一位爱城公立教育局的中英双语教师写的关于教高频度汉字的感想　（英文材料）

victorw · 发表于 2005-2-27 18:58

一位爱城公立教育局的中英双语教师写的关于教高频度汉字的感想　（英文材料）

Why teach high-frequency Chinese characters in reading class?

There are many different theories on how reading should be taught to our students. Some educators believe that skillful reading depends upon thorough familiarity with individual Chinese characters, words, phrases, and frequent sentence patterns.  They believe that the characters are linked to form words, words are linked to form sentences, and sentences are linked to form ideas; that is, the parts of reading are put together to form the whole. They are of the opinion that the written Chinese characters or words will flow effortlessly from print to meaning when the students have developed thorough familiarity with individual characters, words, phrases, and frequent sentence patterns. In contrast, some other educators believe that reading is not a process of decoding written language.  They suggest that reading does not involve the processing of each character and each word. They view readers as active thinkers who predict what the author is saying during reading.  When readers sample textual information, they may actually verify their ideas about what the author is saying with a minimal amount of textual cues. They believe the comprehension of a piece of reading happens only when readers use their prior knowledge to aid reading and make sense of what one reads.  These educators emphasize comprehension skills over decoding skills in reading.

There are also many other educators who believe that:

Reading is an active process in which readers shift between sources of information (what they know and what the text says), elaborate meaning and strategies, check their interpretation (revising when appropriate), and use the social context to focus their response. (Walker, 2000, p. 4)

From this perspective, reading is viewed as a socio-interactive process in which readers respond to text using their personal knowledge and feelings, framing and reframing their response according to the social situation.

I know these reading theories have broadened my perspective on the concept of reading.  When I reflect upon these theories and formulate my own conception of reading, I find myself tending to agree more with the third perspective.  I understand that reading is a very complex phenomenon.  As a classroom teacher, I know well that children acquire language through exploring, constructing and communicating in the target language. I am also aware of the fact that the aim of our Chinese language arts is to enable each student to understand and appreciate the language, and use it confidently and competently in a variety of situations for communication, personal satisfaction and learning.  I believe that our students can become confident and competent users of all language arts skills through many opportunities to listen, speak, read and write, and to view and to represent in a variety of combinations and relevant contexts.  I know that all the language arts skills are interrelated and interdependent.  Facility in one strengthens and supports the others.  I also feel it is necessary for us to help our children to consciously learn and firmly grasp the basic constituents of the language, namely, basic Chinese characters and basic Chinese words, while facilitating students' increased understanding of the whole picture of the language.

In order to reach this goal, I have decided to find a way to assist my students in learning to recognize the basic Chinese characters.  We are all aware that the Chinese language is one of the most complicated linguistic systems in the world.  According to Zhang (1992), there are around  9000 commonly used characters in the modern Chinese language.  Almost all these Chinese characters can be linked with other related characters to form new words. Most of the characters, as observed by Zhang, can be linked to more than one character to form a new word or a new phrase.  The complexity of the characters and words (character formations) makes the learning of Chinese language vocabulary a very difficult job.  For most of the students in our English-Chinese bilingual program, Mandarin is a second language or a third language.  Although most of my students have been learning Mandarin for five to six years and have acquired classroom Mandarin survival oracy skills, they still have considerable degree of difficulty in developing basic Chinese literacy skills.  The questions that had been facing me at the beginning of the school year were “How can I assist my students in developing their reading skills?  What can I do to help my students to improve their Chinese character (and word) recognition skills?  Which Chinese characters should be introduced or taught first to our students?”  In order to gain a better understanding of the issues, I consulted many of my former university friends and teacher colleagues.  From them, I learned the concept of high-frequency Chinese characters.  After a careful research on the topic, I have learned that high-frequency characters are the characters that appear most often in the printed Chinese language materials.  In the Chinese language, according to Zhang (1992), there are only around 3000 characters that are most commonly used.  Much linguistic research has been done in the area of tabulating the high-frequency Chinese characters.  From my observation, there are only minor differences in character placement among the most respected and massive studies.  My favorite study in this area is documented by Zhang (1992).  (By the way, I generally use Zhang’s list of high-frequency Chinese characters in my reading class.)  According to Zhang (see Figure 1), if a reader is able to recognize the first 1000 high-frequency characters, he or she will be able to identify 90% of the characters printed on the ordinary published materials in Chinese language.  If a reader is able to know the first 2400 high-frequency characters, Zhang indicates, he or she will be able to identify approximately 99% of the printed characters.  If a reader is able to identify the first 3800 high-frequency characters, Zhang predicts, he or she will be able identify 99.9% of the characters in the printed materials in Chinese language.

Figure 1:  High-frequency Characters and Their Percentages of Reading Coverage (Zhang, 1992)
Character Frequencies Percentages of Character Coverage in Modern Printed Materials
1 to 1000 90%
1 to 2400 99%
1 to 3800 99.9%

Based upon the findings of the high-frequency Chinese characters research documented by Zhang (1992), the vocabulary teaching advice from Walker (2000), Sippola (1997), Zhang (1992) and Sitton (1995), and my own understanding of the Program of Studies for Elementary Schools, I have decided to implement a high-frequency Chinese character learning program for my reading instruction in the context of my student-centered, content-based, and integrated Chinese language learning curriculum.  I have chosen the first 1000 high-frequency characters as the core characters for the program. The characters on my core character list are listed in the order of their frequencies of use on printed materials.  The lower the number of the character on the list, the higher its frequency is in print.  Characters with higher frequency are introduced to the students before the ones with lower frequency.  The goal of my high-frequency character program is to assist my students in recognizing 1000 high-frequency Chinese characters before they leave for junior high school.  Being able to recognize 1000 characters, I believe, will ensure my students be able to recognize approximately 90% of all characters appeared on modern printed materials in Chinese language.  I also see that there is a built-in relationship between the high-frequency characters and reading comprehension.  I believe that learning to recognize the high-frequency Chinese characters will be helpful for our students to develop fluency in reading Chinese language.  These high-frequency characters are essential in forming commonly-used written Chinese words and phrases.  They usually play an important part in holding together the general coherence of texts as well. Recognizing the high-frequency characters will give the students a basic context for predicting the meaning of character combinations, namely Chinese words or phrases.  These high-frequency characters can also become springboards for using comprehension skills in reading.  A familiarity with these high-frequency Chinese characters, I believe, will also help students increase speed and accuracy in their reading.

How to teach the High-frequency Chinese Characters?

Educators Sitton (1995), Sippola (1997), Zhang (1992), and Walker (2000) have suggested many valuable strategies for developing word recognition skills in our students.  I have carefully studied their strategies and tried some of them in my class.  Their instructional ideas are instrumental in assisting me in formulating my own strategies on tackling the high-frequency Chinese characters.  I am of the belief that almost any activity that invites students to engage with a written text can be used to strengthen students’ learning of high-frequency Chinese characters.  Activities such as daily news reporting, paired reading, silent reading and choral reading of text or poem will provide many opportunities to focus on the high-frequency characters in context.

In the following, I would like to share some of the specific strategies that I have used in my class:
• Character Walls:  I call lists of characters that follow a particular pattern "character walls" in my class.  I usually ask my students to write the high-frequency characters on large sheets of paper and put them up on the walls.  Students can use character walls as reference when they engage in class reading and writing activities.  When they meet a new high-frequency character, I usually ask them to add it to the lists.
• Direct Instruction on High-frequency Characters:  Sometimes, I conduct direct instruction focusing on the character meaning clues and picture clues to assist students recognizing individual characters.
• High-Frequency Character List:  I give my students lists of high-frequency characters they have learned.  They can take them home and put them on their bedroom walls.  If they have trouble with a particular character, they can refer to it on their lists.
• Weekly Dictation Exercises:  I usually give my students dictation exercise every week on the high-frequency characters they have learned.  I think these exercises will help them to retain these characters.
• Teaching Dictionary Skills:  Using a dictionary is a very important skill.  Once the students have proper dictionary skills, they can use a dictionary if they have problem with a particular character.
• Chinese Word Formation Exercises:  In the Chinese language, characters are combined to form words.  I believe knowing a character does not necessarily guarantee an understanding of the word in which it is a constituent part.  Therefore, I ask my students to use the familiar high-frequency characters to combine with another appropriate character (or characters) to form new words and then predict the meaning of the word.
• Games:  Playing educational games with students is another effective way to assist students in learning new characters.  I have tried charade games in my class to get my students excited about learning characters.
• Character Sorting:  Categorizing and classifying the high-frequency characters are good ways to help students focusing on the different features of the characters.
• Character Probe Strategy:  I employ this strategy to help students to learn the structural construction of a character.  In the strategy, the sequence of the strokes and the structure of a character are analyzed and discussed.
• Character Webbing:  This strategy is designed to help students to use the target character to combine with other related characters to form new words.  The target character is placed in the center of the web.  Other characters that can be combined with the target one are arranged around the center to show their connections with the target character.
• Oral Reading:  Sometimes, I choose an interesting story and read it to the class.  While reading aloud to the class, I usually pause to discuss interesting characters or words appeared in the story.

These are some of the strategies that I have tried so far.  I believe effective Chinese character instruction will have the following traits:
• Teach only a few characters (or words) per session.
• Teach characters (or words) in a meaningful context.
• Relate each character (or word) to students’ prior knowledge.
• Combine each character with other related characters to form words, phrases and sentences.
• Have students use the characters to express their own experiences and ideas.
• Expose students to authentic reading materials in the Chinese language.

Each time when I am experimenting with a new instructional strategy, I usually apply the above criteria to gauge its appropriateness.  I am still working to develop new strategies for my high-frequency character instruction. Right now, I am working on the general rules or patterns on the Chinese character formation and experimenting with the idea of using character stroke clues, shape clues and radical clues to assist my students in predicting the meaning of a specific character.

Does the program have potential for teaching writing?

I also see that there is a very tight bond between high-frequency character teaching and writing instruction.  I believe teaching high-frequency characters will help me to improve my students’ writing skills.  In my character instruction program, the major determiner for character selection and placement for teaching is not my perception of the character’s stroke complexity. The core characters that I used for teaching are determined by their necessity in modern writing.  I do not teach the characters with fewer strokes (easy characters) first and then teach the ones with more strokes (complex characters).  I teach characters in the order of their frequencies appeared in modern printed materials. Introducing characters in the order of their frequencies to students will provide them an opportunity to learn the most powerful (or useful) characters in Chinese writing.  This practice, I believe, has the potential to provide opportunities for instant success in writing for my students. I know we cannot write (or spell) every character that we can read. I understand the fact that our mental banks of characters for reading are larger than those for writing.  Right now, while working on developing strategies to assist my students in enlarging their banks of characters for reading, I am also working on the core characters to develop strategies to help my students to master sufficient characters for writing.

Looking back at my past experiences of working with my students on high-frequency Chinese characters and the progress that my students have made in terms of Chinese character recognition skills, I believe the high-frequency character recognition program will serve my students very well in the years to come.  I sense my students understand that knowing high-frequency characters is key to reading in Chinese language and they are willing to work hard on these characters.  My parents also seem to see the importance of this skill and volunteer to work with their children at home.  Students in my class, according to my observation, have improved a great deal on their reading skills.  However, I will do an assessment in June to see the extent of my students’ improvement.  I would also like to caution other teachers who want to implement such a program in their reading class:
• Do not teach Chinese characters in isolation.  A meaningful Chinese character instruction program will connect the target character to other related characters and meaningful contexts.
• Do not get too carried away by the excitement of vocabulary teaching.  Vocabulary development is only one of the many parts in an integrated reading program.

REFERENCES

Sippola, A. E.  (1997).  Reading methods in contemporary elementary classrooms.  Dubuque, Iowa:  Kendall/Hunt Publishing Company.

Sitton, R. (1995).  Rebecca Sitton’s spelling sourcebook 1:  Your guide for developing research-based spelling instruction for the writing-rich classroom.  Spokane, WA:  Effer Publishing, Inc.

Walker, B. J. (2000).  Diagnostic teaching of reading: Techniques for instruction and assessment.  New Jersey:  Prentice Hall, Inc.

Zhang, J. X.  (1992)  A course on modern Chinese characters.  Beijing:  Modern Press.

细雨 · 发表于 2005-2-27 19:07

写得好! 有理论根据和数据. 对海外中文教育有指导作用.

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一位爱城公立教育局的中英双语教师写的关于教高频度汉字的感想 （英文材料）

一位爱城公立教育局的中英双语教师写的关于教高频度汉字的感想　（英文材料）