Taking into Account the Oral-Written Dichotomy of the Chinese language :

Taking into Account the Oral-Written Dichotomy of the Chinese language : The division and connections between lexical items for Oral and for Written activities Bernard ALLANIC 安雄舒长瑛 SHU Changying 1

I. The oral/written dichotomy in Chinese language and the teaching/assessment of Chinese II. CEFR and the oral/written disassociation III. Proposals of the EBCL project IV. Method of preparing the lexical items list for Oral activities V. Method of preparing the character threshold lists 2

I. The oral/written dichotomy in Chinese language and the teaching/assessment of Chinese I.1 A disabling dichotomy Unlike alphabetic languages, the Chinese language has no transparency between what is written and what is pronounced: learners are not able to read Chinese words aloud unless they have previously learned the characters. 3

Two major problems arise when oral and written objectives are connected in the teaching-learning process of Chinese / when learners are obliged to learn how to write everything they can say: 4

Two major problems arise when oral and written objectives are connected in the teaching-learning process of Chinese / when learners are obliged to learn how to write everything they can say: 1. Learning of oral Chinese becomes slower because the memorization of Chinese characters is inherently slow. 2. Teaching of characters becomes dispersed and unsystematic because there is no respect for the graphic logic of written Chinese. 6

Two other problems occur when oral and written objectives are connected in the assessment of Chinese: 7

Two other problems occur when oral and written objectives are connected in the assessment of Chinese: 1. Candidates who cannot read characters will fail the oral exam. Even if they perfectly understand everything orally. 8

The teaching, the learning and the assessment of Chinese must take into account the non-alphabetic nature of written Chinese. 10

I. The oral/written dichotomy in Chinese language and the teaching/assessment of Chinese I.1 A disabling dichotomy I.2 Advantages of the oral/written disassociation 11

I. The oral/written dichotomy in Chinese language and the teaching/assessment of Chinese I.1 A disabling dichotomy I.2 Advantages of the oral/written disassociation - For oral activities: the dissociation of oral and written activities can accelerate the learning process of oral Chinese, if the learners are not obliged to know how to read or write the characters for every word they hear or use in oral activities. - For written activities: it can be beneficial to the teaching of written Chinese : It helps to develop a character teaching program which will take into account the graphic logic of the Chinese characters, the cognitive memorization process, and the learning strategies of each learner. 13

About the graphic logic of the Chinese Writing system, there is a fundamental rule : The law of economy : the commonly used characters are limited in number. This limited number of characters can be used to write a considerable amount of words. 14

Chart : Coverage rate of 2000 most frequent characters 15

According to traditional sinographic studies, a character has three defining characteristics: graphic form, pronunciation and meaning. However, since characters are symbols used for recording spoken language, they exist equally as means of communication. Yet some characters are used more frequently than others during this communication process and there is a regular statistical pattern for it. We should therefore consider that characters have a fourth defining characteristic: the frequency of use. Feng Zhiwei 冯志伟 16

II. CEFR and the oral/written disassociation II.1. Disassociation of oral and written skills 17

II. CEFR and the oral/written disassociation II.1. Disassociation of oral and written skills The CEFR makes a distinction between different skills and respects the fact that a language user may have different levels in different tested skills. 18

II. CEFR and the oral/written disassociation II.1. Disassociation of oral and written skills II.2 Coexistence of a vocabulary for oral activities and a vocabulary for written activities 19

To narrow down the scope of work of its relatively vague descriptors, the CEFR has supplemented the various alphabetic language versions with lists of linguistic forms. For example, for Level A1, the CEFR provides lexical items lists comprising a number of items varying from 500 to 800 according to different languages. It is generally indicated that this number corresponds to the vocabulary for listening activities, which is naturally the largest vocabulary. It is also stated that in written production, a smaller number of vocabulary items should be acquired. 20

III. Proposals of the EBCL project 21

III. Proposals of the EBCL project III.1 Elaboration of lexical and grammatical item lists for oral activities By following the example of the supporting materials of the CEFR in numerous languages, we have compiled lists of lexical items for oral activities. We only select those considered to be essential to carry out the communication tasks set for each level. The selection of items does not take into account the level of difficulty for writing the characters. It only reflects the language needs of users for oral activities. 22

The EBCL project has already drawn up the lexical items lists for oral activities for Level A1 and Level A2, which contain respectively 590 items and 1245 items. These lists are not set in stone and can of course be modified. These lists are available in characters as well as in pinyin, because the items are only required to be identified for oral activities, but not for written activities. 23

III. Proposals of the EBCL project III.1 Elaboration of lexical and grammatical items lists for oral activities III.2 Elaboration of character threshold lists and vocabulary lists for Chinese written activities 24

The characters of these threshold lists are selected according to two criteria: 1) They make up the words considered necessary and essential for the accomplishment of the reading and writing tasks described at the corresponding level (priority is given to language needs). 2) They are featured as frequently-used characters in existing statistics studies. The character threshold lists for Level A1 and A2 contain respectively 320 and 630 characters. 26

These vocabulary lists contain all the lexical items which are at the same time listed for oral activities of the same level, and made of the characters of the corresponding threshold lists. 28

These vocabulary lists contain all the lexical items which are listed for oral activities of the same level, and made of the characters of the threshold lists. At Level A1, 73% of the items necessary for oral activities are also selected in the written vocabulary list (430 out of 590 words). This proportion goes up to 75% at Level A2 (940 out of 1245 words). 29

NB. The character thresholds and vocabulary lists apply first and foremost to the written production. 31

NB. The character thresholds and vocabulary lists apply first and foremost to the written production. It is agreed that for the written receptive activities the character and word numbers should be slightly increased. These amount can be : A1: 300/400 characters for 500 words. A2: 600-700 characters for 1000 words. 32

I. The oral/written dichotomy in Chinese language and the teaching/assessment of Chinese. II. CEFR and the oral/written disassociation. III. Proposals of the EBCL project IV. Method of preparing the lexical items list for Oral activities 33

The lack of oral corpus the necessity of fulfilling the tasks described by the descriptors for each level. Be based upon European profiles and some Chinese resources by taking into account these two points: - Cultural context. We should associate European context and Chinese context. - The frequency of usage of the lexical items in Chinese. 34

Resources Vocabulary lists of Fr-Ge-It-UK profiles (level A2) Vocabulary of HSK level 3 Vocabulary of TOCFL level 2 (corresponding to CEFR A2 level according to the presentation of the test) Lexical items from two textbook linked with CEFR and corresponding to A2 level: - 你说呢 (by A. Arslangul, C. Lamouroux, I. Pillet, 2009) - Le chinois comme en Chine (by Bernard Allanic, 2009) Lexical items from samples of spoken activities (work of It & UK teams) 35

Procedure Step 1: to get the lexicon lists of level A2 from Fr- Ge-It-UK profiles 36

Procedure Step 1: to get the lexicon lists of level A2 from Fr-Ge-It-UK profiles Step 2: to compare the four lists 324 38

Procedure Step 1: to get the lexicon lists of level A2 from Fr-Ge-It-UK profiles Step 2: to compare the four lists 324 Step 3: to insert further items from several resources 39

Inventory of items from the vocabulary of HSK-3 Inventory of items from the vocabulary of TOCFL- Taiwan (level 2) Inventory of items from samples of spoken activities Inventory of items from two textbooks 40

An abstract of team voting 41

Procedure Step 1: to get the lexicon lists of level A2 from Fr-Ge-It-UK profiles Step 2: to compare the four lists Step 3: to insert further items from several resources Step 4: to select items to add by voting Result: From 738 To 589 (A1 items not included) 1245 (EBCL-A2 Lexical items for spoken activities) 42

Procedure Step 1: to get the lexicon lists of level A2 from Fr-Ge-It-UK profiles Step 2: to compare the four lists Step 3: to insert further items from several resources Step 4: to select items to add by voting The final EBCL-A2 lexical items list (items of EBCL-A1 included) contains 1245 items. Pinyin has been added to all the items since it s the vocabulary for spoken activities. 43

Appendix Appendix for A1 level: - European countries and 美国, 日本 ; - Ten most frequent Chinese names Appendix for A2 level: - frequent professions - some famous places in China - frequent polite form of address 44

The sample for A1 : starting point : one reference list (list 1) List 1. 255-characters Threshold of the French Chinese Language Syllabus LV3 (Chinese as third foreign language) published by the Official Bulletin in 2002. Developed under the direction of Prof. Bellassen, this threshold list includes characters which are selected for their high use frequency, their great combinatorial capacity and (sometime) their pedagogical value or cultural value. 46

In view of the number of selected characters and the selection criteria, List 1 could form the nucleus of the Level A1 threshold character list. 47

In view of the number of selected characters and the selection criteria, List 1 could form the nucleus of the Level A1 threshold character list. + 2 steps However, as List 1 was made before the implement of CEFR, it should be verified that all the characters within the list are in accordance with the requirements of CEFRL Level A1 (step 1) and we will compliment it with other characters also necessary to fulfill all the communicative tasks of A1 WP (step 2) 48

Step1 We have verified if the 255 characters of the list 1 are really relevant in the context of CEFR : Do they appear in the written form of the 580 words which compose the lexical items proposed for Oral activities for A1? ( presupposed idea : we can write what we can say ) 49

Step1 We have verified if the 255 characters of the list 1 are really relevant in the context of CEFR : do they appear in the written form of the 580 words which compose the lexical and grammatical items proposed for Oral activities for A1? comparison between the 255 characters and the 490 characters constituting the 580 lexical items (list 2). We remove 18 characters (details provided on the website) 50

Step2 A) we complete the list with 58 characters coming from 2 other recent corpus : - Threshold of 202 active characters and 98 passive characters compiled as Chinese Teaching Programme for Middle Schools Level 1, published in France in 2005. - List of 300 characters for beginners level published by Hanban in 2010. 51

Step2 B) Adding of 25 more characters coming from list 2, ( made by the characters which compose the written version of the lexical items for oral) It seemed that certain important characters were missing from the list of complementary characters and they might be useful for carrying out the activities of communications specific to Level A1. For example, characters 头 and 发 for writing hair or send (an email) which are closely related to the exercise of self-introduction, or the characters for cat and dog which are related to the introduction of one s home (in Europe). 52

For A2, we followed the same methodology The reference list / the starting point was the 505- characters Threshold of Chinese Language Syllabus LV2 (Chinese as second foreign language) in France, published by the Official Bulletin in 2002. 53

Thank you! Merci 谢谢 54