Author(s)

Jiangying Yu

Corresponding Author

Jiangying Yu

Abstract

The most important forms of Chinese idioms, chengyus (CYs), have a fixed length of four Chinese characters and have long attracted the attention of linguists, lexicographers, translators, language instructors. The work presented here work attempts to provide a quantitative perspective of assessing difficulty levels of Chinese idioms for Chinese L2 learners. The approach is based on three dimensions. One is the semantic parameters, which attributes mainly from the view of the relation of the literal meaning and deeper meaning. The second is the syntax parameters, which is mainly divided into syntactic structure and syntactic function. Third is the pragmatic parameters, which takes sentimental color, cultural color and special restriction and collocation of Chinese idioms into consideration. Finally, a general approach to assess the difficulty levels of Chinese idioms for Chinese L2 learners is proposed.

Keywords

Difficulty Levels, Chinese Idioms, Chinese L2 Learners