More and more schools in Hong Kong are adopting the "Using Putonghua to teach Chinese Language Subjects" approach. Its mode of implementation, however, varies from school to school owing to the absence of clear guidelines. In the case of teaching materials, for instance, textbooks which are compiled with different conceptual frameworks will have a direct impact on the implementation of the scheme. This paper examines some typical examples taken from three types of teaching materials and analyses the basic sentence patterns found in the textbooks for primary one pupils. The result shows that textbooks with Hanyu Pinyin support may not necessarily be the better ones for the scheme. It is more important for a textbook to contain activities that meet the learning needs of the learners and provide them with adequate training opportunities in listening and speaking.

Keywords: Materials for Language Teaching, Analysis of Sentence Patterns, Using Putonghua to Teach Chinese Language Subjects

With Differentiated Instruction through Personality Types as its theoretical reference, this paper looks into the ways teachers can leverage on this theory to understand the different personality types of their students and to design teaching activities accordingly. This theoretical framework actually involves classifying students into four personality types which entail various learning styles. Each personality type has its own attributes, according to which the teacher will design his teaching activities to enhance the effectiveness of learning by meeting the learning needs of the student. In this paper, we will demonstrate how to make use of the framework to design listening and speaking activities for classroom, which can serve as a template of pedagogical design for teachers.

Keywords: Personality Type, Differentiated Instruction, Differences in Personality, Learning Differences Listening and Speaking Activities

How scientific are language textbooks in terms of their content materials for developing skills and of the sequence in which these materials are arranged? Do they meet the requirement as specified in the learning objectives? These are issues that need to be addressed. This study constructs a research framework around the system theory, subject theory, ability structure theory, cognitive theory and curriculum theory. Using this framework, we examine the units in the Chinese Language Textbook for Lower Secondary Students as published by the People's Education Press with the focus on the development of reading skills using materials listed in the important learning points of each unit. Through a process of sorting, analysis and discussion, we are to find out if the content materials for developing skills are comprehensive and if their sequence is clear. At the end, we will make some proposals for improvement. The study shows that the development of reading skills materials listed in the important learning points of this textbook are comprehensive enough and arranged in relatively good sequence. Nonetheless, some fine-tuning can be done at the level of reading comprehension skills to make it a better textbook. As for sequencing, basic skills should come first, and the text types should be grouped together. This will make it easier to achieve a kind of spiral curriculum structure.

Keywords: People's Education Press Edition, Language Textbook for Lower Secondary Students, Developing Reading Skills, Important Learning Points

In Hong Kong, when we talk about how to effectively improve the listening skill in the teaching of Putonghua listening, it is inevitable to touch on the issue as what teaching approach is within the reach of the students' ability. Before the listening session, the students can start with learning some common expressions, idioms and colloquial words in order to overcome the hurdle owing to differences in cultural background. This will enable the students to get the optimal results by enhancing their ability to comprehend effectively during the listening session. This study applies the empirical contrastive research method on the teaching of Putonghua listening. The results show that in the teaching of Putonghua listening in Hong Kong, it is an effective way to improve students' listening skills by first letting them overcome the intercultural lexis shock.

Keywords: Teaching of Listening, Listening Practice, Intercultural Lexis Shock, Listening Comprehension, Listening Skill

"Read-aloud" is widely used in the teaching of Chinese language in Hong Kong primary schools. However, it has yet to receive attention of its importance from the Education Bureau of Hong Kong and many teachers. Indeed, the pedagogical function of read-aloud has often been overlooked. This paper points out that read-aloud is a very effective teaching method to enliven other teaching activities, making the classroom more interesting and enhance students' language abilities. The teaching methodologies mentioned in the paper serve as reference for teachers.

Keywords: Read-aloud, Instructional Guidelines, Reading, Reciting, Skills, Aesthetics

Many development projects involving the use of ICT in Chinese language teaching have been conducted over the past years. However, very often, the achievements of the research are unable to turn into sustainable and implementable normal classroom teaching practices. One way to address this issue is to conduct professional development for teachers in a systematic manner: researchers and teachers collaborate to design teaching activities and complement each other in terms of theory and practice, developing thinking teachers of the 21st century at the same time. This paper summarises the experiences and results from the two rounds of "collaborative inquiry" between the team and the teachers from 2007 to 2009. With the participation of curriculum planning experts from the Ministry of Education in the first round of our collaborative inquiry, we sorted out a "model of collaboration-tension relation pertaining to the tripartite collaborative inquiry between the government, teachers and developers". We improved the way activities are carried out in the second round of our collaborative exploration and finally designed a set of strategies for collaborative writing process using Wikipedia together with the teachers. Teachers involved in this research project also benefited from the practice and problem solving reflection exhibiting their ability to make adjustments in teaching.

Keywords: Teachers' Professional Development, Collaborative Inquiry, Collaboration between Teachers and Researchers, ICT and Chinese Language Teaching, Wiki

One of the overall objectives of the Chinese language curriculum for Singapore primary schools is that pupils are able to write out short passages of relatively rich content according to the pictures or instructions given, and use Chinese to express their feelings in their daily life. Lower primary pupils should be able to write simple sentences. When they reach primary 3 and 4, they should be able to make paragraphs. When it comes to writing, it is critical for pupils to know how to write sentences. For as much as the lower primary pupils need to master the basic writing skills, what concerns us most is how to teach in a systematic manner. As an effort to enhance the efficiency of teaching and learning and to devise a feasible and effective teaching model, the Singapore Centre for Chinese Language and the Bukit Timah Primary School have started a collaborative project to study the teaching of sentence writing to primary 2 pupils. The object of study consists of six classes of primary 2 pupils. The instructional design flow goes step by step from "speaking" to "writing" with the aim of achieving "I write what I say", thereby overcome the psychological barrier that writing is a difficult task. Instructional materials for sentence writing are compiled from the basic sentence patterns and qualitative expressions in the textbooks. Short exercises were designed to enhance and reinforce the teaching of sentence writing progressively. We hope that the primary 2 pupils would have built up a sound foundation at the early stage of writing training, and that they would be able to write complete sentences of proper syntactic order. The research methods adopted include surveys, pre-post tests and teachers reflective diary. The findings of the study show that the pupils of the Bukit Timah Primary School made improvement in grammatical sentence structures. For sentences pattern involving "time + people + place + event", they were also able to master them better.

Keywords: Teaching of Sentence Writing, Sentence Pattern, Short Exercise, Teaching Model

With the advent of information era, information can be obtained through media like newspaper, journals, computers, television and teleconference. Students need to learn how to receive and send messages accurately within the shortest period. This will demand a higher standard of expectation in their oral ability. Students are trained best in speaking in places where they live and study every day, namely, their homes and schools. As indicated by the data in the census report, the number of Singapore school children who communicate in Chinese with their parents and siblings is on the decline. Family language has a direct effect on the performance of school children in their learning of Chinese language. Obviously, in this case, little can be expected from the home to help improve the oral skills of school children. The expectation is therefore very much on the classroom teaching and curriculum setting. The success of teaching of oral skills depends on the enhancement of students speaking ability. The scope of our study is confined to the oral skills teaching for primary 2 pupils. Integrating the teaching of reading skills with that of oral skills, we have designed a set of progressive systematic teaching package meant to be experimented in authentic teaching environment. The students progress was monitored and charted. The teaching strategy has been reviewed and fine-tuned based on the analysed results of the experiment. The aim of this research is to help students nurture their confidence and interest in oral expression by using reading to stimulate their desire for expression with tools like "My daily Chinese speaking plan" and steps for oral skills enhancement.

Keywords: Reading, Listening and Speaking, Action Research, Singapore Primary Schools, Lower Primary Classes

The "Guangyang News Channel" teaching experiment emphasizes a shift from the closed conventional classroom teaching to an open teaching approach using modern media where pupils experience active learning of Chinese with fun. By making good use of the "teach as you learn, learn as you teach" mechanism, our teachers and pupils tap on the new technologies with flexibility. They share among themselves the newly acquired knowledge, discard the teacher-centred and lecture-centred conventional teaching style and completely achieve the best effects in oral teaching. It ignites the passion for teaching in teachers and strengthens the sense of achievement as teachers see how the pupils learn the Chinese language with enthusiasm. As for the pupils, the "Guangyang News Channel" teaching model reveals their great enthusiasm to play the role of news presenters, which in turn drives them to be actively engaged and stay concentrate during Chinese lessons.

Keywords: Open Approach Teaching, Chinese Language Teaching, Media Education, Teaching of Oral Skills, News Teaching, Teaching with Innovative Technology

The "Teaching of Chinese to the minorities" takes the form of second language teaching which caters for students of the minorities. It aims to nurture students' communication proficiency in Chinese. The languages used among students of the minorities in the Sichuan University for Nationalities are complex, which thus give rise to a host of issues in the teaching programme of Chinese. This paper proposes a few solutions to these issues after conducting a cause analysis on them. Several effective teaching methods are recommended, including skill integration training, stratified teaching method, comparative and contrastive teaching, pronunciation diagnosis, multidimensional perspectives and context creation teaching method. With elaboration on skill integration training and multidimensional perspectives, we hope to provide some learning points for the reform of the teaching of Chinese to students of the minorities.

Keywords: Universities for Nationalities, Minority students, Teaching of Chinese, Problems and Causes, Teaching Strategies