Research in Chinese as a Second Language

Istvan Kecskes

May 2013 · Trends in Applied Linguistics [TAL] Book 9 · Walter de Gruyter

About this ebook

The book aims to address one of the main problems of Chinese language teaching: lack of research base. The rapidly growing interest in Chinese language teaching has not resulted in the development of a strong research background. This book attempts to change the current situation.

The volume consists of three chapters. Chapter I: Research Base for Practice contains three papers, each of which uses research findings as a basis for solving issues connected with practical language teaching. Chapter II: Integrating Culture and Language is about one of the most intriguing topics of current language-oriented research: how to integrate culture into the process of language teaching. Chapter III: Acquisition of Language Structures consists of studies that investigate the acquisition of certain grammatical structures in Chinese. There are only a few papers in the literature on this issue, so the articles in this chapter are especially important for further research.

One of the most important features of the volume is that each paper makes an attempt to bring together theory and practice by focusing on theory-building based on practice or theory application in practice. Thus the book can be recommended to both researchers and practitioners.

About the author

Istvan Kecskes, State University of New York, Albany, USA.