Efficiency of short stories in intensive reading teaching on chinese lessons

Abstract

This study describes the use of intensive reading technologies in teaching the Chinese language: from work on the structure of lessons and their content, questionnaire to conclusions. Intensive reading is a type of educational reading. It differs in that the students must study and analyze a small text in a short time; the level of lexical complexity is higher than their current language level or corresponds to it. This type of reading, in our opinion, has several advantages: short text and rich lexical material, development of translation skills, reading aloud, being a great tool in consolidating the grammar passed and the inclusion of new grammatical material. The uniqueness of the study is due to the choice of teaching material – short stories. Chinese parables, legends and folklore as a whole distinguished by interesting content, conciseness, and rich linguistic and cultural material. It is possible to develop not only students' reading skills, but also writing, speaking, and expanding the vocabulary. We conducted a survey and a series of lessons, that helped us draw the appropriate conclusions and strengthened our opinion about the effectiveness of intensive learning technologies and the use of folklore as educational material. Our lesson materials were compiled on the basis of two well-known Chinese legends: “Cowherd and Weaving maid” and “How Hou Yi shooting Sun”. This study will be useful to teachers of a foreign language, in particular Chinese.