On Teaching Strategies of Light Tone in Chinese to Foreign Students

The teaching of light tone is in an awkward situation in teaching Chinese as a second language. Disputes on whether or not light tone should be taught, what to teach and how to teach could be heard from time to time. As a special phonetic phenomenon in Chinese Mandarin and dialects, light tone has a certain grammatical function, but more importantly it reveals the rhythm of Chinese, therefore, it should not be ignored in the teaching of Chinese to foreign students. This paper tries to analyze the importance and difficulties of the light tone teaching and figure out acceptable solutions to the difficulties of the light tone teaching.