As I posted someplace else I am a bit concerned regarding this “never ending boom” in China (this year for the first time ever I actually heart similar pessemistic voices in China). And I am sceptical if business value is a sustainable motivation for learning this language.
Learning Chinese for a future career in business is not what motivated us to enroll our blond son in Mandarin school but I can tell you one cool side-effect that we didn’t expect: As a preschooler he worked hard to learn to count to 200 in English (all that vocab, think about it) but after three weeks of Mandarin he can count to 200. No wonder Asian kids are a year ahead of their American counterparts in math from the getgo!
Twenty five years ago people in the US were flocking to take Japenese language courses. The media sure hyped all the American companies and especially property being bought by Japenese interests. Japan was economically taking over the world. What’s the story now? Who would have guessed the Sony Walkman would be replaced by Apple’s iPod?
I try hard not to be too pessimistic, but boom times don’t go on forever.
Agreed that no boom goes on forever and China may fail to ultimately pose a threat to US economic dominance. I still think that China has a long ways to go before it peaks, though.
Even with the number of years Japan has been down, all is not lost for language studies. At my university, there still are about twice as many beginning Japanese language students than Chinese beginning students. However, at the third year level, there are about the same number in each. Compared with Chinese, German is about half as popular, but French is about the same. Spanish is the most popular. (Four year degrees are offered in each of these are offered here, so I think this is a fair comparison.)
(Chinese language students still out number Punjabi students by a factor of 8.)
To say the Sony Walkman has been replaced by the Apple Ipod is not seeing the big picture. Japanese is still considered a very valuable business language and Japanese electronics are still regarding as being the best in the world. The Japanese economy is still quite good and there are still tens of thousands of people per year from other countries including America who move there for the economic opportunity. It’s just not “hot” like it once was, it’s not the new thing. Largely that’s because suddenly the Japanese people themselves sort of turned a cold shoulder toward foreigners whereas the Chinese have opened up to the west and to a partnership with America. If you look at what’s going on politically with China the future looks VERY BRIGHT! Even in the future when learing Chinese becomes kind of like Japanese is now, not the new thing not as popular as it once was but will STILL a great way to open up many opportunities for yourself. However as Mr. Carroll pointed out the time China will peak and plateu is still a long way off…50 to 60 years away, in the near future the opportunity is only getting better and better!
“I don’t focus on grammar; from the first minute on, I make them [students] talk.” – Yao Zhang, founder of Quick Mandarin
Lately I’ve taken an interest in the teaching process. And since I’m not on the road for the riches, I can afford to check out the pavement, so to speak. One thing that’s obvious to me is that Yao Zhang, founder of Quick Mandarin, has tapped into the American psyche of wanting instant gratification. Everything has to be “Quick” so the name of his business is “Quick Mandarin” and the only thing he left out was, “Easy” but that’s already implied. (And perhaps “Quick and Easy Mandarin” has already been trademarked.) To make such a claim, he needs to market a method, and that is all taken care of by the quote, above.
To be sure, not focusing on grammar in the beginning makes it seem as if you’re making faster progress. Of course, skipping steps gives the appearance of a jump start. But later, after you’ve developed a vocabulary, you realize that you don’t really know the proper way to put a sentence together. It’s the same in English, where a foreigner can use perfectly choice words to the effect of sounding illiterate. One of the typical excuses given for the no-grammar approach is the tidbit about Mandarin not conjugating verbs. But if you don’t understand the Mandarin concept of tense, for example, or if you get the word order wrong in a sentence, and so on, you may express either nonsense or something quite unintended. This doesn’t become a problem until you attempt to freely communicate without relying on memorized dialogues. Ultimately, you spend more time trying to figure out the proper way to put a sentence together than it would have taken to learn the necessary grammatical principals in the first place.
Another typical smoke screen is to present the options in terms of all grammar or no grammar. What I like about ChinesePod is its attempt to balance vocabulary and usage with some essential grammar. And to be perfectly honest, John’s incredibly thorough, hit the nail on the head, answers to grammar questions also helps to provide the balance. Where I do find agreement with Yao Zhang is in his philosophy of making students communicate. Input without output requires little or no mental processing and hence is a relatively inefficient road to travel, mile for mile.
The above post by Delta reflect the consensus views of most of the language learners and teachers I have known. But they don’t conform to my own experiences and I don‘t agree with them.
Thousands of brilliant men have spent decades trying to develop translation programs. Their programs have combined ever more refined and subtle grammar rules with elaborate dictionary definitions. But their results are still mediocre and the translation programs still make lots of mistakes. A language learner who relies on consciously learned grammar rules combined with memorized word lists will surely do even less well than the computer programs.
In my lifetime I have known very many bright people who have seriously tried and failed to learn a foreign language. Typically they were poring over grammar rules, memorizing word lists, looking up words in dictionaries etc. Some would try to inflict their painfully constructed, badly pronounced sentences on native speakers, only to be replied to in English.
One of my early language learning gurus was Anthony Burgess. He was a brilliant man who spoke many languages and an expert in phonology. If I remember right, he suggested that a learner start with a sample collection of two thousand or so sentences in the target language with phonetic transcriptions and recordings. Memorize and practice the sentences and test them with native speakers. Don’t stop until you are convinced that you can’t improve them. This sounds like really practical advice to me. Learn another twenty thousand sentences or so, hopefully in context, and you are on your way to fluency. Having learned enough correctly formed sentences, your word order will be automatically right.
Anthony Burgess also suggested skipping language classes. He thought they were a waste of time.
“Input without output requires little or no mental processing”?! Really? When I was in high school, they would take and non-native English speaker and sit him in a classroom with no participation expected. After six months or so, the student would start to understand what was going on. I wake up to a radio alarm in the target language and I usually have the radio or TV tuned to a target language station while I am cooking my beans etc. Even though I am not consciously listening, I am convinced that it speeds my progress considerably. Words and phrases start to pop out, and meanings gradually become clearer.
I find however, that I do indeed progress faster if I echo words and phrases that I hear. I suppose that this is in a sense “output” . But when I am in the beginning and intermediate stages of learning a language, I find it much more productive to spend my learning time memorizing and repeating new and correct words and phrases rather than inventing possibly incorrect sentences and “outputting” them to an unsuspecting native speaker. Even worse is to try to have a conversation with a fellow language learner.
I suspect that this way of learning sounds strange and weird to many readers. But I can assure you that the results are good. When I studied Spanish, my second foreign language, I spent over a thousand hours memorizing sentences and doing oral drills with recordings with no work at all on grammar and I never once attempted free conversation. When I first attempted conversation with a native speaker, I was amazed myself how easy it was. All the memorization and drills had made the mechanics of pronunciation and grammar automatic and I was immediately fluent. The only problem was that my friend accused me of lying to her when I told her she was the first person I had spoken Spanish with. When I went to Mexico shortly after, I was immediately functional and fluent in a wide range of situations, and I even had several people tell me that I had no accent. (Though others told me I had a very slight accent) Of course I still lacked a lot of vocabulary and idioms, but these came very quickly and naturally.
I don’t expect that everyone will want to do things exactly my way. We are all different after all. So if you are happy with the progress you have been making, there is no reason to change your methods. But if you are a smart, hard-working person who can’t understand why you are getting such poor results following the conventional methods, perhaps you might give my way a try.
As I posted someplace else I am a bit concerned regarding this “never ending boom” in China (this year for the first time ever I actually heart similar pessemistic voices in China). And I am sceptical if business value is a sustainable motivation for learning this language.
But maybe I am just a chronic pessimist.
Learning Chinese for a future career in business is not what motivated us to enroll our blond son in Mandarin school but I can tell you one cool side-effect that we didn’t expect: As a preschooler he worked hard to learn to count to 200 in English (all that vocab, think about it) but after three weeks of Mandarin he can count to 200. No wonder Asian kids are a year ahead of their American counterparts in math from the getgo!
Twenty five years ago people in the US were flocking to take Japenese language courses. The media sure hyped all the American companies and especially property being bought by Japenese interests. Japan was economically taking over the world. What’s the story now? Who would have guessed the Sony Walkman would be replaced by Apple’s iPod?
I try hard not to be too pessimistic, but boom times don’t go on forever.
Agreed that no boom goes on forever and China may fail to ultimately pose a threat to US economic dominance. I still think that China has a long ways to go before it peaks, though.
Ken, Probably so.
Even with the number of years Japan has been down, all is not lost for language studies. At my university, there still are about twice as many beginning Japanese language students than Chinese beginning students. However, at the third year level, there are about the same number in each. Compared with Chinese, German is about half as popular, but French is about the same. Spanish is the most popular. (Four year degrees are offered in each of these are offered here, so I think this is a fair comparison.)
(Chinese language students still out number Punjabi students by a factor of 8.)
After seeing my posted message, I must return to my English grammar lessons. 不好意思
James,
Mandarin is growing but it’s coming from a long way from behind. Give it 50 years and we’ll see.
Ken Carroll
To say the Sony Walkman has been replaced by the Apple Ipod is not seeing the big picture. Japanese is still considered a very valuable business language and Japanese electronics are still regarding as being the best in the world. The Japanese economy is still quite good and there are still tens of thousands of people per year from other countries including America who move there for the economic opportunity. It’s just not “hot” like it once was, it’s not the new thing. Largely that’s because suddenly the Japanese people themselves sort of turned a cold shoulder toward foreigners whereas the Chinese have opened up to the west and to a partnership with America. If you look at what’s going on politically with China the future looks VERY BRIGHT! Even in the future when learing Chinese becomes kind of like Japanese is now, not the new thing not as popular as it once was but will STILL a great way to open up many opportunities for yourself. However as Mr. Carroll pointed out the time China will peak and plateu is still a long way off…50 to 60 years away, in the near future the opportunity is only getting better and better!
” If you look at what’s going on politically with China the future looks VERY BRIGHT!”
That’s a joke…right??
“I don’t focus on grammar; from the first minute on, I make them [students] talk.” – Yao Zhang, founder of Quick Mandarin
Lately I’ve taken an interest in the teaching process. And since I’m not on the road for the riches, I can afford to check out the pavement, so to speak. One thing that’s obvious to me is that Yao Zhang, founder of Quick Mandarin, has tapped into the American psyche of wanting instant gratification. Everything has to be “Quick” so the name of his business is “Quick Mandarin” and the only thing he left out was, “Easy” but that’s already implied. (And perhaps “Quick and Easy Mandarin” has already been trademarked.) To make such a claim, he needs to market a method, and that is all taken care of by the quote, above.
To be sure, not focusing on grammar in the beginning makes it seem as if you’re making faster progress. Of course, skipping steps gives the appearance of a jump start. But later, after you’ve developed a vocabulary, you realize that you don’t really know the proper way to put a sentence together. It’s the same in English, where a foreigner can use perfectly choice words to the effect of sounding illiterate. One of the typical excuses given for the no-grammar approach is the tidbit about Mandarin not conjugating verbs. But if you don’t understand the Mandarin concept of tense, for example, or if you get the word order wrong in a sentence, and so on, you may express either nonsense or something quite unintended. This doesn’t become a problem until you attempt to freely communicate without relying on memorized dialogues. Ultimately, you spend more time trying to figure out the proper way to put a sentence together than it would have taken to learn the necessary grammatical principals in the first place.
Another typical smoke screen is to present the options in terms of all grammar or no grammar. What I like about ChinesePod is its attempt to balance vocabulary and usage with some essential grammar. And to be perfectly honest, John’s incredibly thorough, hit the nail on the head, answers to grammar questions also helps to provide the balance. Where I do find agreement with Yao Zhang is in his philosophy of making students communicate. Input without output requires little or no mental processing and hence is a relatively inefficient road to travel, mile for mile.
The above post by Delta reflect the consensus views of most of the language learners and teachers I have known. But they don’t conform to my own experiences and I don‘t agree with them.
Thousands of brilliant men have spent decades trying to develop translation programs. Their programs have combined ever more refined and subtle grammar rules with elaborate dictionary definitions. But their results are still mediocre and the translation programs still make lots of mistakes. A language learner who relies on consciously learned grammar rules combined with memorized word lists will surely do even less well than the computer programs.
In my lifetime I have known very many bright people who have seriously tried and failed to learn a foreign language. Typically they were poring over grammar rules, memorizing word lists, looking up words in dictionaries etc. Some would try to inflict their painfully constructed, badly pronounced sentences on native speakers, only to be replied to in English.
One of my early language learning gurus was Anthony Burgess. He was a brilliant man who spoke many languages and an expert in phonology. If I remember right, he suggested that a learner start with a sample collection of two thousand or so sentences in the target language with phonetic transcriptions and recordings. Memorize and practice the sentences and test them with native speakers. Don’t stop until you are convinced that you can’t improve them. This sounds like really practical advice to me. Learn another twenty thousand sentences or so, hopefully in context, and you are on your way to fluency. Having learned enough correctly formed sentences, your word order will be automatically right.
Anthony Burgess also suggested skipping language classes. He thought they were a waste of time.
“Input without output requires little or no mental processing”?! Really? When I was in high school, they would take and non-native English speaker and sit him in a classroom with no participation expected. After six months or so, the student would start to understand what was going on. I wake up to a radio alarm in the target language and I usually have the radio or TV tuned to a target language station while I am cooking my beans etc. Even though I am not consciously listening, I am convinced that it speeds my progress considerably. Words and phrases start to pop out, and meanings gradually become clearer.
I find however, that I do indeed progress faster if I echo words and phrases that I hear. I suppose that this is in a sense “output” . But when I am in the beginning and intermediate stages of learning a language, I find it much more productive to spend my learning time memorizing and repeating new and correct words and phrases rather than inventing possibly incorrect sentences and “outputting” them to an unsuspecting native speaker. Even worse is to try to have a conversation with a fellow language learner.
I suspect that this way of learning sounds strange and weird to many readers. But I can assure you that the results are good. When I studied Spanish, my second foreign language, I spent over a thousand hours memorizing sentences and doing oral drills with recordings with no work at all on grammar and I never once attempted free conversation. When I first attempted conversation with a native speaker, I was amazed myself how easy it was. All the memorization and drills had made the mechanics of pronunciation and grammar automatic and I was immediately fluent. The only problem was that my friend accused me of lying to her when I told her she was the first person I had spoken Spanish with. When I went to Mexico shortly after, I was immediately functional and fluent in a wide range of situations, and I even had several people tell me that I had no accent. (Though others told me I had a very slight accent) Of course I still lacked a lot of vocabulary and idioms, but these came very quickly and naturally.
I don’t expect that everyone will want to do things exactly my way. We are all different after all. So if you are happy with the progress you have been making, there is no reason to change your methods. But if you are a smart, hard-working person who can’t understand why you are getting such poor results following the conventional methods, perhaps you might give my way a try.