Absrtact: This paper investigates and analyses the possible problems in the teaching of Chinese as a foreign language, expounds the advantages and disadvantages of "first word after sound" or "first word after sound" and "participle marking" of pinyin, and puts forward the self-innovative method of Chinese character pronunciation and its fonts, hoping to be helpful to the teaching at the primary stage.

Key words: Chinese teaching; phonetic improvement

With the rapid development of China's economy and the improvement of its international status, it has become more and more influential to the world. Many countries have witnessed an upsurge in learning Chinese. According to newspaper reports, many European and American countries have listed Chinese as an optional subject in the college entrance examination for foreign languages, and some countries even put forward the slogan "Chinese learning should start from the doll".

However, when it is exciting and full of efforts to promote this great project, the difficulty of learning Chinese has become the biggest problem that can not be avoided. "Song Yongzhong, president of Nanjing Normal University, clearly pointed out that there are many difficulties in the promotion of Chinese as a foreign language education in China, especially abroad. On the one hand, Chinese itself is very difficult to learn, which has dampened the enthusiasm of many foreigners. On the other hand, the lack of teachers and the lack of popularity of overseas Chinese examination centers have also led many foreign students to give up learning Chinese. Even gave up studying in China. Quoted from Oriental Morning Post. What's more, it is only a superficial phenomenon that the global "Chinese fever" surpasses the wave. There are many obstacles to the promotion of Chinese as a foreign language in China.

Because Chinese characters are not phonetic characters, that is, the pronunciation and font are completely independent and separate, and can not "see the character intimate voice" or "see the sound to read", it is the first and most difficult point in the whole teaching process, that is, the understanding and reading of Chinese characters.

In order to help reading, it is indispensable to annotate Chinese characters. Its means and methods have gone through a lot of hardships, and have been constantly exploring and pursuing perfection. Such as example method, pronunciation method, straight tone method, anti-tangential method, phonetic symbols and so on, until now the Pinyin method. It is undoubtedly a great progress to use 26 Latin alphabets to pronounce Chinese phonetic alphabets. However, the use of Chinese phonetic alphabets, especially in teaching materials of Chinese as a foreign language, is not perfect. There are some problems as follows:

1. Syllable letters are more or less, ranging from 1 to 6. They cannot be labeled neatly and intuitively corresponding to Chinese characters. We know that the size of bytes of Chinese characters is the same, and the internal components (root) structure is also regular. They are arranged in left and right ways. There are only three kinds of characters: single character (wood), left and right character (Lin), left and right character (Bin). There are no four parts of Chinese characters: left, middle and right character (Bin).

If we regard letters as components of Chinese characters, we also arrange them in left and right ways. The same byte space can only accommodate three letters at most. The syllables of 4-6 letters are not accommodated. So when annotating a whole chapter and a whole sentence, Chinese characters must be spaced, whether the syllables are marked up or down, whether the syllables are long or short, or in disorder. This may be the annotation of Chinese characters in domestic and foreign textbooks. Common problems.

Second, in order to reduce the character spacing in Chinese, word segmentation and annotation have been proposed, which is basically the case in the current teaching materials of Chinese as a foreign language.

Word segmentation is beneficial for foreigners to master Chinese vocabulary better, but who will stipulate the criteria for word segmentation? What's more, the unit of our language is the word, and the resulting word mix makes a text read intermittently, which is not conducive to grasping the beauty of Chinese language, nor to memory, and even to the future high-level teaching or not advocating word segmentation, but also to re-cultivate the ability of Chinese continuous reading.

In addition, after participle labeling, the syllables of words and sounds are all connected together. For example, the idiom "Lianzhngsnyun" is labeled as "Linzhngsnyun". Perhaps even we can hardly recognize it ourselves, so we can not dazzle foreigners who are new to Chinese learning.

3. What if English and Pinyin are easily confused? This is not only a double problem for us to learn English, but also for foreigners to learn Chinese. In order to avoid confusion, we have to have both. Therefore, in the teaching materials of Chinese as a foreign language, Chinese characters are only marked with Pinyin and no translation, but in the CCTV International Channel, the opposite is true. Only the translation, no Pinyin, even in the column "Happy Learning Chinese". Regardless of the textbooks or the media, we all know how much pronunciation is needed for beginners of Chinese, especially foreign friends, whenever Chinese characters appear.


4. The dualistic teaching mode of Chinese characters resulting from the separation of Chinese characters and pronunciation has become a puzzle in the teaching of Chinese as a foreign language. Whether to learn Chinese should be "pronunciation before word" or "pronunciation after word" has been controversial and can not be unified.


Fifth, in teaching Chinese as a foreign language, courseware such as computer and screen demonstration are indispensable. The pronunciation of Chinese characters in these courseware must be added through various software or artificial methods, often through the process of making twice or more, which is not only laborious, but also not ideal. This has been verified in various institutions of foreign training.


6. Due to the current phonetic notation of Chinese characters, there are many problems in teaching materials of Chinese as a foreign language, such as loose pages, lack of neatness and beauty, which results in great waste of printing and paper. As early as 2007, Looking magazine disclosed: "The difficulty of teaching Chinese as a foreign language is that more than 400,000 and 200 tons of Chinese textbooks are sent from China to the rest of the world through the postal system every year."


In addition to the above, how to solve the problem of polyphonic and alphabetic initials capitalization; how to add Pinyin and intonation in Word, indesign, OFFice 2007 and other systems; how to make foreign textbooks and domestic textbooks unified phonetic notation methods. And so on, to sum up: all of them have something to do with the way and method of Pinyin labeling!


In view of the problems mentioned above, especially the problems of word segmentation and dualistic teaching in teaching Chinese as a foreign language, I have made a long-term and multi-way research, and put forward the scheme of "schematic pinyin" (patent No. CN200410014528.0); I have published an article annotating the underlined Chinese characters, see Science Popular (Science Education) No. 679, a target. That is to say, we hope to solve the problem of separating Chinese characters from their pronunciation thoroughly. If you think otherwise, you can't live a hundred times.


However, practice has proved that the above practice of completely abandoning letters, "span" is too big, unrealistic, and can not be implemented. In the process of understanding the concerns and corrections of friends, as a precept and a precept, in line with the three principles of using letters, general reservations and individual simplicity, a new phonetic notation method is proposed and elaborated in the following:


We know that 26 letters are not enough in Chinese Pinyin, so we have to borrow them from each other. First, h in the initials zh/ch/sh, h in the initials "h" (drink), and second, N and ng at the end of rhyme. Borrowing is feasible only because the borrowed letters no longer have the original phoneme properties, but are used as a mark to indicate what phonological type they are. To this end, we can completely change the way of marking and recording the three letters, so that syllables are short and easy to mark.


There is no doubt that there are problems in clarity and resolution. The solution for the future is to make a "phonetic font" library, like all kinds of fonts, to tie the Chinese characters and phonetic notes together technically and to become "standard parts" of a single word, so that they can be put in place step by step. When output, reading, or every time they need to be used, the Chinese characters and phonetic notes are in the same place! ________ Now the font font library and other technologies are more and more mature, "phonetic font" clarity is certainly not a problem.


We believe that as long as the "phonetic font" font library is in place and applied in teaching Chinese as a foreign language and textbooks, at least the following effects can be achieved:


1. Synchronized and unified teaching of words and sounds, shortening the course; 2. Solving the problem of word segmentation and phonetic annotation, returning to the standard of word phonetic annotation, at the same time, this level is also conducive to the same as domestic textbooks; 3. In teaching Chinese as a foreign language, maintaining the characteristics of Chinese continuous reading not only improves the teaching efficiency, but also greatly reduces the cost of textbooks.


Foreigners learn Chinese mainly for daily oral communication, business, tourism, and more understanding of Chinese culture. Almost no one will take the Chinese phonetic alphabet test in China to get a score and diploma, so it is most practical to help them get started as soon as possible. If you have already learned Pinyin and been accustomed to the original method of phonetic notation, in fact, it is very easy to transform it, because here the simplification and improvement of the original method of phonetic notation is very slight and regular, at most a few minutes of a few sentences, that is, just click on it.


Everything is difficult at the beginning, and Chinese learning is difficult at the beginning. Once the initial stage of phonetic teaching shows its effect, it will undoubtedly greatly enhance the enthusiasm of foreigners in Chinese and add to the flourishing cause of training Chinese as a foreign language.