從文字屬性檢驗小學國語課本生字之學習順序的恰當性

Examining the Appropriateness of Teaching Sequence of Chinese Characters in Chinese Elementary School Textbooks

本研究的目的是根據中文字的屬性，評估國語課本對生字之教學順序安排的恰當性。研究一以問卷方式，請151位國小國語科教師就「書報字頻」、「筆畫數」等九個分屬「文字應用」、「文字音義」及「文字構形」三個類別的文字屬性，評估它們對文字的教學與學習的相對重要性。研究發現，教師們認為，文字的童書字頻和構詞能力是每個年級進行文字教學與學習時，教師都應考量的重要文字屬性。文字的結構與筆畫數是低年級的重要文字屬性，而文字的作文字頻則是高年級的重要屬性。參考研究一的發現，研究二根據六種文字屬性評估三種版本的國小國語教科書，在生字之教學順序安排上的適當性。研究發現，雖然三個版本之內，對生字教學順序的安排頗符合文字屬性所蘊含的適當性，但是在版本之間，不同教科書對小學期間識字量的安排不僅高達約10%的差異，對文字的選擇更高達20~30%的不同。另外，研究也發現，約15%的課文生字學習該課文的時間點而言，應往前或往後調整。另外，為了有效的進行本研究，研究者設計了一個含有約5900個書報雜誌常用的中文字及其文字屬性的字庫，也設計了一個可以進行文章用字分析及文字屬性分析的電腦軟體；這個軟體將會放置於網路，提供讀者使用。

An elementary school student in Taiwan is expected to learn 2500~2900 different Chinese characters from Chinese textbooks. The purpose of the present research is to evaluate the appropriateness of the arrangement of character sequences in textbooks. One hundred and fifty one experienced elementary school teachers of Chinese descent participated in Study 1. They were asked to evaluate the relative importance of 9 properties of Chinese characters， including character usage in writing， features of character orthography， and complexity of character phonology and semantics， when selecting characters to teach. The participants indicated that properties such as “frequency of use in children’s books” and “number of words included as morpheme” are important and should be considered in every grade. They also found that， “number of character strokes” is important for grade 1 and 2， and “frequency of use in children’s own writing” should be considered in grade 5 and 6. Based on the findings of Study 1， Study 2 evaluated how the potential characters to be learned were arranged in Chinese textbooks published by three publishers. The results showed that although the characters in the textbooks published by the same publisher were selected and arranged in accordance with the sequence indicated by character properties， there was much variation regarding the selection and learning sequence arrangement of the characters among the publishers. For example， between two publishers， there could be 20~30% difference on the characters to be learned included in the textbooks. All together， the potential characters to be learned in about 15% of the articles were misplaced in the teaching sequence. Moreover， a database containing about 5900 different characters and their properties has been built， and a computer program utilizing the database to analyze the characters in an article has also been designed. The database and program will be available on the internet.