A proposal for a pedagogical grammar syllabus in tertiary Chinese language education in Japan

Abstract

The environment of tertiary Chinese language education in Japan has changed in the last two decades. The changing circumstances are partly reflected in the diversification of both learners and teachers of Chinese as a foreign language (CFL), students’ motivation to learn Chinese, and the curriculum of Chinese as a second foreign language. In a grammar-focused approach, CFL instruction is facing the issue of how Chinese grammar should be taught under the new teaching and learning conditions: should it be taught as a system of knowledge, or as a complement to communicative needs? In this article, we will discuss the concept of “Chinese pedagogical grammar” as a new framework for CFL and propose a new syllabus with a supporting example. We argue that compared to the mainstream pedagogical framework for CFL based on Chinese linguistic grammar in Japan, our new framework is conducive to students’ communicative needs and better aligned with the current foreign language education policy and pedagogical conditions in tertiary institutions in Japan. We will use Chinese comparative expressions as examples to illustrate a grammar syllabus derived from our concept of Chinese pedagogical grammar.