“Series of Teaching Foreigners
Chinese Grammar” is the achievement of “Research and Development of Grammar
Syllabus for Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language and Teaching Reference Grammar
Series (Multi-volume)”, a major project of National Social Science Fund of
China sponsored by Professor Qi Huyang, which has been selected as the “2022
Funding Project of National Publication Foundation”. As an important reference
book for international Chinese language education, it aims to build and improve
the “Grammar System of Chinese Teaching” for foreign students to meet the
development needs of the new era. It mainly serves the front-line Chinese
teachers, researchers, graduate students and undergraduates majoring in
Teaching Chinese to Speakers of Other Languages. This series consists of 39
volumes, including 4 outline series, 26 book series, 8 summary series, and 1
collection of essays.
This book is a sub-volume of the series.
Preposition in modern Chinese is a
relatively closed class, limited in number but diverse in semantics and usage,
and is the focus of teachers and the difficulty for students. From the
perspective of teaching Chinese as a second language, this book distills 79 problems
closely related to the teaching of prepositions, and systematically explains
common problems in the teaching of prepositions through the compilation of
ontological knowledge of prepositional linguistics, the identification of
easy-to-confuse prepositions and polysemous prepositions, the analysis of
learners’ typical errors, and the demonstration of teaching methodologies and
teaching cases.
Li Tiefan, the Editor-in-Chief, is
a Ph.D. in Linguistics and Applied Linguistics from Shanghai Normal University,
a professor and president of Huangshan University, and a Master Teacher of
Anhui Province. He is in charge of the national first-class undergraduate major
of “Chinese International Education” and the national first-class undergraduate
curriculum of “Modern Chinese”. His research mainly focuses on modern Chinese grammar
and teaching Chinese as a foreign language. Professor Li has published more
than 50 papers in journals such as Social Sciences in China Press, Curriculum,
Teaching Material and Method and one monograph, and has presided over more
than 10 projects such as the sub-projects of major projects of the National
Social Science Fund and major projects of key research bases of the Ministry of
Education for humanities and social sciences. He was awarded the first prize of
social science by the People’s Government of Anhui Province and the first prize
of teaching achievements in Anhui Province.
Li Xianzhuo, the author, is a
Ph.D. in Linguistics and Applied Linguistics from Sun Yat-sen University and an
Associate Professor at the International College for Chinese Studies, Nanjing
Normal University. His research mainly focuses on Chinese language acquisition
and processing. Professor Li has published more than 10 papers in journals
including Applied Linguistics, TCSOL
Studies, Foreign Languages, and Acta Psychologica
Sinica.
Although the number of prepositions in modern Chinese
is limited to more than 100, the prepositional phrases are used very frequently
and have diverse semantics and usage, which make them the focus of Chinese
language teaching and difficult for students to learn. Although relatively
reliable research results have been achieved on the ontology, acquisition and
teaching of prepositions, there are still blind spots in research. For example,
on the ontology, there are still controversies about the family members,
classification criteria, and the structure of prepositions; on the acquisition,
the research on prepositions is very uneven, with more research results on “把、被” and less on spatial and object prepositions; on the
teaching, the research results are mostly scattered in some comprehensive grammar
books, failing to provide a systematic introduction of usage and a
comprehensive analysis of differences, and there are also cases in which it is
too difficult to explain. On the basis of fully absorbing the research results
of error analysis, this book provides a comprehensive and systematic
explanation of prepositions in plain language, compares the similarities and
differences of prepositions that are easy to be confused by learners, and then
gives some representative cases of teaching prepositions. This book aims to
provide a comprehensive teaching reference for front-line Chinese teachers,
especially novice teachers and overseas teachers.
This book is recommended to international Chinese
language teachers engaged in international Chinese language teaching, whether
they are specialized teachers with a background in linguistics or international
Chinese language education, or non-specialized teachers with diverse academic
backgrounds.