Through empirical research, this book explores the parameters of difficulty level differences at the Chinese discourse level, and finds that in narrative discourse, topic chain, clause setting, and whole sentence/dependent zero sentence can be used as the three explicit parameters for determining the difficulty level difference of the discourse. Relying on the interlanguage corpus, this book further analyses the discourse performance of international students in acquiring Chinese on these three parameters, and finds that the three parameters show different trends of acquisition change from the initial stage to the advanced stage.

This book can serve as a reference for the formulation of discourse syllabus in international Chinese language education, the formulation of assessment criteria for standardized Chinese language examinations and the compilation of intermediate and advanced Chinese language teaching materials.

Tian Ran, female, graduated from the Department of Chinese Language, Fudan University, is now a professor at Beijing Language and Culture University and an expert of the National Social Science Foundation of China and the Humanities and Social Science Foundation of the Ministry of Education. Her research mainly focuses on Chinese textual grammar and discourse teaching. She has presided over three projects of the National Social Science Foundation and the Humanities and Social Science Foundation of the Ministry of Education, and published two monographs, Discourse Grammar of Chinese as a Foreign Language and International Chinese Teaching: Methods and Techniques for Teaching Reading and Writing, as well as more than 30 papers in journals such as Chinese Language Learning. She has travelled to the United Kingdom, the United States, Mexico, Austria, Finland, Australia, New Zealand and other countries for work, training and academic exchanges.

This book brings together the authors’ years of efforts to study Chinese discourse from both ontological and acquisition perspectives. From the ontological perspective, based on the discourse of child native speakers and that of adult native speakers, the author extracts three parameters for determining difficulty, namely, topic chain, clause setting, and whole sentence/dependent zero clause. From the acquisition perspective, based on the three parameters, the author examines the discourse performance of Chinese learners of different levels. Whether you are tracking the development of Chinese discourse research, or looking for references for the formulation of discourse syllabus or related test evaluation standard, this book serves as a supportive reference for you.

It is recommended to Chinese ontology researchers and second language acquisition researchers, especially for scholars interested in discourse studies.