玛拉工艺大学中文二语教学中的多语元语言运用

The Use of Multilingual Metalanguage in Teaching Chinese as a Second Language in UiTM

马来西亚是个多元民族的国家,人们习惯于使用多语交际,包括教学。本研究考察马来西亚玛拉工艺大学中文二语教师如何运用多语元语言,即描述语言的语言进行教学。本文的语料采录自玛拉工艺大学四个班级的中文二语课的课堂教学,我们也采访了四位教师以了解他们课堂运用元语言组织教学的原因和作用。研究发现教师都采用汉语、马来语、英语进行教学,教师比较常用英语和马来语解释有关汉语的使用和结构规则,解释途径多样化,对提升学生元语言意识有助益。教师运用元语言教学,原因包括:二语课的学习课时相对不足,翻译法和阐释法较节省时间;学生是成人大学生,有很好的马来语和英语基础;学生可以联系自己和华人交际的经验去理解所学的中文。

Malaysia is a multi-ethnic country.People are accustomed to multilingual communication,including teaching.This study examines how Chinese as a second language(CSL)teachers use multilingual metalanguage for teaching.Metalanguage is the language that describes a language.The corpus of this paper was recorded from the classroom teaching of the CSL classes of Universiti Teknologi MARA(Ui TM),Malaysia.Four classes taught by four different teachers were observed and the classroom observation data were recorded and transcribed verbatim.Four teachers were also interviewed to explain the reasons and functions for the usage of metalanguage in their classroom teaching.The study found that,besides Chinese,Malay and English were also used in teaching CSL.English and Malay were commonly used to explain grammar underlying the usage and structure of Chinese language.Teachers used diverse explanation approaches to trigger students’metalinguistic awareness.The reasons why teachers use metalanguage in their classroom in a mixed language approach are as follows:the class time for CSL is relatively insufficient and time can be saved if translation and interpretation approaches are used;the students are adults with a good basic command of Malay and English;the students would be able to connect their experience with Chinese people to understand Chinese language better.