On YU Alternatives — anyone have recommendations?
Here’s a bit of the guest lecture today at YU:
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
[No sound? Click here]
sān jiā èr děngyú wǔ, yī jiā sān děngyú sì, sì jiā èr děngyú liù, wǔ jiā èr děngyú qī, sì jiā èr děngyú liù, yī jiā wǔ děngyú liù.
三加二等于五，一加三等于四， 四加二等于六，五加二等于七，四加二等于六，一加五等于六
3+2=5, 1+3=4, 4+2=6, 5+2=7, 4+2=6, 1+5=6
Rather elementary (first grade, in fact), but still a decent lecture, with extremely clear tones and a textbook example of 3rd-3rd tone sandhi (where the first of two consecutive third tones automatically becomes a second tone) on the last sum. Thereby
wǔ děngyú
becomes something that sounds like
wú děngyú
No doubt: I’m a YUniphile. But when reader Ellen writes in to ask for Mandarin study opportunities outside of YU…
I’ve been studying Mandarin for about 2 years as an adult learner in the States and am looking for an intensive summer program in China to focus on my speaking skills (my nightly prayer: dear any-power-that-is-listening, please, please help me with my tones). Do you have any to recommend to a middle-aged person determined to become marginally fluent? For business reasons, I’m inclined to look in Beijing but welcome suggestions in other places where there might be fewer English speakers.
… I have to admit I’m kind of at a loss, so she said I could pose the question to a wider audience. Does anyone out there have a recommendation?
Personally, my ideal program:
1. Forces communication. It should make the Zhonglish speaker get things done and get them done in Mandarin.
2. Involves Mandarin speakers who aren’t secretly trying to learn English. Common problem for native English speakers trying to learn any language — that their interlocutor is actually trying to use the opportunity to learn more English.
3. Emphasizes acquiring a reasonable level of competence in the spoken language before attempting to teach characters. Any curriculum teaching characters to beginners gets sent straight back to the dugout for some long, hard introspection.
Meeting these criteria is what makes YU so great — it certainly beats some of the alternatives cited earlier. However, some potential students may think the tuition is a bit steep.
Looking for ideas here, folks. Can anyone help?
Add "Learn Chinese" to iGoogle
Comments 34
Well, the way I see it, if your goal is to become fluent, I wouldn’t go for the “Speak first, then learn characters” method, because I don’t think you can really grasp the true feeling without knowing which characters you actually are saying, especially since the Chinese language is very short on sounds, the whole distinction between words are first the tones, then the characters. In the end you realice that it all comes down to radicals and characters.
As for language courses I recommend (from my own experience) the Mandarin program at Peking University, 北京大学, or Beida 北大 for short.
Merely because here you get both the “academic” view, with a focus on characters, culture courses and so on, and a very good oral class too.
Only negative is though that you are likely to meet a lot of Chinese students who wants to learn English, but I guess that something you will encounter all over the place. You just have to stay focused and not “fall for the trick” of speaking English.
Posted 15 Oct 2008 at 1:16 am ¶Avoid the universities like the plague if you actually want to learn spoken Chinese. The ones in Beijing are nothing more than cash cows. Out of 4 hours a day you get to speak for about 10 minutes and there is no effort made to give students individual feedback or assistance. These programs focus so heavily on Hanzi that’s it crazy. If you don’t know characters, they don’t care – you’re going to elementary level. I had a Canadian-Chinese guy in my A+ class at BeiYu because he didn’t know how to read characters but he was probably a D level student in speaking. It was so stupid. He left the program after Week 6.
At this stage, I’d say come to Beijing and hire private tutors. I agree with the moderators comments about making sure that they don’t try to turn it into English training. I love Chinese people to death, but they are really selfish about this. If they can use you to improve their English, they will. You’ve got to be vigilant. Fire any tutor who does this.
Posted 15 Oct 2008 at 1:49 am ¶If you just wanna speak Chinese, in the meaning of “being understood”, sure, nevermind characters. But, if you wanna get to a level where you can be a part the society, read media, talk about sensible stuff, then sorry, you have to learn characters. And the sooner you start the better. If start off by not caring about characters, you will most likely end up postponing learning characters for the rest of your studies.
I don’t know,maybe I’m over generalizing, but this seems to be the major difference between European and Americans studying Chinese, in terms of goals and methods, that is. Americans are very focused on speaking, but when they reach a certain level, it takes too much effort to improve from that point and further. While Europeans tend to focued on the small parts, and sometimes get lost in all the knowlegde. To me, the best way to do it is to go to classes to get guidance and to stay on your toes. But too speak, you have to get Chinese friends.
Posted 15 Oct 2008 at 2:16 am ¶I have a friend who speaks excellent conversational Chinese. He doesn’t know characters. I asked him the secret. He said: “I left the university and started talking to Chinese people.”
I’m not saying that Hanzi isn’t important. But mastering characters is a major investment of time. Frankly, you can learn them anywhere. Speaking and listening are the two biggest hurdles in learning Chinese. And it can only be done in China. If I only had six months or a year in China, I would focus on any program that would help me with these skills. Learn Hanzi in your home country. By the way, at BeiYu they don’t even teach you how to draw characters correctly. You’re just supposed to jot down what you see on the board.
Posted 15 Oct 2008 at 4:00 am ¶Oh, I’d love to weigh in on the hanzi kerfuffle too, but maybe we can get others involved first. Sima is known for his character uxoriousness, so we’ll see if he shows up
In the meantime, for the sake of providing Ellen with good information, can I ask some clarifying questions?
@Andre, could you describe your progress after “an intensive summer” if you had something like that? I’m thinking both writing and speaking dimensions…
@Glen, did you go thru such a program and then do something else? And how was the progress?
You’ve both probably been in Ellen’s shoes, or had friends who were. She’s “only” got a summer to spare, has a bit of background in the language, and wants to achieve some reasonable level of competency. Any specifics highly appreciated.
Posted 15 Oct 2008 at 4:14 am ¶Well, first, just some background info:
When I first arrived China, I had studied Chinese back home for one year, then I had summer school at Peking University followed by one semester of Chinese studies at the same place.
How was my progress? Personally it felt like progress at the speed of light, I guess this is probably mostly due to this being my first time in China. However, T think you should give credit to the program at Peking University for from day one having classes exclusively in Chinese. This way you learn a lot of common words, of course not words a Chinese person would use every day, but still words that I think are more than compulsory to learn in order to get around.
I had about 20 hours of classes every week, but still had the time to go out, hang out with Chinese people, all the stuff that’s first of all fun, and second very useful for language improvement.
Maybe I’m just a lazy bastard, but I feel like I have to sign up for a program in order to actuallt do any thing at all. IT’s really stupid, I know, but I think is the core of language learning. Everybody can do it, but only the people who spend enough time learning actually succed.
Posted 15 Oct 2008 at 4:45 am ¶Bottom line is pretty much like this:
Get exposed to as much native Chinese as possible, and study according your motivation.
Posted 15 Oct 2008 at 6:19 am ¶A good friend of mine swears by the “freeze your arse off” method. Actually, being American, he calls it the “freeze your ass off”, but I’m opposed to unnecessary cruelty to donkeys (unless you’re going to eat them, of course). The method in question works this way: Find some small, boring place in the north or northeast that also happens to have somebody who willing to Chinese to a foreigner. Not easy, I know, but definitely doable. And that’s it. The theory is that at least half the year it’s too bloody cold to do anything but study, and even when the weather is pleasant, there’s nothing to do but study. And, being in the north or northeast, the local dialects are reasonably close to standard Putonghua, minimising dialect-interference (something that caused me a lot of hassle when I moved from Changsha to Taiyuan, but almost no hassle moving from Taiyuan to Beijing).
The beauty of this method is you are cutting yourself off from the easy, foreigner-heavy environment in Beijing and Tianjin, meaning if you want to stay alive you have no choice but to speak Chinese every single day, but you don’t have to be totally isolated. Hebei University is based in Baoding, and I believe there are tertiary institutes in Shijiazhuang and Zhangjiakou that also offer Chinese lessons to foreigners. There’s also Taiyuan, if you like coal and vinegar, or perhaps even Hohhot. Anyways, you can easily put yourself in a situation in which you have no choice but to be constantly studying and practicing Chinese, and yet have easy access to the more foreigner-friendly environments of Beijing and Tianjin.
I would say definitely, definitely avoid Beijing and Tianjin’s schools and universities, particularly if you’re from an English-speaking country. Us Anglo-Saxons (ugh, I hate that word) are far too quick to go all lazy with the language learning. Europeans, especially the French, in my experience, tend to do much better in that respect. And don’t go south of the Yellow River or too far west, you’ll get too much interference from the local dialects when you’re outside of class. North and northeast, smaller towns and cities with smaller (or non-existent, in the case of my friend) laowai communities, that’s the way to go.
Posted 15 Oct 2008 at 4:23 pm ¶After that introduction from syz, and after being reminded just how long-winded some of my comments here can be, I’ll try to keep it short.
I think Andre basically nails it for me, and I wish I had, like him, done a bit of study before I got here, but Glen’s warnings about the universities are certainly to be taken seriously.
I did enrol at university after two and a half years living here, mainly because I was worried that I was missing quite a lot through my own haphazard, spare-time study. I was lucky in that, though I don’t think the program was wonderfully taught (one or two teachers were really great), I was pretty much the only full-time, English-speaking student in the place. So much fell into place during the two years I studied there and I’m still feeling the benefits.
As for tutors, I had to pass HSK 6 to get onto my course and decided to hire someone as a tutor to help me prepare. After several less than helpful experiences with tutors in my first year (looking to practise English, looking for a husband, etc) I decided to ask a friend who was a good English teacher (’good’ as in quite secure about conversing in Chinese with me, even though her English was much better than my Chinese). I offered too much money and she bargained me down to an acceptable, but still quite generous price. That really paid off – she knew it was work and she took it seriously. I learnt a lot.
Ellen presumably has quite a lot of knowledge of the language already and really needs the environment to develop it. A university summer course might really help to pull things together – after a couple of years study, character recognition ought to be reasonably high, but there’ll be a huge amount of work to do in terms of converting that into words and phrases. As Andre says, twenty hours of class a week (usually four ’study hours’ each morning Monday to Friday) still leaves plenty of time to get out and about. I found the combination of classroom activity and daily conversation really worked for me.
The key would seem to be…getting out and about. I’d be quite wary of places with loads of foreigners (or loads of English speakers), but I’d be reluctant to go somewhere there are none – I’m freezing my arse off in the Northeast, but I was at least able to speak to a fellow Brit living here before I came. Knowing what I was letting myself in for was quite important. If Ellen’s in Beijing, she will need to be pretty determined to get out and meet people.
One thing I would say – don’t under-estimate the value of having an foreign friend whose Chinese level is above your own. Being a third participant in conversations between a native speaker and a reasonably capable foreigner can be one of the biggest helps in building your confidence.
Er, I said I wouldn’t go on…
Perhaps Ellen could come back on some of the comments. I suspect we’re not exactly helping her sort things out.
Posted 15 Oct 2008 at 6:49 pm ¶@Chris
Being in a place with no foreigners is indeed the way to do it. Wish I had the courage to do that. By forcing yourself to speak Chinese in every possible situation, you’ll learn much faster, and it’ll probably stick for a longer time, merely because you can relate everything to a real life situation.
I might be going to China next summer/fall to boost my Chinese,maybe I should get my shit together and just move to a laowai diserted town! Sounds like fun too.
Posted 16 Oct 2008 at 3:50 am ¶@Chris: FYAO method is one for the archives. (Not that there’s anything wrong with other 方言 or even Mandarin dialects， for the record, but it just doesn’t add a lot to your general ability to converse around the country.) It can’t be complete coincidence that the only guest posts on Beijing Sounds have come from NEsterners: Sima & Randy.
But as Sima notes: lining up a tutor is anything but straightforward. Now I’m assuming Ellen will weigh in here eventually, but I can probably speak for her and say that wasting three months in country just trying to get a tutor who is really jiggy with teaching Mandarin is NOT an option. If that’s the case, the individual tutor option would seem to be unappealing, unless she can get one by personal recommendation. Kind of like getting a nanny…
@Andre, although I think you and Sima are cuckoo on the early learning of characters, I find myself nodding in agreement that
1) Characters are necessary
2) Americans (using myself as an example) tend to avoid them excessively
It was only about a year ago that I began tackling my literacy problem in earnest. In the process I’ve come to the obvious realization that the second language learner hits a plateau without them. Hard to function in modern society as an illiterate — duh!
Still, I’m convinced thru my own experience that it is better to get to that plateau before learning characters than to waste time in the early days learning them at the expense of basic communication. And to your comment…
I’ll just say that lots of illiterate Chinese — historically and to this day — have grasped the true meaning of their native language without the aid of characters. And then I’ll promise to paraphrase lots of DeFrancis in the coming months to shed light on this view that Sima seems to share.
Posted 16 Oct 2008 at 5:34 am ¶I can’t say I’m an expert but who knows, maybe my two cents will help.
First off, as far as universities go there are actually some very very good programs in the United States. I know for a fact that the University of Minnesota and University of Wisconsin: Madison have nationally (if not internationally) recognized programs in teaching Chinese. MN’s course is 7 hours a week with 5 hours speaking while WI’s is 8 hours with 5 hours speaking. Both use the Integrated Chinese Course book by Yao and Liu published by Cheng and Tsui Company. All of the audio files can be found on the University of Minnesota’s Asian Language and Literature website. So if you live in that area, those are great courses (or if you trust your self-study habits enough, you can study and improve on your own with their courses).
Second, in China, it’s not necessary to go to the freezing north. Hangzhou, while occasionally unbearably hot, is home to the Zhejiang Normal University. One of the best, if not the best, university in Zhejiang, it is home to a dedicated group of English majors. The interesting thing about these English majors is that they tend to take many internships/work experience programs as translators/tutors. Of course they will try to pick up more English, but for the most part their English is at a high enough level where teaching you Chinese is more or less their primary goal. Perhaps I was lucky in that regard, but from what they people I know from there say, most of the other students who take those positions enjoy teaching people the Chinese language over learning English which is all they study in college.
Also, if the option is available (usually through a local university, either in China or the US), the Chinese Summer Bridge Program is excellent. It’s a good way to experience the culture of various areas of China, while being exposed to the language more and more (with formal classes happening during the week, too). The only problem, as a middle aged adult, you would most likely be a chaperone than a full fledged participant, though I assume Hanban, the organization in charge (through the Chinese government), has programs that are similar for adult learners.
I hope some of this helped, or at least sparked an idea.
Posted 16 Oct 2008 at 10:43 am ¶@syz
There are lots of Chinese people who are illiterate, and of course still have a feeling for their language. But Mandarin is their mother tongue. However, I think when you are learning a language after a certain age (meaning after 15-16 or something like that) you need input from both written and oral practice in order to catch up with all the passive knowlegde a native speaker has aquired through just living in the country where the language is spoken.
Posted 16 Oct 2008 at 1:43 pm ¶@André: I don’t at all disagree that characters are valuable and necessary, eventually. But I think they’re a waste of time during initial instruction, probably the first two years. Now I am starting to recognize my own biases, finally, and might grudgingly accept that that approach works for some people. But I think, and will try to back this up with actual research which I am pretty sure exists, that it very much does NOT work for the majority.
Since it’s related, here’s a comment I just posted over at Pinyin.info, where they’re talking about Australian Mandarin programs’ high drop-out rate for all except, apparently, legacy Chinese speakers.
Posted 16 Oct 2008 at 2:57 pm ¶@syz: No, there is nothing wrong with any kind of 方言, that’s not the point. For those wanting a good grounding in Modern Standard Mandarin, the north and northeast minimise that interference. And yes, I know how incredibly difficult it is to find a good tutor. What eventually got my Chinese off the ground was finding myself in a particular work situation. No money or language exchanged, just the need to work together and the resulting friendship. But that tutor-finding problem (and the obvious problems of being totally isolated from laowai society) is precisely why I mentioned that Hebei University is based in Baoding- a small city just south of Beijing, a few fellow foreigners, not a huge community, easy weekend access to “civilisation”, weekday in the deep end- and that I am at least vaguely aware of institutions in Shijiazhuang and Zhangjiakou- similar situations to Baoding. My point: Enroll in a university or college of some kind to get some grounding in formal grammar and expression (and the appropriate visa and easy accomodation), then after class dive in the deep end.
@Parry: Of course the freezing north is not necessary for university programmes. Kunming, for example, is well known for it’s Chinese as a foreign language teaching. My point with the north was simply that freezing your arse off minimises (but does not eliminate) the interference of local dialects and/or accents outside the classroom. For example, when I moved from Changsha to Taiyuan, I had a hell of a time making myself understood, simply because on the street in Changsha I had to speak very heavily Changsha-ised Putonghua (at the very least) to get what I needed. Taiyuan to Beijing was a much easier move. The year I worked in Tianjin, I noticed (as I had moving from Taiyuan to Beijing) linguistic differences, but it did not affect my ability to speak coherent Putonghua.
Oh, and @syz, that comment you quote from Pinyin.info: I don’t see script as a problem, because Chinese people have to learn it to, and they are equally learning from a point of total ignorance. The only advantage they may have is starting at a younger age. Nor can I see point 2 being an issue. Sure, loanwords make certain things “easier”, but as any English speaker who’s acquired a reasonable degree of fluency in French (or vice versa) can attest, faux amis can be a real bitch. But really, I don’t see 足球 as being any harder to learn than futbol or le foot or Fußball. Point 3, the “legacy” (really awful term for this) students, I remember a friend complaining about at Otago University back in the mid- to late-ish- 90s, so I think it’s been around for a while. But it’s not a problem of pedagogy so much as a pain in the arse. It’s essentially no different from the few wasters and losers I have to put up with in my classes- the few spoilt little rich kids who just have to live up to the stereotype, when in fact, although they all come from affluent backgrounds, the majority of my students are really good. The point is the “legacy” students, like the few losers and wasters I have to deal with, are not detracting from the pedagogy, they are at worst distracting the teacher and wasting resources: A pain in the arse, in other words. I don’t see how any of those points sheds any light on the Chinese language teaching/learning situation anywhere.
Posted 16 Oct 2008 at 6:36 pm ¶@chriswaugh
“I don’t see how any of those points sheds any light on the Chinese language teaching/learning situation anywhere.”
Ouch. Clearly I’ve been drinking too much of the Kool-Aid (or maybe the formaldehyde) in the BJS cold storage area.
At the risk of death by explication (implying that the original work was just so much misunderstood poetry), humor me for a couple of supplemental comments:
1. Yes, native speakers in China, like everywhere else, have to bang their heads against hanzi. There is one ENORMOUS difference, though: they are not “learning from a point of total ignorance.” In fact, they are fluent in spoken Mandarin before they begin. To ask the same for second language Mandarin learners would be excessive, but I’m saying that too much early emphasis on character memorization may be killing motivation — hence the high dropout rate. Put another way:
Let’s say Joe the Plumber is studying Mandarin, and he dedicates 500 hours to it. If he learns Pinyin (max. 100 hours) and ignores hanzi, he’ll end up with 400 hours to study vocab & grammar and might be able to hold a basic conversation. If he dedicates 200 hours to characters, he’ll know, well, half as much because he has split the 200 remaining hours. Keep in mind, he still has to learn Pinyin, just to be able to learn the characters. Moreover, he probably still won’t know half the characters for the vocabulary he’s acquired. If he wanted his character learning to keep pace with his vocabulary, I’m guessing the ratio would be more like 300 hours on hanzi and 100 hours on vocab.
On the early-hanzi path, Joe gets discouraged, because after 500 hours he still can’t carry on an elementary conversation or read a basic text. Can you blame Joe for getting discouraged? I suppose. But that’s not going to get you very far. Better to change the pedagogy.
2. I’m pretty sure one could test and document that it takes less time for the average learner to memorize vocabulary with familiar root words. Until I do that, though, I recognize it’s just my opinion.
3. Oh, I’ll spare you since I said “a couple” of comments
Bottom line: there must be some explanation for the extravagant dropout rate of Australians (and, I’m pretty sure, Americans) from Mandarin programs. These are the best explanations I can think of.
BTW, I didn’t mean to imply that you were 方言-bashing. The whole learning-in-the-north thing is good advice.
Posted 16 Oct 2008 at 10:42 pm ¶@everybody
I guess it all boils down to what you wanna do with your Chinese. If you wanna become somewhat fluent, start with characters as soon as possible. You progress will in the beginning be slow, but after some time it will develop until a natural and neccesary way to study.
on the other hand, if you wanna be able to speak, read some, get fast progress for the first couple of years, you will most def profit from spending more time speaking than learning characters.
By now, you all probably have discovered which way I choose, but still I’m will be the first to say, both ways are equally possible.
All roads leads to Rome.
Posted 17 Oct 2008 at 2:05 am ¶In my opinion, saying that you have to avoid foreigner heavy places in China is just being lazy. You CAN make friends with Chinese people in big cities like Beijing and Shanghai. It’s really a question of whether or not you want to. During the summer course at BeiYu, the majority of the students go out to the laowai bars every night and never connect with the community in anyway. I was stunned when my classmates didn’t know we were called “lao wai” and had no clue what yangrou chuanr was (kind of basic cultural things, don’t you think?!).
One warning I would give everyone: be so careful about language exchange opportunities. These usually turn into free English classes for the Chinese side. It’s taken me a long time to find some people who really want to help ME learn their language. Sadly, to become friends with a Chinese person who speaks no English (or whatever your mother tongue is) requires a basic Chinese vocabularly of at least 1500 words. Even then, you have to hope that your friend will be patient and help you when they say the words you ting bu dong.
Posted 17 Oct 2008 at 5:17 am ¶While readers have made many good suggestions, I’d also like to recommend studying Heisig’s Remember the Kanji before she goes to China. Although it’s made for Japanese, it’s fairly easy to convert it to chinese and it really is helpful for character memory. I’m sure somebody’s going to say that Chinese words are two syllables for the most part so learning the individual characters isn’t helpful. Obviously, to understand Chinese individual characters don’t go far enough, but they can be a very helpful memory aid, and so Heisig’s book can really complement your other study methods.
Posted 17 Oct 2008 at 7:42 am ¶Whoa, easy on the “lazy” business there, Glen. Them’s fighting words. Not for me, personally, cuz I’m too lazy to care. But I’m very empathetic with the congenitally slothful, my brethren. Part of the cure, of course, is to force yourself into situations where you’re not allowed to be lazy. I think chriswaugh is suggesting that FYAO works just that way. Quite ingenious, I say. I agree that it’s possible to accomplish the same thing in Beijing, but it does take more creativity and willpower, and those characteristics are not always in plentiful supply.
Posted 17 Oct 2008 at 8:24 am ¶@glen: Interesting. You try to argue, and then you agree with my point. With FYAO I’m merely suggesting that putting a bit of distance between oneself and temptation might help the study. In fact, my first year in Beijing I lived in Wudaokou, at DiDa right across Chengfu Lu from BeiYu. I know the area well and know it ain’t no good for those who want to study but also like to head out for a beer at the end of a hard day banging their heads against characters and chengyu. Indeed, I agree wholeheartedly that it is more than possible to a) make Chinese friends and b) learn decent Mandarin in pretty much any Chinese town or city, even Hong Kong or Vancouver. But some places require more will power to learn, hence me putting forward my friend’s FYAO theory. Remove yourself from temptation, you have no choice but study, therefore you learn more and faster. I guess I should point out that I, personally, never signed up to the FYAO School, unless you count my branch of Yuemu U., which, being based in Beijing’s Yanqing County, is frequently arse-freezingly cold. In fact, most of my China life has been spent in Beijing, and yet I have, if documents must be provided, HSK 7, and I intend to boost that to an 8 at least next April. So yes, Mandarin can definitely be learnt in the big cities. But temptation to skive off to the expat havens is best avoided in smaller towns. In other words, of course it’s entirely possible to make friends with Chinese and learn Chinese anywhere, but you can help speed the process up a bit by putting yourself in a situation where you can’t- or at least can’t easily- spend your spare time with other laowai. That’s the point of the FYAO method.
It’s a bit of a tangent, but for many reasons, social, cultural, and linguistic, I do generally recommend that people spend their first year or two in China in smaller provincial cities and then move to the Big Smoke, but that’s a whole other discussion.
@syz:
1: Point taken.
2: The jury’s out.
3: Uh, I’m lost…. Sorry. It’s been, uh, yeah, a week. One of those.
But I’m not convinced there is an extravagant drop-out rate, or that it’s any worse than any other in the grand scheme of things. I majored in French and studied German and Russia for the hell of it (we didn’t have “minors” at Otago. Canterbury seems to follow a more American model though). For each language I was studying both language and literature. And for each language, as I’ve been telling my students all week, class sizes halved with each year. My high school French and German courses followed a very similar pattern. I’m not sure how that compares with an Aussie (or American or Kiwi) Mandarin drop out rate, but high drop out rates from language courses are nothing extraordinary, not in my language learning experience. I would need to see some pretty solid proof to believe that there is anything unusual about Mandarin in that respect.
Posted 17 Oct 2008 at 2:34 pm ¶I think people drop out from studying languages merely because nobody can be fully aware of how much time you actually have to put down to learn a language fluently. It’s not that people are lazy, it’s just that a lot of people have (too) high expectations when it comes to their progress.
Posted 18 Oct 2008 at 3:34 pm ¶actually, i am the organizer of a language training program that is exactly what you are looking for. the language program incorporates two parts: one is language immerson and the other is business immersion. as for the first one, you will be learning Chinese, doing stay-at home, traveling, participating in cultural activities with a bunch of native Chinese speakers.
As for the second program, business immersion, is especially for business practitioners. we have prepared several trips to stated-owned and international companies for you to network with key business players in Beijing/China. We have also prepared various workshops to familiarize you wth chinese culture. we will be talking about culturl differences in business settings. of course, there will be plenty of opportunities for you to practice and learn chinese.
For both programs, we have prepared a very detailed plan for you to enjoy whil learning the Chinese language. we have found excellent Chinese teachers, planned fatanstic trips to places of interests in China, and provided tons of opportunities to mingle with native chinese speakers.
in general, you don’t need to make any plan. we have planned evrything for you. Just show up and enjoy your learning while having lots of fun.
If you are interested in this, please email me back. i will be more than happy to answer your questions.
Aithankyou
Posted 20 Oct 2008 at 4:17 am ¶If you want to learn Mandarin at the most rapid pace possible while in China, there are a few key programs that can help you do so. They work on the “填鸭式” method, but through their intense studies and strict language pledges they give results. These programs are:
Posted 12 Jun 2009 at 1:58 pm ¶Beijing: Associated Colleges in China (ACC), Inter-University Program for Chinese Language Studies (IUP), Princeton in Beijing (PiB), and possibly Harvard Summer Program in Beijing
Hangzhou: C.V. Starr Middlebury School
Taipei: International Chinese Language Program (ICLP), Mandarin Training Center (MTC)
All of the programs listed above cater primarily to 20-26 years old students (and have 24-hour language pledges that are actually enforced), but both programs listed for Taiwan are non-residential and cater to all ages. If you want to gain high fluency in Chinese as fast as possible, investing time and money in these programs is the way to do so.
Please note that the Hanyu Enrichment Scholarships for 3 months to one year of study at Taiwan study centers is available through Taiwan’s Ministry of Education. The Chinese Scholarship Council also offers a language training grant, but it is for students with no previous background in the language.
Hi Miki, what’s your personal/professional experience with these programs?
Posted 12 Jun 2009 at 8:58 pm ¶“24-hour language pledges that are actually enforced”, that’s a good one.
Posted 16 Jun 2009 at 5:01 pm ¶About Mandaring Training Center in Taipei: does anyone know what kind of accent they teach in? Is it inevitable that you leave there with a Taiwan accent? S
Posted 31 Jan 2010 at 12:52 pm ¶Accent they teach in? It’s kind of like asking what accent Canadian teachers teaching in Canada will teach in. Teachers often teach in teacher accent, regardless of where they are from. And yes, the teacher accent in Taiwan is different from the teacher accent in China, just as the prestige or teacher accent will vary across the greater chinese world regardless of location. Don’t expect all the teachers teaching you Mandarin in Kunming or Guangzhou to sound like they are from Harbin either.
As for whether it’s inevitable that you’ll leave with a Taiwanese accent, I suppose that depends on a few things, like how much you’ve already studied, how firm your own personal accent is in place, and how able/willing you are to adopt the local accent.
You see Australians move to the united states and completely lose their accent, but then you see americans move to the UK and find that their speech patterns are only modified slightly.
Posted 01 Feb 2010 at 11:56 pm ¶@hsknotes: good to see you’re still out there!
@intaipei — hsknotes pretty much said it all, but just to expand needlessly: personally I wouldn’t “worry” much about acquiring a Taiwanese accent, which of course you will, to some extent. First of all, there’s nothing wrong with it. Second of all, there are really only two possible outcomes of the accent:
1) You have the ear and tongue of a savant, and your Taiwanese Mandarin is perfect, in which case everyone you meet on the mainland will think you grew up there and it will be an interesting conversation when you tell them you didn’t.
2) You’re like the rest of us and will have Zhonglish accent mixed in with some Taiwanese elements. Then everyone will focus on the former and probably not even realize you learned your Mandarin in Taiwan.
(hsknotes, weird side note: this Wordpress install has decided to no longer email me your comments. Very odd. It’s been going on for months and seems particular to only you. I subscribe to my own rss comments feed, so I see your comments there, but I get no email notification. If it ever starts rejecting your comments entirely, send me a note and I’ll try to reinstall something cuz I’m guessing there must be something corrupted.)
Posted 02 Feb 2010 at 7:38 am ¶Thanks for the info. I’ve also been informed that MTC (and other places) make an effort to have their teachers not teach in a heavy provincial accent. Certainly I have a heavy non-native speaker’s accent, but I want to avoid being more odd than I have to be. I mean, no one wants to learn English from someone with a southern accent or a heavy Brooklyn accent. That may be a cultural bias, but let’s face it: when you hear a Haitian speaking Brooklyn English, or a Korean speaking Boston English the effect is goofy. A non-native speaker is always forgiven for how they sound, but in movies too, when a non-native speaker says things in a southern way, it’s always played for laughs. I get enough laughs as it is.
Posted 02 Feb 2010 at 9:24 am ¶I think the accent thing is something I think should be a secondary concern. I think the pursuit of an imaginary standard in Chinese pronunciation is usually wrongheaded for people that are just starting to learn the language.
I guess I bought into it starting out, Chinese teachers drilling me on how 玩儿 is the only valid way to say it and crap like that. But… fluent Chinese with a Taiwanese accent (or an Anhui accent or a Shanghai accent or whatever) is not difficult to understand and won’t stand out in any major way. Will it? Maybe I’ve been in Vancouver too long, listening to a thousand versions of Chinese (with Standard Northern-accented Mandarin in the minority) and everyone being able to figure out what everyone else is saying.
Are you planning on being on TV or something?
I mean, you’ll catch a lot more shit for second language learner mistakes than for an accent. An accent, no matter how far from the standard, can pass, as long as it follows its own internal logic. If you turn every n into l, that’s superficially a crazy deviation from Standard Mandarin, but it won’t take more than a split second for a native speaker to figure out what’s going on and keep up with you. Even with something that extreme, they’ll be correcting you on a weird tone before they correct on nonstop n/l confusion. Right? Accent is the least of your worries, as I see it.
Posted 04 Feb 2010 at 7:15 pm ¶Re: DylanK. I think you’re basically right. However, I wouldn’t say so strongly that accent is the least concern when learning Chinese.
Posted 12 Feb 2010 at 5:54 am ¶It seems to me that one ought to study the accent of the place where they intend to spend the most time–if that place is NOT China, then accent really doesn’t matter much, as long as it’s not be too far deviant from the so-called standard pronunciation. For those who know where they will be spending time, targeting the local accent can reap social rewards, even in the initial stages when grammar and tones are a mess. Those with more experience can correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems to me that if you speak Mandarin with a Beijing-accent, Beijingers will take to you [even] more warmly. On the other hand, if you go to Taiwan or just someplace south with that accent, it may put some initial distance between you and the locals. After a year in mainland China, without a terribly strong 兒化 tendency, I still got many Taiwanese telling me, “你的北京話說得不錯。” (Your Beijinghua is pretty good.) A major problem? No, not compared to the many other possible things that can go wrong when trying to learn the language. But still significant, I think.
Having a non-local accent can work in your favor. For example, in the southern U.S., having a northern (or “flat”) accent is a benefit, particularly if southerners can tell by looking at you that you don’t have a European or African background. I wonder if the same can be said about a Beijing accent for foreigners in Taipei who look European.
Posted 13 Feb 2010 at 1:18 am ¶First there is a problem with what does “marginally fluent” actually mean? Does it mean she wants to be able to buy her groceries and talk about the weather? Next she mentions business reasons to move to Beijing, so she wants her Chinese to be at a rather fluent level so she can converse about business? These are vastly different schemes and require a different approach for they involve different vocabulary. With every job I have ever done in China I have had to acquire new vocabulary and the weather or buying groceries seldom came into play.
Posted 24 Feb 2010 at 7:03 pm ¶If you want to get to the business level:
First focus on learning as much as you can in the US also focus on the characters so later on you will find it easier to combine meanings and the often overlooked hidden meanings of things in chinese.
Then find a business programme that will give you a six month internship in a related business with mostly chinese, preferably you being the only one there non-chinese. It is going to be a tough 6 months and you will be exhausted, but your progress will be phenomenal.
Post a Comment