When teaching Mandarin Chinese classifiers, teachers usually ask students to memorize ‘classifier + noun’, phrases as collocations. Given that Mandarin Chinese has a vast and complicated system of classifiers, the rote memorization of ‘classifier + noun’ collocations is challenging and monotonous. Therefore, the present study aims to improve that pedagogical method by applying cognitive linguistics. Previous studies did not explicitly demonstrate the cognitive approach to teaching Chinese classifiers, resulting in difficulty in practice. Thus, this study presents a step-by-step introduction to teaching Chinese classifiers with cognitive linguistics. Afterwards, an experiment is presented with children learning Chinese as a heritage language in Germany in order to test the efficiency of the cognitive approach and the traditional method (rote memorization of ‘classifier + noun’, collocations). Results suggest that the cognitive approach facilitated the learning of Chinese classifiers to a great extent. However, due to some limitations of the experiment, the cognitive approach did not outperform the traditional method. Even so, the present study concludes that the cognitive approach is worthwhile and promising for future teaching activities for two reasons. On the one hand, the cognitive approach helped students and was not worse than the traditional approach in this study. On the other hand, previous studies indicate many potentials of the cognitive approach. Finally, several suggestions learned from the limitations of this study are provided for further research.

在教授普通话量词时，教师通常要求学生背“量词+名词”，短语作为搭配。鉴于普通话有庞大而复杂的量词系统，死记硬背“量词+名词”的搭配具有挑战性和单调性。因此，本研究旨在通过应用认知语言学来改进这种教学方法。以前的研究没有明确地展示认知方法来教授汉语分类器，导致实践困难。因此，本研究逐步介绍了如何用认知语言学教授汉语分类器。然后，为了测试认知方法和传统方法（“分类词+名词”的死记硬背，搭配）的效率，以在德国学习汉语作为传统语言的儿童进行了一项实验。结果表明，认知方法在很大程度上促进了汉语分类器的学习。然而，由于实验的一些限制，认知方法并没有优于传统方法。即便如此，本研究得出的结论是，认知方法对于未来的教学活动是值得和有希望的，原因有两个。一方面，认知方法对学生有帮助，并不比本研究中的传统方法差。另一方面，先前的研究表明认知方法的许多潜力。最后，