Examines methods and materials for teaching beginning reading and Mandarin Chinese (the standard dialect the People's Republic of China) to Chinese children of different dialects. Finds value in the integration of language arts with peer tutoring, multimodal approach, and teaching with mnemonics, but reports excessive memorization, little silent…

This paper analyses elementary school Chinese language textbooks for teaching reading and writing in primary grades in the People's Republic of China. The paper begins by examining the characteristics of the Chinese written language, particularly how the reforms of written Chinese in China since the 1950s have affected instructional materials.…