A Reference Grammar for Teaching Chinese - Syntax and Discourse presents a comprehensive guide on the major issues in teaching Chinese as a foreign language. Through this reference work readers will learn all basic structures of the language, focusing on the interactions of syntactic properties, semantic nuances, and discourse contexts. The work contains ample examples and jargon-free explanations to account for some of the most nagging problems in teaching Chinese. At the heart of this reference resource are the concrete and efficient ways to help researchers in both fields of language pedagogy and Chinese linguistics as well as learners of the language.
About the Author: Songren Cui is an Associate Professor of Chinese at Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine. He holds a PhD in Education (Curriculum Studies/Applied Linguistics) from the University of California, Los Angeles (1992). He began teaching Chinese language at the University of California, Los Angeles in 1986. And later taught at Harvard University (1990 - 1995) and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst (1995 - 1999) before joining the faculty of Bowdoin College in 1999. His research interests include Chinese syntax and discourse, language proficiency and testing, teaching methodology, and learning strategies. He has published the books Business Chinese: An Advanced Reader (The Chinese University Press, the Chinese Univeristy of Hong Kong, Feb. 2004) and Shifting Tide--Culture in Contemporary China (co-authored with Hong Gang Jin and De Bao Xu, et al. Boston: Cheng and Tsui Company, Feb. 2003) as well as numerous papers on Chinese grammar and discourse, Chinese language teaching and learning.
Kuo-ming Sung is Wendy and KK Tse Professor of East Asian Studies and a Professor of Chinese and Linguistics at Lawrence University, Appleton, Wisconsin. He received his bachelor's degree in Foreign Languages and English Literature from National Taiwan University in 1984 and his Ph.D. in Romance Linguistics from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1994. He then joined Lawrence University, where he teaches Chinese and Linguistics. His research areas include theoretical syntax, focusing on Romance and East Asian languages, as well as pedagogical grammars of Amdo Tibetan and Mandarin Chinese. He published Jufa Lilun Gaiyao, Introduction to Syntactic Theories, in 1997 (reprinted in 2008, 2015), which has been adopted as the textbook for syntax courses at a number of Chinese colleges. His Colloquial Amdo Tibetan (2005), co-authored with Lha Byams Rgyal, is regarded as a superior textbook on the subject, and its English revised edition is to be published by Routledge in 2020 at the same time as the Chinese edition (Zangyu Anduo Kouyu) by China Tibetology Publishing House. In addition to his academic publications, in 2008 he published Shinaihai de Zhuoma, Drolmas from Shinaihai, a collection of essasys and stories documenting his encounters with Tibetan people from a cultural perspective.