CLIC Research Projects

Corpus-based Pedagogy: Teaching and Learning the Temporal Connective JIU in Chinese

 
Meng Yeh & Xian Zhang

The Chinese particle JIU is part of the syllabus of most first-year Chinese textbooks. However, L2 Chinese learners do not use this particle to the level it would be expected. A possible factor at play is the specific pedagogical approach used to teach JIU. The conventional approach used in most textbooks is the following: 1) the teacher introduces the explicit rules about the form and functions of the temporal connector JIU; and 2) students are provided with sample sentences. One noticeable feature of this procedure (step 2) is that the sample sentences are presented without additional discourse context.

We argue, however, that the procedure outlined above fails to take into account the fact that the use of isolated sentences brings about a distinct definition of the particle in language, one that is de-contextualized. Under those circumstances, students would be hard-pressed to transfer the ability, developed in one setting (decontextualized) to another one that requires a different definition of the item (contextualized).

To properly address this shortcoming, it is critical to guide students to notice the use of JIU in context, not merely in isolated sentences, so that they are able to use JIU appropriately. In sum, the aim of this project is to gather empirical evidence that will help us substantiate the claim that students who are guided by using a corpus-based pedagogical approach will eventually use JIU effectively in context.