Teaching Writing in Chinese as a Foreign Language: Mainland China

Abstract

The authors first introduce the history and development phases of TFC (‘Teaching Foreigners Chinese’), and highlights the interactions among the curriculum, teaching materials and the ethnical background of the students, for the teaching strategies used in dealing with European students and Asian students (e.g., Koreans and Japanese) are different. The author then poses the debate on whether the four main skills (listening, speaking, writing, reading) should be developed simultaneously or the first two be cultivated prior to the last two skills, with regard to the difficulties encountered by foreign students in learning Chinese characters and pinyin. He also divides the teaching cycle into three levels and suggests some teaching clues such as the use of topic-restricted compositions and free compositions. The chapter concludes with suggestions for future research directions and teaching techniques.