writing language skills required for university major studies. Looking back at the path of our Chinese language teaching over the past four decades, it can be roughly divided into three stages:
Stage 1: From the mid-1950s to 1966, before the Cultural Revolution, the textbooks and curriculum design were relatively simple, and the teaching method was traditional grammar-translation, focusing on grammar theory, with an emphasis on grammar patterns and function words. Both grammar and vocabulary explanations were conducted in students' mother tongues, and textbooks were bilingual (Chinese and ethnic language).
Stage 2: After the Cultural Revolution, from 1972 when enrollment resumed to 1984, influenced by structuralist language teaching methods, although the textbooks remained simple and comprehensive, sentence pattern teaching was widely adopted in teaching methods, changing the past classroom-centered approach with texts. To help students improve their listening and speaking skills, some oral textbooks were also compiled, paying more attention to the combination of language skill training and mastery of language rules.
Stage 3: Starting from 1984 to the present, functional teaching methods were introduced, transforming the past single type of lesson into different types based on language skills. From comprehensive general textbooks, they evolved into specialized series textbooks. The types of lessons were set as: intensive reading (essentially grammar lessons), writing practice, extensive reading, language practice, and for second-year liberal arts students, there are also selected readings and ancient Chinese; for science and engineering classes, there is also science Chinese. The series of textbooks now about to be released is the crystallization of teachers' continuous practice and summarization during this period. In textbook compilation, new theories and teaching methods of language teaching were adopted, attention was paid to the combination of structure, function, and cultural factors, and in terms of layout, scientificity and practicality were noted, while in content, ideological, knowledge, and interest aspects were considered. Some textbooks, after long-term use and repeated revisions, have shown significant teaching effects and are quite popular with students.
The Chinese Writing course is one of the series of Chinese courses offered to ethnic minority students in Xinjiang. Its purpose is to improve students' Chinese writing skills. Considering the practical problems Uyghur students face in standardizing Chinese character writing, this textbook includes not only writing knowledge but also some knowledge of Chinese characters. However, when using this textbook, the focus should be on the teaching of writing knowledge and writing practice.