外语教育政策、二语习得年龄和对外汉语教学

Foreign Language Education Policies, Age of Second Language Acquisition and Chinese Language Teaching

为了提高学生的外语(或二语)水平,很多国家降低了学生学习外语的年龄。这种做法和神经科学关于双语者二语习得起始年龄的研究结果相一致。相关的研究表明,早期的二语习得者其二语大脑加工模式类似于第一语言和母语单语者,而晚二语者的二语加工有激活脑区扩大、激活水平提高的倾向。早二语者更有可能获得接近母语者的二语水平。让学习者在较小的年龄接触外语是一个有效的方法。汉语是外语教育低龄化的受益语言,覆盖低龄学习者,帮助国外解决低龄学习者汉语教学师资问题应该成为汉语国际推广的重要内容。国内的对外汉语教学界要加强针对低龄儿童的教学研究,建立低龄儿童汉语教学师资培训机制,以顺应国外外语教育的发展趋势,促进汉语国际推广。

To enhance learners＇ foreign language proficiency, a lot of countries lower the age of students exposed to foreign language. The change in policies of foreign language education is supported by the neural scientific researches on the effect of age of second language acquisition. Relative researches indicate that neural mechanismof early learners processing second language is similar to that of the first language and native speakers of that language, so early learners are easier to acquire high second lan- guage proficiency. Chinese is benefited from such policy change. In some countries the number of programs on Chinese language teaching is increased. Researchers from China should do more studies on how to teach Chinese to early learners. Training more teachers who can be qualified toteach young learners Chinese is also important. More programs covering lower learners and more teachers for lower learners are what is needed by Chinese language teaching abroad.