Teaching the Mandarin utterance-final particle le through authentic materials

Abstract

The Mandarin utterance-final particle le is among the most difficult and elusive grammatical features that learners of Chinese often encounter, owing to its rich interactional pragmatic functions and the lack of a counterpart in many first languages. In this article, we use media clips to illustrate a beginning-level language teaching unit for this feature. We show that authentic materials can be used to address pedagogical issues with some of the most difficult grammatical phenomena in Chinese and that this can be accomplished via material design, classroom activities, and assessment methods - all at the beginning level. (All relevant video clips used in this article can be found from this website: http://clicresearch.rice.edu/caslar-authentic-spoken-language/#le)