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A few weeks ago, Hugh Grigg, over at East Asian Student (a super awesome blog)wrote an article titled "Why I decided to study Chinese." It was great to hear his own personal story,and I thought I would share my own about getting started down the path of studying Chinese.
Flashback to 2006. A friend and I have just dismantled our personal company. After spend four years in the automotive industry building drag cars and doing custom engine fabrication for local and national customers, our business is failing to live up to our expectations. Working 80 hours a week at three jobs is taking a toll its toll on us both, and while learning a great deal in the process, we've both come to realization that building and fixing cars is a lifelong hobby, it isn't our ultimate end goal. We both decide that going back to college is a good idea. After traveling to Indonesia in 2004, I've got a taste for all things new and international, and I'm eager to begin my studies. I end up enrolling in the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee for the Fall 2006 semester.
Although I didn't know it at the time, my path toward Chinese can be boiled down to one fateful evening at a local diner with close friends. Although we would meet there ever week to catch up while sipping coffee late into the night, this particular evening was different. We were joined by a few other people who happened to be a mix of linguistics majors, with a focus, respectively, on either Chinese or Japanese. Their individual passions for these languages is fierce, and a small debate breaks out about which language is "better" to learn.
Personally I've had a strong passion for studying Japanese since I first read Shogun in high school, and I'd even started to teach myself some Japanese while I was running my company, since a large portion of our business involved importing rare Japanese tuning products to the United States for customers who were willing to to pay, and wait three months for the products to arrive stateside. With that being said, I was certainly intrigued by Chinese, and my friend was making a strong argument about the economic incentive attached to learning the language... in short, China's economy was going to overtake Japan in the next few years (which it did).
Coming home later that evening I was giddy with the idea of studying a foreign language. I had picked up quite a bit of Indonesian during my month of travel, which broke my "I can't learn a language spell," that was cast on me by my high school German teacher. I thought, what the heck, and decided to add a language class to my first semester. At that point I tossed economic incentive out the window and decided to choose Japanese, a language (and culture) I had been interested in learning about for years. However, when I went to pick Japanese 101 from the foreign language enrollment page I was met with a dilemma, Japanese 101 was completely full up.
Having skipped my college orientation (80 hour work weeks keep ya busy), I had no idea that I could've just walked into class the first day and asked one of the teachers to sign a class add sheet. Rather, I chose the next best option-- Chinese. I must have been destined to learn Chinese all along, because when I went to pick Chinese I was delighted to find that there was one seat left in the class, and it was all mine! I figured if I didn't like Chinese I could always switch to Japanese during my second year at school.
A few weeks later I was slacking off at work, reading a New York Times article about learning languages via podcast (a relatively new phenomenon at the time) and they were highlighting Chinese, and one company in particular-- ChinesePod. My full-time job was data entry, giving me the luxury of listening to whatever I wanted while I worked, so I decided to give ChinesePod a shot, and signed up for their 7 day free trial.
That summer before college I poured over the material, mimicking their short dialogues and paying close attention to tones. I had been a musician in high school, playing guitar, trumpet and African hand drums, and perhaps that helped me to feel the difference in tones quicker, cause I started practicing them from day one. That whole summer I worked on the basics of Chinese, learning how to ask simple questions and introduce myself. I didn't fly through the lessons, but I put a lot of effort on the material I was studying, and the things I studied I knew well.
When I arrived to my Chinese class on the first day, I was ready to put what I'd learned to the test. It was my first real world interaction in Chinese. We were going around the room, with students giving their name, year in school and major. When it was my turn to speak I went for broke: "大家好，我叫Jake, 我是一年級的學生, 我的Major是Linguistics." My teacher was impressed and actually praised my "good pronunciation" and tones. I would find out later that both of these things would still need lots of work, but it didn't matter, from that instant I was hooked.
My teacher gave me something that day I had never received when studying German for four years in high school... praise and encouragement. From that moment onward Chinese classes were the highlight of my week. I worked hard the entire semester, and my efforts were rewarded when I took fourth place among first year college students during our state wide Chinese speech contest.
The rest then, I suppose, is history. I moved to Taiwan during my second year of Chinese study and pushed myself to the limit. One year later I worked at a summer camp teaching Chinese, and then packed my bags to spend half a year in Beijing, figuring I should learn a little something about the mainland as well. During my forth year of Chinese study I picked up a job teacher Chinese to Taiwanese-American kids at a weekend school, and made the decision to become a teacher shortly there after, while attending a four day, all expenses paid, Chinese Teacher's Conference in Beijing.
Now here I am, in Taiwan, earning a Master's degree in Teaching Chinese as a Second Language. After five years of studying Chinese I'm really starting get the hang of it, but there is still so much more to learn. As a teacher, however, I learned the most important lesson there is from my first Chinese class in 2006... give your students the praise and encouragement they want and need, and you will create a life long language student.
Got your own story to tell? Feel free to leave it in the comments below.
Thursday, April 5, 2012
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
Why the heck are there Simplified characters in Taiwan?
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Pick Simplified or Traditional....that's the choice many of us face when we start studying Chinese. When I first began the language journey in 2006 those were my options, and they were clear cut. I was suppose to pick a text book and focus all my efforts on one or the other. But as someone who had their heart set on studying abroad during college, this also meant that I was making an even bigger choice: Mainland China or Taiwan, I decided to say screw the system, and choose both... but more on that another day.
This is the way that many of us look at the world of Chinese characters, especially as a student of Mandarin Chinese. Teachers don't generally talk about Hong Kong, or talk about what might be useful if you're living near a strong overseas Chinese community. The options we have, from the very beginning, feel political.
Anyone who pretends the argument isn't about politics is fooling themselves. Putting that aside however, language learners still tend to focus on studying one form or the other until the inevitable day arrives when you stumble upon a website, a Facebook message, a Tweet, or even a book that uses the other character system.
For those readers who have spent time in Mainland China, you'll know that you are bound to run into Traditional Chinese characters from time to time. Places like restaurants, temples and museums are notorious for having the Traditional versions of some characters, and while guessing the meaning (of a character you might already know in the Simplified form) can be somewhat of a challenge, you eventually get used to it. However, things are little different here in Taiwan, because everything is already in Traditional characters, or at least we like to think so. But then you start to notice some little inconsistencies on the streets, Simplified characters are here too if you look hard enough. The first time I noticed it was at Taipei Main Train Station, where the Simplified "台"(Tái) took the place of the Traditional "臺" in the Chinese for 台北(Táiběi).
As time went on I began to notice a few other similar instances of Simplified characters being used. Two of the most prominent examples are found on Taiwan Mobile's street signs, and on the cans and bottles of Taiwan Beer, where the Simplified "湾"(wān) is used instead of the Traditional "灣" (pictured below).
Initially, a lot of people didn't really take notice of the change, but once they did, questions were raised about the meaning behind the switch. In one Yahoo News Article a Taiwanese citizen said: 「改繁體字會比較好，又不是大陸，我們是台灣人。」(Translation: Changing it (back) to the Traditional characters would be better. We're not Mainland China, we are Taiwanese). In the same article, a representative from the Taiwan Alcohol and Tobacco Company responded to the question of character simplification by stating:
These characters are actually referred to as 簡化字 (jiǎnhuàzì) in Chinese, but are often translated into English just as Simplified characters, where as perhaps something like abbreviated characters might better capture the meaning. Some other such characters that are in common usage today in Mainland China include (but are not limited to):
So, next time you come across a Simplified character here in Taiwan, I hope your first thought is historical, rather than political, cause many of these Characters have been around a lot longer than people who have been arguing about whether they should be studying Simplified or Traditional.
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| Taipei Main Station uses the Simplified (台) instead of (臺) |
This is the way that many of us look at the world of Chinese characters, especially as a student of Mandarin Chinese. Teachers don't generally talk about Hong Kong, or talk about what might be useful if you're living near a strong overseas Chinese community. The options we have, from the very beginning, feel political.
Anyone who pretends the argument isn't about politics is fooling themselves. Putting that aside however, language learners still tend to focus on studying one form or the other until the inevitable day arrives when you stumble upon a website, a Facebook message, a Tweet, or even a book that uses the other character system.
For those readers who have spent time in Mainland China, you'll know that you are bound to run into Traditional Chinese characters from time to time. Places like restaurants, temples and museums are notorious for having the Traditional versions of some characters, and while guessing the meaning (of a character you might already know in the Simplified form) can be somewhat of a challenge, you eventually get used to it. However, things are little different here in Taiwan, because everything is already in Traditional characters, or at least we like to think so. But then you start to notice some little inconsistencies on the streets, Simplified characters are here too if you look hard enough. The first time I noticed it was at Taipei Main Train Station, where the Simplified "台"(Tái) took the place of the Traditional "臺" in the Chinese for 台北(Táiběi).
As time went on I began to notice a few other similar instances of Simplified characters being used. Two of the most prominent examples are found on Taiwan Mobile's street signs, and on the cans and bottles of Taiwan Beer, where the Simplified "湾"(wān) is used instead of the Traditional "灣" (pictured below).
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| Showed using the Simplified （湾）instead of the Traditional （灣). |
「我們不視為它是簡體字，就像很多商標同樣一個字，它會畫龍點睛會彎繞，它的位置就是讓它跟一般的字有區別，讓它視覺效果好一點。」
"(rough translation)We don't consider it to be a Simplified character, its more like those other company trademarks (logos). It is meant to bring the bottle to life, it curls and winds. Its design is to make the character stand out from the others, and give it a more visual sense."While the answer sounds like the perfect marketing response when put under pressure, I would like to posit that there is nothing wrong with using these Simplified characters in the first place, because they aren't political, they're just simplified. The character 湾 much like 台 has actually been in use since the Song and Yuan Dynasties, and are part of a Simplified character group known as the 宋元以來俗字, a group of nonstandard characters, or a demotic writing system used by the common people of the time. A book entitled 《宋元以來俗字譜》，or "A Glossary of Popular Chinese Characters Since Song and Yuan Dynasties" actual researched and outlined 6,240 of these kinds of characters and published the results in 1930 (more info can be found here).
These characters are actually referred to as 簡化字 (jiǎnhuàzì) in Chinese, but are often translated into English just as Simplified characters, where as perhaps something like abbreviated characters might better capture the meaning. Some other such characters that are in common usage today in Mainland China include (but are not limited to):
实、宝、礼、声、 会、怜、怀、搀、罗、听、万、庄、梦、阳、虽、医、 凤、义、乱、皱、台、办、战、归、党、辞、断While over 330 of these abbreviated characters have been worked into the system we know call "Simplified Chinese," which is used by the UN and the People's Republic of China, it is clear that their origin goes well beyond this past half-century. Furthermore, many people, even here in Taiwan, use many of these abbreviated characters when taking pen to paper. In that way then, what better choice is there than to use the "common mans" character on something as common and everyday as beer or a cellphone?
So, next time you come across a Simplified character here in Taiwan, I hope your first thought is historical, rather than political, cause many of these Characters have been around a lot longer than people who have been arguing about whether they should be studying Simplified or Traditional.
Monday, March 12, 2012
Putting it all in one place: Integrated Chinese comes to the iPad
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Today I got an email from Cheng & Tsui, one of the largest Chinese textbook producers in the US. They are announcing that their Integrated Chinese book series will be available on the iPad with its very own iBook edition. According to the email:
While this is certainly good news for the tech generation, it also makes me wonder what these iPad wielding language students will be missing. In the hay-day of my Chinese language study I would cover my textbooks in notes; highlighting key phrases, underlining grammar patterns and pouring over the little details.
When I didn't understand a word or a grammatical phrase, I would have to go through the process of looking it up in my dictionary or in a previous textbook. As annoying as it would be at times, there was something to be gained through re-retrieving information. A quick glance at old vocab would show a sample sentence that my teacher had given, or a radical/ character component breakdown I did during the wee hours of the night.
No matter how many times I open those books, or how long I sit on my bookshelf, those notes will always be there waiting patiently for my gazing eyes. Can the same be said about an iPad textbook? How many updates, software hardware or otherwise, before the digital footprint of what you have studied is erased?
"The digital version will "take advantage of the iBook's capabilities. Students experience text, language notes, glossary, and audio in an exciting interactive environment. Plus you can customize flashcards, grammar indexes, and more on your iPad."The app, or the book rather, will be available May 2012. Those viewing this on an iPad can download a sample here.
While this is certainly good news for the tech generation, it also makes me wonder what these iPad wielding language students will be missing. In the hay-day of my Chinese language study I would cover my textbooks in notes; highlighting key phrases, underlining grammar patterns and pouring over the little details.
When I didn't understand a word or a grammatical phrase, I would have to go through the process of looking it up in my dictionary or in a previous textbook. As annoying as it would be at times, there was something to be gained through re-retrieving information. A quick glance at old vocab would show a sample sentence that my teacher had given, or a radical/ character component breakdown I did during the wee hours of the night.
No matter how many times I open those books, or how long I sit on my bookshelf, those notes will always be there waiting patiently for my gazing eyes. Can the same be said about an iPad textbook? How many updates, software hardware or otherwise, before the digital footprint of what you have studied is erased?
Friday, March 2, 2012
Teaching in Taiwan Part 1: The Past Five Months
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I had originally intended to spend some time talking about my impression of using 漫畫 as a teaching material for my student, but I thought that instead I would use this post to catch up on what has been going on for the past five months of teaching. Instead, the post on 漫畫 will be a follow up.
For the past five months I've been spending four hours a week teaching Chinese to a fellow American living here. We first started our classes working on improving tones and pronunciation (at their request). With that as the focus, we spent a lot of the first few months reading from a book, and paying close attention to how sentences (and tones) flow in a Chinese. Because my student wanted to be better understood when speaking with locals I was a ruthless teacher (sort of a tone Nazi), pointing out every mistake that they made, and often making them start back from the beginning of the sentence over and over again.
This type of teaching method is something I would never do in a traditional classroom, but this was 發音課, so the rules were different. After the first month I started to see huge improvements in my student, and a sort of self-awareness in where their mistakes often occur. I chose this type of teaching method because my student is a working professional who doesn't have time to taking more traditional style classes here in Taiwan. When they interact with locals, the biggest issue is lack of feedback and error correction (on many levels).
Once we started to see improvement in pronunciation, we both felt it was time to move on to a less formal (and less strict) teaching style. We have spent much of the last few months simply having conversation class. For two hours I play the role the listener, my only request to my student has been that, no matter what, they never speak English during those two hour session. My main goal was to get my student thinking in Chinese, and using the vocabulary they already knew to talk around subjects (or objects) that they didn't think they could say in Chinese.
My role as listener is twofold. If my student was able to talk around a word that they could not express, I would provide them the word, also writing it in their study notebook. My other goal is to fix any mistakes that would cause confusion or misunderstanding among native speakers. Because I am also a native speaker of English, I can easily understand what they are saying (when mistakes happen), and therefore I can correct them. Every time a grammar mistake (or pronunciation mistake) occurs, rather than fix it immediately, I write it in the study notebook. Once my student finishes their thought, I can take the time to explain the mistake and how the sentence should be said, also only using Chinese. Since the mistake (and correction) are also in the notebook, it is a reference point for my student to look back on (and hopefully) fix before our next meeting.
We have used this teaching/ learning style for quite some time now (about three months) but I have started to notice a small problem, while my students sense of Chinese grammar is getting better, the rate at which they are acquiring new vocabulary is much less than a student using a traditional textbook. For a while I didn't know how to approach this dilemma. I didn't want to go back to using a traditional textbook, since the material is too far removed from my students needs in the real world, but I also didn't want to spend the whole class talking to my student, and having them stop me every time I said a word they didn't understand.
We recently found a pretty good solution, that has also made our class time a lot more fun... and we have once again restructured our classes to include a wider range of materials, situations, and teaching styles. Now, instead of simply sitting in a coffee shop for four hours a week, or lessons have begun rotating between a few activities:
We just might have found the primer for taking my students Chinese to the next level!
For the past five months I've been spending four hours a week teaching Chinese to a fellow American living here. We first started our classes working on improving tones and pronunciation (at their request). With that as the focus, we spent a lot of the first few months reading from a book, and paying close attention to how sentences (and tones) flow in a Chinese. Because my student wanted to be better understood when speaking with locals I was a ruthless teacher (sort of a tone Nazi), pointing out every mistake that they made, and often making them start back from the beginning of the sentence over and over again.
This type of teaching method is something I would never do in a traditional classroom, but this was 發音課, so the rules were different. After the first month I started to see huge improvements in my student, and a sort of self-awareness in where their mistakes often occur. I chose this type of teaching method because my student is a working professional who doesn't have time to taking more traditional style classes here in Taiwan. When they interact with locals, the biggest issue is lack of feedback and error correction (on many levels).
Once we started to see improvement in pronunciation, we both felt it was time to move on to a less formal (and less strict) teaching style. We have spent much of the last few months simply having conversation class. For two hours I play the role the listener, my only request to my student has been that, no matter what, they never speak English during those two hour session. My main goal was to get my student thinking in Chinese, and using the vocabulary they already knew to talk around subjects (or objects) that they didn't think they could say in Chinese.
My role as listener is twofold. If my student was able to talk around a word that they could not express, I would provide them the word, also writing it in their study notebook. My other goal is to fix any mistakes that would cause confusion or misunderstanding among native speakers. Because I am also a native speaker of English, I can easily understand what they are saying (when mistakes happen), and therefore I can correct them. Every time a grammar mistake (or pronunciation mistake) occurs, rather than fix it immediately, I write it in the study notebook. Once my student finishes their thought, I can take the time to explain the mistake and how the sentence should be said, also only using Chinese. Since the mistake (and correction) are also in the notebook, it is a reference point for my student to look back on (and hopefully) fix before our next meeting.
We have used this teaching/ learning style for quite some time now (about three months) but I have started to notice a small problem, while my students sense of Chinese grammar is getting better, the rate at which they are acquiring new vocabulary is much less than a student using a traditional textbook. For a while I didn't know how to approach this dilemma. I didn't want to go back to using a traditional textbook, since the material is too far removed from my students needs in the real world, but I also didn't want to spend the whole class talking to my student, and having them stop me every time I said a word they didn't understand.
We recently found a pretty good solution, that has also made our class time a lot more fun... and we have once again restructured our classes to include a wider range of materials, situations, and teaching styles. Now, instead of simply sitting in a coffee shop for four hours a week, or lessons have begun rotating between a few activities:
- Exploring Taipei and the surrounding areas (going anywhere my student wants to take me)
- Using 漫畫 as teaching materials and as a way of studying new vocabulary and grammatical phrases
- Playing an MMORPG in a Internet Cafe with other Taiwanese gamers.
We just might have found the primer for taking my students Chinese to the next level!
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
Slang: Don't release my dove!
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No matter what language your speaking, being stood up is never fun. But at least the Chinese slang for being stood up is easy to remember. For one reason or another "release my dove" or 放我鴿子／放我鸽子 (fàng wǒ gē zi) has taken on this meaning.
Here in Taiwan, I often hear the phrase 别放我鴿子 used as a joking phrase used among friends who are going to meet up later. However, if someone actually does stand you up it can be used as well.
Regardless of the origin this slang certainly beats saying 爽約/爽约 (shuǎng yuē ) the more literary term of breaking an appointment.
Some members of the Baidu also say the term describes someone who simply doesn't respect promises, but I still reckon that 90% of the time I've seen or heard it used among friends, in the media, or in books, it is talking about someone skipping out on a meeting/ date.
Next time you're making a date with a friend, be sure to remind them not to release your dove!
No matter what language your speaking, being stood up is never fun. But at least the Chinese slang for being stood up is easy to remember. For one reason or another "release my dove" or 放我鴿子／放我鸽子 (fàng wǒ gē zi) has taken on this meaning.
Here in Taiwan, I often hear the phrase 别放我鴿子 used as a joking phrase used among friends who are going to meet up later. However, if someone actually does stand you up it can be used as well.
Regardless of the origin this slang certainly beats saying 爽約/爽约 (shuǎng yuē ) the more literary term of breaking an appointment.
Some members of the Baidu also say the term describes someone who simply doesn't respect promises, but I still reckon that 90% of the time I've seen or heard it used among friends, in the media, or in books, it is talking about someone skipping out on a meeting/ date.
Next time you're making a date with a friend, be sure to remind them not to release your dove!
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