The Learning and Teaching of Cantonese as a Second Language

The Learning and Teaching of Cantonese as a Second Language brings together contributions on such issues as Cantonese textbooks, linguistic description, literacy and tone acquisition, supplemented by case studies from the Netherlands and Japan. The learning and teaching of Cantonese as a second language is a subject of considerable interest in the international academic community, and the first international symposium on teaching Cantonese as a second language, held at the Chinese University of Hong Kong in October 2019, brought together leading researchers in this field. This conference provided the inspiration for the current volume, The Learning and Teaching of Cantonese as a Second Language. In the Hong Kong context, historically, the term ‘Cantonese’ refers to the language varieties of immigrants who came to the territory from various areas in Guangdong province, including Macau, Panyu, Taishan, Xinhui and Zhongshan. From the late nineteenth century onwards, their speech coalesced into the contemporary variety of Cantonese used in Hong Kong today. The term ‘Cantonese’ is also used to refer to the entire Yue subgroup of Chinese, which includes varieties of Cantonese spoken in southern China, Hong Kong, Macau, Malaysia, Singapore and among overseas Chinese in Australia, Europe and North America. In all, it is estimated that there are about 70 million Cantonese speakers in the world. This volume is of direct relevance to educators, language teachers, linguists and all those concerned with the learning of Cantonese as a second language.

Table of Contents:
List of figures List of tables List of contributors 1 Introduction: The learning and teaching of Cantonese as a second language PART I Linguistic perspective on the learning of Cantonese 2 The Cantonese mixed script 3 Written Cantonese and Cantonese textbooks in mainland China 4 How not to acquire tone: Cross-linguistic influence in prosody 5 Teaching literacy skills to Cantonese learners PART II Case studies from the Netherlands and Japan 6 Cantonese heritage language teaching in the Netherlands: Towards an inclusive classroom 7 The learning of Cantonese as a foreign language at Japanese universities PART III Current trends in Cantonese language education 8 Curriculum design and Cantonese teaching at a Hong Kong university 9 Teaching Cantonese tones to international university students in Hong Kong 10 A corpus-based approach to learning and teaching Cantonese 11 Textbook Cantonese romanization systems 12 Learning, teaching and performing Cantonese on the Internet Index

About the Author :
Siu-lun Lee is Senior Lecturer in the Yale-China Chinese Language Centre at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He has over 25 years of experience teaching Cantonese at the tertiary level. His research interests include applied linguistics, Cantonese studies, Chinese linguistics, sociolinguistics, language teaching pedagogy and second language learning. He is the author of the book series Modern Cantonese published by Routledge.

Review :
"This edited book offers an important contribution to this subject. The book contributes to the field of language teaching, particularly to teaching Cantonese as a second language. This book will appeal to many language teachers, particularly to teachers of Cantonese as a second language. This book also attracts strong interest from scholars working in the field of Chinese linguistics, Cantonese studies, and sociolinguistics." Ng Hok Chung, Language Centre, Hong Kong Baptist University