東亞地區的漢字教學

Abstract

Chinese characters are ideographic representations of real-life phenomena, their usage in written language systems in the East Asia having a long history. They are widely used in many East Asian countries and feature in the official languages of China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea and Singapore. The system and rules governing how characters are written and pronounced vary across regional and national boundaries: simplified characters are used in Mainland China; traditional characters are used in Hong Kong; Kanzi adaptations of Chinese characters are used in Japan; and Chinese characters are used in Korea. Chinese characters are ideographic, their form and shape reflecting the meaning of the phenomena they represent. The learning of Chinese characters and the way they are written and pronounced are fundamental processes in acquiring a Chinese lexicon. The learning of Chinese characters involves recognizing what each stands for; how they are pronounced; the rules governing how they are written down; and how the order in which they are written. The characters learnt in the early stages of reading and writing are similar across national and regional boundaries, the choice of characters varying little across countries and regions. The number of characters children are taught to recognize in the early stages of schooling range from about 1000 to 3500 in number: the number of characters they learn to write varying from about 825-2600. The basic element in the structure of a Chinese character is called the ‘part’ and is important for mastering the reading and writing of the character. The learning and teaching of Chinese characters begins with listening to what individual characters mean and how they are pronounced; recognizing how they are conventionally written; then practicing the writing of characters until they can be reproduced on demand. The written forms of some Chinese characters differ slightly across countries and regions, which may generate some confusion for the learner, and the standard teaching of traditional Chinese characters could help to minimize this problem. Also of help would be for teachers to start from teaching learners to recognize individual characters; to learn how each is pronounced and what it means; and the conventions in the order in which characters are written. Importantly, teachers are encouraged to provide a relaxed, stress-free learning environment and to use attractive resources so as to make character learning a pleasant experience.