「是」字句和「是……的」句的教學語法: 以九套國際學校中文教材為例

Abstract Due to the economic growth in East and Southeast Asia, the global interest in teaching and learning Asian languages has been continually increasing in the past two decades. More and more international schools are offering Asian languages as elective second/foreign languages to adolescent learners, such as Arabic, modern Chinese (Cantonese/Mandarin), Japanese, and Malay. Since 2008, the most common grammatical mistake, shi (literally to be) had been highlighted by the Cambridge Assessment every single year in the IGCSE Mandarin (0547) examiner reports. This paper reviews the literature of the functions and the error patterns of copula verb shi and “shi…de” construction, then investigates how the textbooks describe the grammatical usages and sequence the different functions of shi for young learners. Based on the qualitative research findings, this study proposes suggestions for improving the description of grammar items in Mandarin textbooks, and illustrates the classroom activities and teaching strategies for parts of speech in the international school context. This research has implications for second language acquisition, pedagogical grammar, and teacher education for IGCSE Mandarin. 摘 要 隨著東亞及東南亞的經濟崛起, 近年來越來越多國際學校在初中階段提供亞洲語言給學生選修, 例如中文 (廣東話、普通話) 、日語、馬來語和阿拉伯語。從 2008 年起, 劍橋考試局 (Cambridge Assessment) 連續十二年, 在國際中學會考 (IGCSE) 「中文普通話作為外語」的考試年度報告中, 把「是」列為考生常見的語法偏誤之一 。即使報告每年都 提醒教師要加强「是」的語法操練, 但考試中的偏誤情況仍然沒有改善。本文首先回顧「是」字句和「是……的」句的語法功能及其偏誤和習得的相關研究, 再分析九套國際學校中文教材中的語法排序和描述。根據教學語法 (pedagogical grammar) 理論, 九套國際學校中文教材對這兩個語法點的術語使用和內容描述都不大理想。最後, 本文提出教材編寫和課堂教學的實務建議, 供前線教師、教材編者和課程規劃人員參考。