Language teaching and research Some problems in Phase 3 of 1996 in phonetics teaching of TCFL illustrate that phonetics learning is the basis of foreign language learning.


Phonetics teaching is an important part of foreign language teaching. At present, many teachers are not satisfied with the effect of phonetics teaching. The reasons for the unsatisfactory teaching effect are very complicated. Among them, there are objective difficulties as well as problems in our understanding and teaching methods. Some teachers hope to carry out in-depth research and Discussion on phonetics teaching in order to improve the level of phonetics teaching. For this reason, I would like to make some comments on several issues that you have discussed more in order to arouse discussion.


The scope of this paper is limited to phonetics teaching in TCFL from zero starting point, which lasts more than one year. The inconsistent understanding of phonetics teaching is reflected not only in classroom teaching but also in different teaching materials of Chinese as a foreign language, and the teaching materials tend to reflect the editor's teaching guiding ideology more centrally. Therefore, in order to facilitate discussion and explanation, I have studied and compared five sets of representative textbooks which have great influence on the history of teaching Chinese as a foreign language.


These five sets of textbooks are: 1. Chinese Textbooks, edited by the Commercial Press of the Chinese Language Specialized Course for Foreign Students of Peking University, 1964. 2. Basic Chinese Textbook, Beijing Language Institute, Chinese Language Teaching Publishing House, 1980. 3. Practical Chinese Textbook, edited by Liu Wang Xun, Deng Enming and Liu Shui, Commercial Press, 1984. 4?? 1995-2007 Tsinghua Tongfang Optical Disc Co. Ltd. All rights reserved.4, Primary Chinese Textbook, Beijing Institute of Language and Culture, Beijing Institute of Language and Culture Press, 1984, second edition. 5. Deng Yi, Editor-in-Chief of Primary Chinese Course, Peking University Press, 1993.


Next we will discuss several controversial issues.


First, the traditional method of "phonetics teaching stage" in basic Chinese teaching is to arrange phonetics teaching stage separately and concentrate on phonetics training to lay a sound foundation. The teaching time is usually two weeks. "Chinese Textbook", "Basic Chinese Textbook", "Practical Chinese Textbook" and "Primary Chinese Course" are all stages of phonetics teaching according to the principle of staged teaching. The teaching time varies from 10 lessons to 16 lessons. Generally, the teaching plan is completed in about 50 hours in two weeks. "Primary Chinese Textbook" has changed the traditional practice of not arranging the phonetics teaching stage separately and combining phonetics, grammar and vocabulary teaching at the beginning. In the "Writing Notes", the editor pointed out that "pronunciation plays an important role in foreign language learning. The practice of pronunciation should run through the whole basic stage. Therefore, this book changes the general practice of singling out the phonetic stage. All the lessons in this book have phonetic exercises.


I agree with the idea that the practice of pronunciation should run through the whole basic stage. Whether the author's experience in learning a foreign language or in teaching Chinese as a foreign language, he feels that the initial stage of phonetics learning is only a preliminary foundation. The correct pronunciation of a language should be practiced repeatedly and continuously in the whole basic stage. This may have been neglected in the past teaching. After the phonetic stage, grammar and vocabulary learning tasks are very heavy, which often relaxes the phonetic practice and does not pay attention to correcting the wrong pronunciation. But the development of things has continuity and stages. Mr. Zhao Yuanren said that "learning foreign language is divided into three important parts: pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary. Of course, we should follow these three parts step by step. The hardest and most important part of pronunciation is..." Language Questions, 156 pages. Phonetics, grammar and vocabulary teaching are interrelated and have their own characteristics. In foreign language teaching, we should start with phonetics teaching, which has its own distinct characteristics.


Materialistic dialectics tells us that there are qualitative stipulations in different stages of development of things. Materialist dialectics also tells us to grasp the main contradictions in solving problems. The main contradiction in the initial stage of foreign language learning is phonetic learning. I think it is necessary and effective to concentrate on voice training at this stage. This is not inconsistent with the emphasis on speech training in the whole basic stage. It's just that the emphasis of teaching is different at different stages. If we concentrate on laying a sound foundation in the phonetics teaching stage and continue to pay attention to the phonetics training in the grammar and vocabulary teaching stage according to the traditional way, we will achieve better results for foreign students'Chinese phonetics learning.

2. How to deal with the relationship between phonetic, rhyme, monotone training and conversation training of Mandarin Chinese in the phonetic teaching stage has always been a controversial issue. Teachers who advocate starting from individual exercises take more account of the rules of foreign language teaching and the characteristics of Chinese phonetic system. Some of the teachers who advocate conversation training emphasize the practicability of language teaching, while others focus on teaching methods and advocate learning pronunciation in language flow.


The question of language flow teaching will be discussed later. Here we will talk about practicality first. Before the 1960s, foreign language teaching in China was greatly influenced by the Soviet Union in theory and method, and so was the teaching of Chinese as a foreign language. At that time, phoneme teaching was generally emphasized, that is to say, phonetic learning should begin with individual exercises of sound, rhyme and tone, and then gradually transit to conversational practice. This kind of teaching guiding ideology is fully embodied in the Chinese Textbook.


The publication of Chinese Textbook in 1964 is the first set of Chinese textbooks for foreigners officially published in China. There are 12 lessons in phonetics teaching. The first eight lessons concentrate on the training of phonology, rhyme and monotony in the theoretical part. They introduce the phonetic knowledge of Putonghua in detail and do not practice conversation. The last four lessons are part of oral practice. The main content of conversational practice is classroom language and daily life language.


In the 1970s, the introduction of foreign language teaching theories and methods from European and American countries had a great impact on foreign language teaching in China, especially on audio-visual, functional and sentence pattern teaching. Sentence patterns have also been used in teaching Chinese as a foreign language. Basic Chinese Textbook was published in 1980. This set of textbooks not only inherits the tradition of attaching importance to individual training in Chinese Textbook, but also absorbs some principles of sentence pattern teaching. In the explanation, the editor pointed out that the first ten lessons of phonetics teaching should combine the conversational practice with the individual training of harmony, rhyme and tone according to the Chinese phonetics system.


Under the guidance of this idea, the phonetic part of the book has two characteristics: first, the teaching begins with conversation and then carries on the training of phonology, rhyme and monotony. The order of compiling the text content is conversation, new words and Chinese characters, vowels, initials, Pinyin and exercises. It has changed the traditional practice of "Chinese Textbook" from the training of phonology, rhyme and monotony. The second teaching content is still "as far as possible according to the Chinese phonetic system" rather than according to the language communication function. From the overall point of view, the focus of this book's phonetics teaching stage is still single training.


In the 1980s, functional teaching method had a tremendous impact on teaching Chinese as a foreign language. Although the teaching principle of "structure-function-culture combination" was formally put forward in the late 1980s, some people emphasized the scientific, practical and interesting nature of foreign language teaching in the early 1980s. Emphasis on practicality means that foreign language teaching should be close to real life and strengthen the cultivation of language communicative competence. This kind of teaching guiding ideology will inevitably affect phonetics teaching.


We have seen traces of the influence of functional approach in Basic Chinese Textbook. This influence is more obvious in Practical Chinese Textbooks and Junior Chinese Textbooks. "Practical Chinese Textbook" was published in 1984, which is a textbook specially designed for teaching Chinese in foreign countries. In the preface, the editor points out that the first 20 lessons focus on the training of pronunciation and intonation, focusing on difficult and difficult intonation, while learning conversation and sentence patterns, so as to lay a good foundation for pronunciation. Editors put conversation and sentence pattern learning at the top of the list, emphasizing that while learning conversation and sentence pattern, they learn phonetics and intonation and highlight difficult intonation. The conversation content of each lesson is compiled according to functional items and grammar teaching content is strengthened in the phonetics teaching stage. In the preface, the editor also points out that in the teaching of phonetics and grammar in the first 12 lessons, it is necessary to explain the difficulties of foreign readers and the characteristics of Chinese itself that the main phonetic or grammatical points appearing in this lesson are not introduced comprehensively and systematically.


On this basis, the Primary Chinese Textbook has made some progress. It has changed the general practice of singling out the phonetics stage by combining phonetics, grammar and conversation exercises at the beginning. However, in the actual use of this set of textbooks, Beijing Language Institute still takes the first fifteen lessons as the phonetics teaching stage. The Primary Course of Chinese, edited by Professor Deng Yi of Peking University, was published in 1994. This set of textbooks inherits the tradition of Chinese Textbook. There are 15 lessons in the phonetic part. The first 10 lessons concentrate on the training of sound, rhyme and tone, and mainly focus on single training. The last five lessons are to learn conversational content and still focus on classroom language and daily life.


There are many kinds of foreign language teaching theories and methods in the world. All kinds of teaching theories and methods have their own advantages and disadvantages. The existence of different teaching theories and methods is beneficial to the improvement of foreign language teaching if they can complement each other. Therefore, we can not simply comment on who is right and who is wrong about the different approaches of the above five sets of textbooks. On the one hand, we should allow and encourage different practices and explorations, on the other hand, we should also carry out theoretical discussions to make our practice more in line with the objective law.


Based on this, I would like to make some personal comments.

The first is about the principle of practicality. I am in favor of advocating the principle of practicality in teaching Chinese as a foreign language. The ultimate goal of teaching and scientific research in any field is to be practical. But the practicability is direct and indirect, partial and holistic. Some scientific research results seem to have no practicability in the near future but have practicability in the long run. Some of them are not practical in part but practical in whole. This phenomenon also exists in foreign language teaching. For example, "Hello" and "Goodbye" can be said immediately after the first day of conversation practice in the beginning stage of teaching Chinese as a foreign language, which shows great practicability. It seems that it is not very practical to learn single exercises for a few days without speaking. But from the whole stage of basic teaching, it is also practical to do a good job in the individual training of sound, rhyme and tone, lay a sound foundation for future conversation training. There is also a question of "current interests" and "long-term interests". I think the cultivation of language communicative competence runs through the whole Chinese teaching. The completion of the main tasks in each teaching stage is conducive to the cultivation of communicative competence. The ancients said that haste is not speed. In the teaching of Chinese as a foreign language, we should also avoid the bias of quick success and instant benefit.


The second is about the principle of interest. Some comrades think that the monotonous training of sound, rhyme and tone is monotonous and dull. Starting from conversation practice, the interest of phonetics teaching can be enhanced and students'interest in learning can be enhanced. Here is a question of how to deal with "interest". In foreign language learning, as in other fields, "interest" has its two sides. To give full play to one's interests properly will be beneficial to learning and work, but to give incorrect play to one's interests will hinder learning and work. Mr. Zhao Yuanren said: "Language is a set of habits to learn foreign languages is to develop a set of special habits." Language Questions 156 pages.


"Developing a special set of habits" requires certain skills training, and any skill training has a process from analysis to synthesis. Before learning a complete skill, the skill should be decomposed into basic actions. Only after learning the basic movements well can we learn to synthesize the skills of continuous movements. This is true of sports and music. For example, when you learn to play a string instrument, you must first learn fingering and bowing. Only after the fingering and bowing exercises are completed can the music be practiced. And the exercise of basic movements is very monotonous, boring and very hard. At this time, some people will not be able to learn halfway if they only depend on their personal interests. Therefore, the initial stage of skill training is often compulsory. The same is true of learning foreign languages. Although the single exercises of sound, rhyme and tone are very monotonous and boring, strict and hard training is necessary for students to learn Chinese pronunciation well. This stage cannot be crossed. However, I am not opposed to enhancing the interestingness of foreign language teaching. I just disagree with the need to relax the single training of voice, rhyme and tone in order to enhance the interestingness. I also disagree with the necessity of the single training of negative voice, rhyme and tone.


Thirdly, it is also a controversial issue whether to learn Chinese characters in phonetics teaching and Chinese character teaching at the stage of phonetics teaching. One suggestion is that we should concentrate on learning pronunciation without teaching Chinese characters or less teaching Chinese characters at the pronunciation stage. Because it is very difficult to learn Chinese characters in the phonetic stage, Chinese character learning will distract students'energy and affect phonetic learning. Another idea is that we should learn Chinese characters. Because after the phonetics stage is the basic grammar teaching stage, if the phonetics stage does not learn a certain number of Chinese characters into the basic grammar teaching stage, the burden of students will suddenly increase and a great leap will take place in the connection between the two teaching stages. Therefore, it is advocated that the teaching of Chinese characters should be advanced.


These two opinions are reflected in the five sets of textbooks mentioned above. About 50 Chinese characters are taught in 12 phonetics lessons of Chinese Textbook. The phonetic part of the first eight lessons teaches 21 Chinese characters. In Chinese character teaching, the basic strokes of Chinese characters and the structure of Chinese characters are mainly practiced by the analysis of Chinese character morphemes. In the oral practice section of the last four lessons, 29 Chinese characters are learned. The Basic Chinese Textbook has advanced the learning of Chinese characters and increased the number of Chinese characters. In the first lesson, 68 Chinese characters were learned in the whole phonetic stage. In the first 10 conversation texts, Chinese characters can not be found, but only some of them can be found in the new phonetic vocabulary. The number of Chinese characters teaching in Practical Chinese Textbook has increased earlier than that in Basic Chinese Textbook. From the first lesson, 101 Chinese characters have been learned in 12 lessons of Chinese characters in both text and vocabulary.


"Primary Chinese Textbook" is not only a phonetic teaching stage. In practice, the first 15 lessons are used as phonetics teaching stage. In addition to intensive reading, there is a special "Chinese character reading and writing exercise class". There are 236 Chinese characters in 15 classes before intensive reading. A total of 171 Chinese characters were learned in 15 lessons before Chinese character reading and writing exercises. Except for individual Chinese characters, these 171 Chinese characters have appeared in intensive reading classes, requiring students to recognize and write. Intensive reading texts are divided into Chinese character texts and phonetic text lists using Chinese characters. "Primary Chinese Course" is a completely different approach. In phonetic stage 15, there is no Chinese character and no Chinese character is learned. From the above simple statistical materials, we can see that the views and practices on the teaching of Chinese characters in the phonetic stage are quite inconsistent.


I think there are two problems to be considered in dealing with the relationship between phonetics teaching and Chinese character teaching. First, we should grasp the main contradictions to ensure the completion of the main tasks. The main contradiction in the stage of phonetics teaching is phonetics learning. A certain number of Chinese characters can be learned appropriately without affecting the completion of phonetics teaching. Failure to grasp the main contradictions will not only affect the completion of the main tasks at this stage, but also affect the whole basic Chinese teaching.

There are leaps and bounds in Chinese character recognition and writing from the phonetic stage to the basic grammatical stage. It is necessary to minimize jumping, but it can not affect phonetics teaching. Basic Chinese teaching is a whole and staged course. Each stage of teaching has its own characteristics and main tasks. It's not easy to finish phonetics teaching in two weeks. We can't think too much about the next stage of phonetics teaching too early. Contradictions in the next stage are mainly solved in the next stage. In addition, from the perspective of teaching psychology, excessive learning of Chinese characters will certainly distract students'energies. Because it is very difficult to spend a lot of time learning Chinese characters. At the same time, it will be novel for foreign students who have never touched Chinese characters. Therefore, it is possible to spend most of the time on the reading and writing exercises of Chinese characters after class, thus affecting the practice of pronunciation. We have a deep understanding of this in our teaching practice.


Second, consider the possibility. Chinese Textbook and Basic Chinese Textbook teach 50 and 68 Chinese characters respectively in the phonetic stage. The first lesson of Basic Chinese Textbook teaches Chinese Characters Basic Stroke, the second lesson teaches 3 Chinese Characters and then gradually increases to 14 Chinese Characters per lesson in the last two lessons. The average burden of learning six or seven Chinese characters a day in two weeks is not too heavy. It can also adjust the study life. Practical Chinese Textbook teaches 101 Chinese characters in the phonetic stage. It will be difficult to learn so many Chinese characters in two weeks. But this set of textbooks is specially designed for the teaching of Chinese in foreign countries. Weekly classes abroad are not as many as in China. Although the teaching hours are about 50 hours, the time span is relatively large and can generally be endured. Because the burden of learning 101 Chinese characters in two weeks is different from that in four weeks.


"Primary Chinese Textbook" is divided into intensive reading class and Chinese character reading and writing exercise class. 236 Chinese characters reading and writing exercise classes require 171 students to read and write. It's hard for students to learn so many Chinese characters in two or three weeks. If the students from the Chinese character culture circle had studied Chinese characters before they came to China, the situation would be better. If students who have never been exposed to Chinese characters learn so many Chinese characters in two or three weeks, the difficulty is completely imaginable. Imagine a Chinese illiterate who learns so many Chinese characters in two weeks that it is not easy to read and write what I see. In a word, the teaching of Chinese characters is a difficult point in teaching Chinese as a foreign language, which needs special study. In the phonetic stage, we can't learn Chinese characters too much. We should seriously consider the students'endurance ability and the feasibility in the specific operation of classroom teaching. I advocate that Chinese characters should be taught as little as possible or not at the stage of phonetics teaching so as to concentrate on learning Chinese phonetics well. This will benefit the whole basic Chinese teaching.


4. The so-called phoneme teaching in phoneme teaching and language flow teaching refers to the gradual transition of phoneme training from single exercises of Chinese phonetics, rhyme and tone to phrases, sentences and conversation exercises. This method is adopted in Chinese Textbook. It represents the guiding ideology of Chinese phonetics teaching in the 1950s and 1960s. In the 1970s, with the introduction of sentence pattern teaching method, language flow teaching method was put forward. Flow teaching emphasizes that learning phonetics and pronunciation in the language flow begins with the practice of the language flow. Basic Chinese Textbook adopts this method with reservations. Although it adopts the method of starting from the practice of language flow, it still pays great attention to individual training as a whole. In the 1980s, the method of language flow teaching was widely adopted. However, in the whole field of teaching Chinese as a foreign language, views and practices are still very different in theory and specific teaching methods. For example, in the context of the widespread use of language flow teaching methods, Professor Deng Yi of Peking University edited the "Primary Chinese Course" basically adheres to the phoneme teaching principles. The representative works on the elaboration of the theory of language flow teaching are Zhao Xianzhou and Li Weimin's The Teaching Methodology of Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language. In this book, they regard the teaching of language flow as a formal principle of phonetics teaching. Now excerpt the book's discourse on language flow teaching. "Learn pronunciation through speech flow. The smallest unit in which people express their thoughts is that sentences are not syllables. Learning syllables is only a means. Its ultimate goal is to speak correctly and naturally. Voice training is a necessary and indispensable process. However, phonology, rhyme and intonation are all meaningful through language flow, that is, learning phonetics through practice. Teachers'main energy should be focused on the overall training of sentences. There are some differences between the pronunciation of isolated phonemes and words and the pronunciation of phonemes and words in the flow. Students perceive the pronunciation and intonation of sentences as a whole in the flow more important than isolated perception of phonemes and words.


I agree with all the linguistic arguments in this passage. For example, it is undoubtedly correct that "the smallest unit of expression of ideas is that sentences are not syllables", "isolated phonemes and pronunciation of words are somewhat different from that of phonemes and words in the language flow". I agree with the discussion about the relationship between learning syllables and learning to speak. For example, "Learning syllables is only a means. Its ultimate goal is to speak correctly and naturally and fluently."


But when it comes to the specific operation of teaching, I can't agree with it. There are several issues that need further discussion.

First, we should distinguish between purpose and means. To speak correctly and naturally and fluently is the ultimate goal of phonetics teaching. However, how can we achieve this goal? As mentioned above, any skill training has a process from analysis to synthesis. Let's take the example of learning a string instrument to illustrate the basic skills training and the ultimate goal. We can also say that "learning fingering and bowing is only a means. Its ultimate goal is to draw beautiful melody correctly and naturally and fluently." But from the beginning of bowing and fingering exercises, whether Latin American melodies can be beautiful or not can be achieved. If this can achieve the ultimate goal, that's the last thing. But the objective law tells us that this is not feasible. The same applies to language learning. It is impossible to speak correctly and naturally without doing a good job in the individual exercises of sound, rhyme and tone. We can't substitute purpose for means.


Secondly, we should correctly deal with the change of the original pronunciation and the flow pronunciation. It is a linguistic fact that the pronunciation of isolated phonemes and words is somewhat different from that of phonemes and words in the language flow. This difference in phonetics is called "flow change". "When we communicate with each other in language, we always have a continuous flow of different sounds, which are followed by one sound. A series of sounds in the language flow are closely connected with the pronunciation position and the pronunciation method, which are constantly changing. Sometimes, they inevitably interact with each other and change obviously. This kind of phonetic change is called "voice flow phonetic change". Lin Tao and Wang Lijia, 149 pages of Phonetics Course.


In Mandarin Chinese, the soft tone, the rhyme of Erhua and the tone change of Lianyu are all the changes of language flow. For example, "ah" becomes "ah, ah" and "bread" becomes "mi npu" and "mi mpu" under certain conditions. For example, the three tone sandhi "1, 7, 8, no" tone sandhi is a typical flow change in Mandarin Chinese. The tone of a single syllable is different from the tone in the flow. Fluent phonological changes are common in all languages. For example, the French recitation of li2aison is a typical voice change. "When two words are connected, the last consonant of the former word and the vowel of the beginning of the latter word can be read together." "The consonants originally belong to the last syllable of the former word because of the relationship between recitation and the vowels of the first syllable of the latter word are combined to form a syllable." "For example: quel hommek_-lm, une-lvey-ne-l_:v, a female student." Chen Dingmin, French Phonetics, 166 pages. In addition, the consonants at the end of the word will change when they are recited. Some clear consonants should be pronounced as voiced consonants. However, in spite of the fact that there is a flow of sound change in foreign language learning, we still need to learn the original tone of monosyllables and words well before we can grasp the law of sound change in the flow.


To learn Chinese pronunciation, we must first pronounce the original pronunciation of "face" and "package" because "face" can only be pronounced MIM if there is no sound change. The same is true of Tritone sandhi. It is necessary to learn the basic tone first and then learn the rules of tone sandhi. The same is true of learning French. So the overall training of sentences is not important. That's very important. "Learning a language can't be considered a good language if it's only about pronouncing a single phoneme or phoneme accurately. Because if you read a single sound in a word or sentence, it sounds as if you are recognizing a word rather than talking. Wu Zongji, Editor-in-Chief, A Summary of Modern Chinese Phonetics, 151 pages. So I don't think monosyllabic or phonemic exercises are important or unimportant issues that should be neglected with flow exercises or whole sentence exercises.


We can't emphasize this aspect one-sidedly and ignore the other. But according to the rules of phonetic learning, there are successive problems. I advocate that phonemes should be the first language and the second language should be the second language. In addition, when discussing phoneme teaching and language flow teaching, there is another opinion that some students with difficulty in pronunciation are not allowed to pronounce alone but can pronounce accurately in language flow. For example, Zhi monosyllables often pronounce t as ti, which sounds a bit like "base", but when you say "China", you can pronounce it accurately. According to my own teaching experience, this is not realistic. Because the difficulty for students to learn this syllable is that i t is easy to pronounce the vowel after the tip of the tongue as i, because influenced by vowel i, t is pronounced as t I. Without knowing the correct pronunciation of zhi, teachers who pronounce Zhi as Ti can easily distinguish whether they pronounce zhontu as TU with little attention or have poor ability of distinguishing pronunciation. It is not easy to distinguish whether they pronounce Zhi correctly or whether there is a problem of pronouncing t as t in fact. When you read "know", it sounds like "basic way" to read "titu". Moreover, even if the pronunciation of Zhi is difficult, the pronunciation of Zhon can not be proved to be inaccurate and accurate in speech flow.