Studying Chinese in US schools vs. in Chinese schools (in Beijing). My thoughts.

[xiexieniii]

For those of you native-English speakers who have both studied Chinese in the US and studied in China, what do you think of your experiences?

Personally, I am very disappointed with the teaching I have received here in Beijing. Do NOT waste your time and money by enrolling in a local school. If you do want to study in China, go with a course that is coordinated by an American university. You will pay more money but if you really want efficient teaching, this is the only way to go.

I have discovered that local schools here are fond of giving you teachers who can barely speak English. Some newbie Western students who don't know any better might think this is okay, because you are "being exposed" to the language -- but THIS IS FREAKING NOT OKAY. That's like saying, "I'll teach you Calculus (微积分) but I will only use German when I explain the problem -- if you don't fully understand how to do the problem, don't worry, you will still get 'exposure' to Calculus."

When you are learning a new language, you MUST have someone explain to you, IN ENGLISH, the correct way to make a sentence. You cannot simply give someone a list of 30 new Chinese words and say, "make sentence!" But this is basically all they have done in the school I am in. I do not think this is a only problem with my particular school -- I think it's like this in schools all over Beijing.

Originally I believed that by coming to Beijing, I would receive similar language instruction for a fraction of the cost of US schools, with the added bonus that I will be forced to use the language on a daily basis in Beijing.

However, after four weeks of receiving daily instructions of "read dialogue! make sentence!" it turns out that I never should have left the States. I may not have been using Chinese every day there, but at least American-trained teachers were able to explain to me that "到" (dào) has two different meanings -- sometimes it is a verb, meaning "to arrive", and sometimes it is a preposition, meaning "to (somewhere)". The teachers here in Beijing did not describe this to the class -- and if they did, the explanation was 100% in Chinese, so basically they explained NOTHING.

(And, by the way, after 4 weeks in Beijing, I only learned YESTERDAY that "到" was both a verb and a preposition. This is because I referred to a Columbia University textbook that I just received in the mail]...)

Edited July 4, 2009 at 01:45 PM by imron
language

[Meng Lelan]

You cannot simply give someone a list of 30 new Chinese words and say, "make sentence!"

Laughing my #$%* head off, that's exactly what I did for three months at Nankai University in Tianjin something like a decade or two ago.

[roddy]

Please tell me you're not dismissing every school in Beijing on the basis of four weeks at one? You're also welcome to name the school.

I think the L2-only methodology is the best way to go, if you have a teacher able to use it. You really need to be able to break stuff down to the simplest of components, otherwise you will just lose people, and that's not easily done.

[xiexieniii]

It's not just the school -- it's everywhere. When I hired a private tutor, he could tell me that a sentence was incorrect but he could not explain to me WHY it was incorrect. "Just say it like this. Don't say it like this."

The school is CLE (Chinese Language Education) in Guomao. Like I said, I don't think it's a bad school -- their upper-level classes seem to be doing fine. However their frequent use of non English-speaking teachers to teach beginner-level students is an awful practice.

What is the L-2 methodology?

[Meng Lelan]

I think the L2-only methodology is the best way to go, if you have a teacher able to use it.

I think that L2-only is appropriate for intermediate and above - something like after two or three semesters of Chinese study - but not appropriate for complete beginner level.

[roddy]

There are any number of schools where teachers will speak English to you - often too much. I maintain you've dismissed Beijing a little too hastily.

By L2 methodology I was refering to the exclusive use of the target language - here Chinese - in the classroom, with no explanations in the students' native language. There's probably a better term.

[xiexieniii]

I think that L2-only is appropriate for intermediate and above - something like after two or three semesters of Chinese study - but not appropriate for complete beginner level.

I also agree with this statement. It's okay to use Chinese to explain things at the beginner level too, ONLY IF you can then quickly switch to English when the student shows that he or she does not understand. I do NOT want to spend 30 minutes of trying to decipher "verb" in Chinese when the instructor simply could have just said "verb".

[yonglin]

I am not a native English speaker, so perhaps I don't have the privilege of contributing to this discussion.

I have had terrible Chinese teachers in China and in the "West". I have also had great Chinese teachers in China and in the "West". (I haven't studied Chinese in the US, but at universities in England and in Canada.) For me, however, the better ones have spoken very little English during classes (or at all), both in China and elsewhere.

I am also a bit curious about your background. From the description of your expereinces in Beijing, it sounds to me like you are a beginner. Yet, you have the experience to compare the instruction you received in Beijing with that which you received in the US?

[HarryCallahan]

I attended a popular private school in Beijing (hint, the most popular) and found it to be lacking for similar reasons. I wasn't a complete beginner thanks to Pimsleur, which I completed up to intermediate, but it was still tough going. Probably worse than the classes was the administration who were responsible for a few headaches. Sometimes you feel like you're attending "Chinese for people who can speak Chinese", if the problem with that isn't obvious god help them. Terrible advice on what courses are on offer, where they lead, what's learnt. Absorbing Hanzi for the first time made it a steep learning curve first up.

They claim to offer a language neutral approach - that allows them to capture a larger audience in one class, but isn't conducive to language learning at the beginner levels. (Despite being language neutral they still do end up speaking English a lot in the classes - the international language.)

Also I've found Chinese produced learning resources to be full of Chinglish and other errors, one or two word definitions for new words lacking necessary explanation. I've only recently learnt that 对 can be used to indicate spoken direction. Mind you that school, for whatever reason, isn't offering New Chinese Reader, which seems to be the king at the moment (is it English only?) and I do have the first one of those and it does seem better than the others.

Though after nearly 6 months I did take in a lot and do feel equipped to go it alone in perhaps even better style than which the classes offer.

[katyjo]

Learning Chinese is so challenging I almost think it is just about impossible for an adult foreigner to truly learn it well. I think one must be at minimum, conversant and have a good grasp of the characters before they go to Asia. In opinion, being "advanced" in America is "elementary" in China or Taiwan. Look at a few Chinese Children books with no English. Perhaps it would be better to go site seeing with a bilingual companion. I'd rather do that than sit in class.

[HarryCallahan]

Agree with above. Advanced Pimsleurs isn't even close to what the elementary courses end up covering.

[xiexieniii]

I am not familiar with Advanced Pimsleurs.

Anyway, I did take one semester (3 months, 1 hour per day) worth of Chinese at Columbia University two years ago. Because I took two years off from college and now need to resume my studies, I figured that if I lived in Beijing for the summer I could both refresh my memory and learn Chinese at a faster pace than Columbia's scheduled program.

Boy was I wrong! After checking in with the professor, I discovered that I've been going at a SLOWER pace than their summer program, even though I had more exposure with local teachers (6 hours of class time per day vs 3 hours of class per day at Columbia).

[hidden12345]

I have discovered that local schools here are fond of giving you teachers who can barely speak English. Some newbie Western students who don't know any better might think this is okay, because you are "being exposed" to the language -- but THIS IS FREAKING NOT OKAY. That's like saying, "I'll teach you Calculus (微积分) but I will only use German when I explain the problem -- if you don't fully understand how to do the problem, don't worry, you will still get 'exposure' to Calculus."

This is a horrible analogy. Calculus is an analytical system used to describe motion in space. Chinese as a communicative tool is a filter in which the world is both viewed and described to others.

All that liberal arts training at Columbia and you still can't drop your own cultural assumptions about how to approach different systems of thought? When you learn Chinese, you learn Chinese culture. The two are inextricable. Chinese are very conclusory and idiomatic. Confucianism is basically one big appeal to tradition ("that‘s how our ancestors did it, so that's how we do it"). Your western mind wants to know WHY but there is no WHY to a lot of Chinese. Chinese is a language built on pure memorization and accumulation of handed-down interlocutory devices. You want to learn it? Stop asking why and start memorizing. The natural flow of grammar and the chinese 思维方式 will come to you by...you guessed it, exposure.

Or just go learn Spanish or something.

[margit]

I think there are several issues being confused here - I have not been to China, but have learned many languages, and know quite a few Chinese, including some I am learning Mandarin from, so I feel experienced to comment on some points.

Immersion (what someone called L2) works well but the teachers need to know what difficulties students can have, and how to explain in easy target language with hands, drawings and props if necessary. I have been instructed as a beginner in Chinese (at Concordia Language Villages, MN - superb!), and it can be done. German Goethe Institutes, Hebrew Ulpanim have >30 years experience with instruction in the target language out of necessity - it is a wrong generalization that explanations have to be in the mother tongue of the students. But: it has to be done by competent teachers.

The other issue is the cultural one - because Chinese had to learn Chinese characters the hard way, by rote memorisation, and were drilled as kids, some feel that is the only way to learn it. We as adults have other tools, and the idea that the best way to learn a language as an adult is by drill and repeat, like a child, is wrong. There are great debates on several Websites whether or not learning Chinese characters using English mnemotic helps or is wrong - but this is an open debate with many different opinions.

Nevertheless, I am glad I didn't do what the poster did - maybe as usual, one has to do one's homework to find the right school and situation.

[Meng Lelan]

Your western mind wants to know WHY but there is no WHY to a lot of Chinese.

Let me tell you something. There is a WHY to a lot of Chinese. Why do we write 人 like we do? Because it used to be drawn like a walking person. Why do we put a 吗 for a question? Because it's signal that someone's asking you a question, it's telling you to listen up. Why isn't 冷清 the same as 清净? Well, 冷清 doesn't feel right, it feels cold and lonely kind of quiet, like being on the moon all by yourself. 清净 is nice and quiet, like when you finally can get away from teaching a class of mentally insane deaf students like I do. Etc etc etc I could go on and on and on but I need to go out now for my daily run in 100 F plus heat.

Anyway in sum total, there's a rhyme and reason to everything in Chinese, and the original poster wants to know things like this.

[xiexieniii]

First of all, what I mean by "WHY" is (using the previous example): can you please explain to me why this sentence '我给你做饭' means 'I will make food for you' and not 'I will give you food that is made'? If you cannot explain this simple grammar point, in English, that sometimes '给' is a verb, meaning 'to give', but when it is not used as a pure verb it becomes a preposition, meaning 'for (somebody)', and that "做饭" is a verb meaning "to make food", then I am wasting my time and money in your stupid class!! It's not a "Western" thing. If a teacher cannot teach, the fault is on the teacher, NOT the student!! Are you telling me that such an important grammar point, that "给 is sometimes a verb and sometimes a preposition" -- are you telling me you don't NEED a teacher to tell you this and all you have to do is memorize the sentence???

Exposure is obviously helpful good but you need a TEACHER to show you which grammar structure conveys which meanings. If you think "exposure" is so great, how do you explain why immigrants who have lived and done business in the US and Europe for many years...often still do not speak fluent English? Sure, they can get by with the English skills they have...they are understandable, but they are not accurate, and if they had to write an essay it would be loaded with grammar mistakes. If you want to virtually speak a foreign language, not having a teacher is fine -- but I do not just want to virtually speak the language, I want to be ACCURATE and fluent.

Even with Spanish, you need a teacher. You cannot just have someone tell you, "gato means cat, mirar means to see, ayer means yesterday...now go make a sentence and try to say "Yesterday, I saw a cat!!"

Do you get my point here? If you have a bad teacher or no teacher at all, you will never gain fluency.

Edited July 4, 2009 at 01:15 AM by xiexieniii

[xiexieniii]

All that liberal arts training at Columbia and you still can't drop your own cultural assumptions about how to approach different systems of thought?

Um, are you saying that I should drop my assumptions about wanting to have a good language teacher?

I am quite familiar with the whole rote memory thing -- who isn't? It's not just Chinese students who learn by rote memory. But in addition to your own rote memory homework you need a good teacher.

[roddy]

Immersion (what someone called L2) works well but the teachers need to know what difficulties students can have, and how to explain in easy target language with hands, drawings and props if necessary. .. . . . it is a wrong generalization that explanations have to be in the mother tongue of the students. But: it has to be done by competent teachers.

Completely agree with this. However you need students willing to work with you - an 'I'm not going to understand it if it ain't in English' attitude is a killer - and crucially, you need to be competent.

[abcdefg]

When you are learning a new language, you MUST have someone explain to you, IN ENGLISH, the correct way to make a sentence.

Incorrect basic premise. And it seems to me like now you are globally pissed off. It's everyone else's fault: your teacher, your school, Beijing, China. And God really screwed up by placing you here in this difficult situation. If you are to salvage anything at all from this summer, it will require a different attitude and mindset.

Assume, just for the hell of it, that maybe the teachers are right. Try it on for size and be willing to adapt to a new technique that you originally found worthless. It might result in a (gradual) revelation. Seems to me you have little to lose.

[isela]

@xiexieniii: I feel bad for your frustration. I think it's very understandable, that you have great commitment and high expectations about yourself, yet feel like trapped by the poorly organized teaching system. I had similar experienced learning other stuff, too. In fact, I think everybody makes mistakes and takes inefficient approaches at times in achieving their study goals. Do allow yourself more time. And maybe give your school another chance? The materials may appear easier as you accumulate more knowledge. Just stay committed, and be a bit more patient.

Also, I don't see any real conflicts between the ideas being made here. We all agree that we need a well-acquainted and explicit Chinese teacher right? Why are we all so angry?

Edited July 4, 2009 at 03:27 PM by isela