“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 presided over by Professor Qi Huyang, which has been selected as the “2022 Founding 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 fascicle of this series.

This book studies the pivotal phrases and pivotal sentences which are relatively special in Chinese. Pivotal phrases and pivotal sentences are used very frequently, with complex structures, diverse semantics and rich pragmatic functions, which are inevitable grammatical difficulties in second language teaching. On the basis of previous studies, this book comprehensively compiles and analyzes pivotal phrases and pivotal sentences. This book, theoretically, explores the nature, characteristics and types, applicatively, counts the frequency of use and distribution characteristics, and, pedagogically, analyzes the learning patterns and teaching difficulties and puts forward targeted teaching suggestions. This book aims to help front line Chinese language teachers and learners of Chinese as a second language to solve all kinds of problems encountered in the process of teaching and learning.

Edited by Tang Yili, written by Luo Qingming.

Tang Yili has a Ph.D. in Linguistics and Applied Linguistics of Shanghai Normal University and is an associate professor at the School of Chinese Studies and Exchange, Shanghai International Studies University. Her research mainly focuses on modern Chinese grammar and international Chinese education. She has published more than thirty papers in professional journals such as Chinese Teaching in the World, two academic monographs, and one co-published textbook.

Luo Qingming, PhD in Linguistics of Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore, is a Senior Lecturer and Doctoral Supervisor in the School of Humanities, College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, NTU, Singapore. His research mainly focuses on corpus linguistics and teaching Chinese as a second language. He has published more than 40 papers in professional journals such as Chinese Teaching in the World, Language Teaching and Linguistic Studies, Chinese Language Learning, TCSOL Studies, etc. He has also published one academic monograph and edited several Chinese textbooks.

Designed for front line teachers teaching Chinese as a second language, this book popularizes the theoretical knowledge, teaching theory and methodology of the pivotal patterns. The book adopts the Q&A format, introducing theoretical knowledge in depth, breaking down “difficult problems” from multiple perspectives, and analyzing the problems with real examples. Most of the questions are formulated with the practical needs of teaching, and are based on the real errors and common problems of international students. Finally, in the teaching section, theory and practice are combined to comprehensively discuss the problem of teaching pivotal patterns, which helps teachers to open up their minds for a richer and more effective teaching design.

This book is recommended to international Chinese language teachers and undergraduate and graduate students of international Chinese language education.