Wen-Hua Teng - Essential Chinese Vocabulary: Rules and Scenarios

Since I taught my first Chinese class to English speakers nearly 30 years ago, the landscape of teaching and learning Chinese as a foreign language has undergone a tremendous transformation. Such a transformation is manifested by the increasing number of students, modern and innovative teaching methodologies, as well as the almost daily emergence of new materials, both printed and digital.

As Chinese as a foreign language is rapidly gaining popularity worldwide, both the quantity and quality of resources, such as textbooks and reference supplements, have reached an all-time high. Todays teachers and students enjoy a wide selection of materials that can aid them in teaching and learning, a luxury that was not available to my students or me three decades ago.

However, amid all the growth and improvements, one area has stayed static; that is, the instruction or acquisition of vocabulary has remained surprisingly traditional and one-dimensional. A students task, when it comes to learning new vocabulary, rarely goes beyond memorizing characters, pronunciation and definitions. While it is often easy to define (and memorize) a word, it is not nearly as easy to capture the versatility of any vocabulary word in its entirety. This may be a reason that accounts for the lack of attention paid to the instruction of Chinese vocabulary, and is also what motivated me to bring this important pedagogical issue to light via this book.

Vocabulary is fluid; the meaning or function of a word is rarely confined by its definition, but is in relation to the context in which it appears. I encourage readers to peruse the entry for (ysi) in this book to see a case in point.

Perhaps many readers are familiar with the Chinese phrase (jin sh b jin ln), literally seeing the trees (but) not seeing the forest. And this phrase seems to depict the current state of vocabulary teaching and learning quite accurately. One goal I hope to achieve in this book is to show learners of Chinese how to develop a broader perspective in order to perceive the whole picture of language use (the forest), instead of clinging to individual isolated items (the trees) of the language.

And this is why readers of this book will encounter these recurrent words throughout the entire book: connotation, implication, interpretation and context. While definitions of the vocabulary words I have chosen to include in this book are still provided, what I wish to emphasize is the actual use of these words in realistic situations, a task that goes much beyond knowing their definitions. Therefore, there is an abundance of examples; each is built upon a scenario. These scenarios, some simple and some elaborate, aim to create a sense of reality which helps add dimensions (or even some fun) to students vocabulary learning process.

While linguistic terminology is not a prevalent feature in this book, I hasten to point out that the use of vocabulary is governed by language rules. Perhaps a simple word, (du), can illustrate this point. I discuss five major usages of , each of which involves a different sentence pattern (language rules), and each is supported by a number of scenarios. Although much space in this book is devoted to examples and scenarios, I do not intend to downplay the importance of rules and patterns; instead, I aim to achieve a balance between rules and actual use of these vocabulary words. Rules and scenarios being part of the title of this book makes this abundantly clear.

Clearly stated rules can help learners avoid making mistakes. Thirty years of teaching Chinese to English speakers has not only taught me to predict what mistakes learners would make, but also helped me develop an understanding of the sources of common mistakes. While making mistakes might be a valuable part of the learning process, knowing how to avoid common mistakes is one way to make the process that much smoother.

In this book, I share with readers the insight I have gained from observing my students efforts to make progress, and straightforwardly point out common mistakes they have made. It is my hope that readers of this book can benefit from the mistakes made by their fellow learners even though some of them may have belonged to a different generation.

This book is a collection of about 200 vocabulary words, the majority of which are presented in alphabetical order of their pinyin; others are presented as related expressions to certain words. Each entry starts with a general statement of the word, followed by a list of descriptions of the rules or patterns. The highlight of each entry is the examples or scenarios that show the word and its rules in action. Simplified Chinese characters are used; pinyin and English translations are provided. There is also an index that helps readers quickly locate words or expressions and navigate the book easily.