Compose post

Advice for Mandarin Learner: Carefully Choose Your Class and Tutor

I have been a mandarin Chinese tutor for many years both in New York and Beijing. From my own experience and my students’, here is my advice for you:

China is changing everyday. But some classes and tutors are still offering stereotype textbooks (new published does not mean new content) and method, especially some intermediate level business Chinese book, compiled by some language teachers, who don’t have any sense of real business world.

1) Don’t waste too much time to learn how to write.

Even within China, few people really write characters with a pen now. People use computer to type with Pinyin. You need to learn how to use Chinese software to write. In China, text message is very popular as it is cheaper than calling someone with a cell phone. So even a person with primary school education knows how to input Chinese characters into his/her cell phone. However, you need to make sure you can RECOGNIZE every character.

Some students said writing helped them to memorize the characters. If you thought this method would be good for your memorizing, you should do it.

However, handwriting is an art in China, like painting or photograph. If you have interest with it, you’d better find an artist of calligraphy, not a language tutor.

2) Simplified or Traditional characters should you learn?

Mainland China uses simplified characters, while Taiwan and Hong Kong are still using traditional ones. There is always an argument that which one is better between scholars. Personally, I think traditional one represents the 5000-year culture and is more beautiful, however, simplified one is easy to learn and used by 1.3 billion people.

Since Mainland China is the 3rd biggest economic body in the world, Hong Kong and Taiwan are melting into the economy; I encourage you to learn simplified characters. If you have interest with the culture, you could learn both. But only learning traditional ones is kind of waste of your time practically.


3) Be careful of your teacher’s pronunciations and accent

Mandarin was originated from Beijing. It is a standardized Beijing dialect without local slang. There are hundreds if not thousands dialects in China. People from Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong or Sichuan cannot understand each other if they speak with their own local dialect although the characters are same. Although Chinese government has promoted mandarin for many years, people from other provinces, even school teachers, have their own accent and cannot tell some pronunciations. For example, some Chinese people cannot tell the difference between “IN” and “ING”, “AN” and “ANG”, “EN” and ENG”, “N” and “L” and etc.
so if your teacher was born and grew up in Beijing with college education, it is perfect. (Be careful of “people from Beijing”. Like in New York, many people in Beijing are from other cities. I know many of them who live in Beijing many years still speak mandarin with their hometown accent). Otherwise, you’d better make sure your teacher’s pronunciations and accent.

Some Beijing-ers, especially old generation (born before 1950’s), might have strong accent with Beijing dialect (old mandarin). Since government has been promoting standard mandarin for 50 years, young generation can speak perfect mandarin. The “er” sound at the end of some nouns are typical Beijing dialect. However, it is accepted by standard mandarin, many people from other provinces mimic it.

Although people speak “mandarin” in Taiwan and Singapore, they speak with strong accents. Before 1980’s, most of the foreigners went to Taiwan to learn Chinese, as Mainland China was not open to the world. Many people who learned Chinese in Taiwan told me that they realized later that pronunciation and the accent they learned in Taiwan is not “right”.

4) Don’t waste your time on the basic things

Most Chinese textbooks are too simple or not practical. The whole book only teaches what you could speak in kindergarten, so as some classes (however, it may take you 1 year). The Chinese grammar is very simply and flexible. The most difficulty part for foreigners is the character. Chinese characters only represent the meaning not pronunciations. Therefore you must memorize both the meaning and pronunciation for a word (there are some scientific evidences that this is a good training for your brain). So don’t follow the textbook or some classes’ progress if they didn’t make sense for you. It takes you 2 or 3 hours to know the basic grammar. Then just memorize what kind of words you want to learn.


5) Practice, Practice, and Practice

If someone tells you that he/she can make you speak fluent Mandarin in 3 month, DON’T believe it unless you think you are a language genius. I am not discouraging you. You can do a calculation by yourself that how much time you could spend on the language and how many characters you could memorize so that you would know how fast you could speak fluently. Language is not a science. It is an art. Even you know all the characters and grammar, it doesn’t mean you could speak as a native speaker. You need to get enough exposure of the language and a lot of practice to speak good Chinese Mandarin (not American Mandarin).

You can self-study Chinese. There are many CDs, software and free web site can help you do that. When you reach a point, you need a good tutor. Practice your reading, speaking and listening with help from a good tutor and friends (if you have Chinese friends), you will make tremendous progress.

Enjoy your mandarin Chinese learning.

Mandarin Language Is Music To The Brain

Science Daily — It’s been shown that the left side of the brain processes language and the right side processes music; but what about a language like Mandarin Chinese, which is musical in nature with wide tonal ranges?

UC Irvine researcher Fan-Gang Zeng and Chinese colleagues studied brain scans of subjects as they listened to spoken Mandarin. They found that the brain processes the music, or pitch, of the words first in the right hemisphere before the left side of the brain processes the semantics, or meaning, of the information.
The results show that language processing is more complex than previously thought, and it gives clues to why people who use auditory prosthetic devices have difficulty understanding Mandarin. The study appears in this week’s online early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
In the English language, Zeng says, changes in pitch dictate the difference between a spoken statement and question, or in mood, but the meaning of the words does not change. This is different in Mandarin, in which changes in pitch affect the meaning of words.
“Most cochlear implant devices lack the ability to register large tonal ranges, which is why these device users have difficulty enjoying music … or understanding a tonal language,” says Zeng, a professor of otolaryngology, biomedical engineering, cognitive sciences, and anatomy and neurobiology.
In his hearing and speech lab at UCI, Zeng has made advances in cochlear implant development, discovering that enhancing the detection of frequency modulation (FM) significantly boosts the performance of many hearing aids devices by increasing tonal recognition, which is essential to hearing music and understanding certain spoken languages like Mandarin.
Lin Chen, Hao Luo, Jing-Tian Ni, Zhi-Ou Li and Da-Ren Zhang of the University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, are study co-authors. The National Natural Science Foundation of China and the National Basic Research Program of China provided support.
Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued by University of California - Irvine.