Teaching and Learning Chinese as a Foreign Language: A Pedagogical Grammar

Janet Zhiqun Xing has been an active participant in a vigorous debate over Chinese pedagogical grammar which has been taking place over the last decade, mainly in the pages of the “Journal of the Chinese Language Teachers Association” (JCLTA): e.g. Teng (1997), Liu (1998), Xing (1998), McDonald (1999), Loke (2002), Xing (2003) and Tao (2005). Xing’s 2003 article is indeed entitled “Towards a Pedagogical Grammar of Chinese ...” and her book can thus be seen as the fulfilment of the promise implied in that title. In this context, Xing’s book might be expected not just to provide a practical framework for designing curricula to teach Chinese as a foreign language (FL), but as “the first book written in English that systematically addresses all major aspects involved in teaching and learning Chinese as a foreign language” (back cover) to summarise the state of the art in research on teaching and learning Chinese. Unfortunately neither of these expectations is satisfactorily fulfilled, and the book, I believe, misses the opportunity to sum up this still developing field and point new ways forward. In her own summary, the overall aim of the book is as follows: