A couple of days ago we held another training session for the teachers’ network. These sessions introduce local Mandarin teachers (in this case, about 20 of them) to ChinesePod and offer some basic orientation towards how to teach Mandarin to the lao wai, using ChinesePod. The training emphasizes the importance of speaking practice and how to conduct it. After they’ve completed this orientation, the teachers can sign up on the CPod database and establish contact with learners like you.
The training sessions underscore the scope of the differences in cultural attitudes towards learning a language. On a fundamental level, the role of the teacher (and therefore, of the student) differs radically from East to West, both in theory and in practice. So too do the underlying ideas about how learning happens, or even on why it should happen. Big questions, but ones that a discipline of Teaching Chinese as a Second Language (TCSL) will have to grapple with.
Let me mention a couple of issues that cropped up in the training. One concerned the role of memorization. A participant posed the question:
“You tell us not to force students to memorize things, but if they don’t memorize stuff, how can they learn the new words?”
This, I think, indicates how she sees memorization as the only way to learn new items, a notion that may be common in China, but which would surprise a western teacher. The Chinese tradition relies heavily on memorization, but sees little role for other cognitive strategies (guesswork, inference, problem solving, etc). The extent to which we rely on cognitive strategies informs the most basic behaviors in the classroom. No wonder that experiencing this difference for the first time can be a bit shocking. (John Biesnecker’s blog about learning Japanese in China provides examples.)
Other issues that came up: pronunciation and the 4 tones. I haven’t written much about these topics on this blog, but I think it’s time we had a long, hard look at them. I’ll try to take a systematic approach to these issues for the rest of this week – I will also be soliciting your feedback on them.
Ken Carroll
pretzellogic on 
Andrew Cockerham on 
Dave on
{ 13 comments… read them below or add one }
It would be interesting to know if the Chinese have a phrase eqivilent to ‘learning by rote’ or learning ‘parrot fashion’ or whether they just call that learning.
I have tried explaining the concept to two Chinese people and came away with the impression that they understood what I was saying but didn’t understand why I was exaplaining it or the point I was trying to get across. Another Chinese Lady did get it and knew exactly what I was talking about (she however used to be a Scientist, my company deals with both Chinese and Japanease Scientists and it does seem that the Chinese Sceintists are far more open and flexible than their Japanease counterparts).
Both rote learning and ‘parrot fashion’ have negative vibes in the West although I am sure many years ago Western educators would have accepted them without question. I think they they still have their place, but the use should be retricted (for example in most languages it is probably a good idea to learn things like days of the week in one go, rather than just absobing them as you go along and finding one year down the line that you still haven’t aquired a full set, Chinese is simpler than English though in this case as Sunday appears to be the only dodgy one.)
I think memorization is very important. I think it is good to memorize dialogs or series of chunks such as weeks, numbers, telephone call phrases etc. I am now intermediate speaker of Mandarin after 8 years of this style. I sometimes don’t know the tone if hearing but I can parrot very easily and use myself. I can read pinyin very well but have hard time hearing tones from some speakers. I have been learning Guang Dong Hua on top of Mandarin and I have found pretty easy using tapes and memorizing. I have no idea the official tone marks etc and there is many more than Mandarin. I think tones are bit exagerated on Cpod and could scare away students. This is my opinion but I am not a teacher like many regulars on the site. Tones are important but kept in check when speaking sentances in Mandarin. I find that memorization helps store away in manner that doesn’t require thinking the word in English before speaking Mandarin. I guess a hard burn to brain. Anyways that is my opinion. Seems to work ok for me.
The importance of memorization.
This may have been mentioned before and if I seem naieve or redundant please forgive me. When I studied Mandarin at DLI in Monterey, California many, many years ago, our teacher Dr. Tharp stressed the importance of memorization. Each day we were required to memorize a little story to help us install sentence patterns in our brain to be available instantly when required. Now, after forty years, as I begin again to study Chinese those stories drift back to me. Somehow they are still in my brain and they help me tremendously. The stories are short and simple and I suggest that something similar become part of the newbie curricuum. For example: Tamen nei liange haidzi, yige shi nan haidzi, yige shi niu haidzi. Nan haidzi jiu xihan kan shu kan bao. Niu haidze jiu xihuan mai dongxi. Mai yige jung sishi jiu kuai jiu mao wu fen quian yige. Ta shuo tade quian bu gou…etc.
The only problem that I have is that I memorized the stories originally in Yale romanization so now I have to switch over. I miss the Yale romanization sometimes. It seems to make more sense to say “tsung” instead of “cong” and “dzai” instead of “zai”.
I realize that one can always memorize the newbie dialogs but with dialogs there is an added narrative element. You must keep track in your head of who is speaking. Stories flow much easier.
When I came to Mexico eight years ago to live and work I decided to combine memorizartion work with vocabulary study and verb conjugation when learning Spanish. It worked very well. That is why I suggest that memorization of stories, jokes, phrases, and complete sentences other than dialog should be a regular part of the language learning process.
Your humble newbie,
Bob Mrotek
Irapuato, Guanajuato, Mexico
I find it helpful using any new words in context when I memorize them. Using them in a sentence or story makes it fairly to remember. The key for me is that I must say the phrases and new words out loud as I learn.
Also, I hardly remember much of the French I learned 20+ years ago in High School, but still remember a speech I had to deliver to the class. Delivering speeches helps me focus on the ideas I want to communicate and how to use the language to get it done.
Bob I agree.
I am getting a lot of benefit from memorising simple jokes. I don’t think this is quite the same as ‘learning by rote’ though. I find that remembering longer passages in a relatively short time, it is easier to remember the meaning and then reconstruct the text from the words and grammar that you picked up when you first learnt it. That means (as you point out) that the words and sentance patterns are there, stored as a resource to use in other sentances.
The extreme opposite would be to learn to recite the sounds from a passage without understanding the meaning at all. Plenty of actors have managed to do this in the past and sound convincing in short passages of a language that they cannot speak at all. This would be extreme learning by rote.
Probably most learning of this type is somewhere between the two, but I would suggest that if the student actually carries out the initial translation and is encouraged to play with some of the words and patterns in other ways, they will get the most benefit.
They may well recite the valid slightly differently many years later, but with a perfectly valid meaning and grammar.
Given the difficulty of written Mandarin, it’s not surprising that learning by rote is more common in China.
Ken Carrol wrote: “Other issues that came up: pronunciation and the 4 tones. I haven’t written much about these topics on this blog, but I think it’s time we had a long, hard look at them. I’ll try to take a systematic approach to these issues for the rest of this week – I will also be soliciting your feedback on them.”
I am just starting to learn Mandarin and I would really be interested in Pinyin pronunciation drills and tones. When I first learn a language I need a good foundation, and proper pronunciation is very important to me.
I have written tone drills in a book, but I need to hear the proper pronunciation in order to imitate the correct tones.
Memorising is very important, and essential when learning a language.
Some people memorise by repeating and repeating, especially in places like China.
Most of us memorise by doing this with it, and doing that with it, and doing the other thing, until it automatically becomes part of us. We believe that something learned that way will be recalled more readily even after a break, and easier to re-use in a novel situation without warning.
I coached some kids who were really bad in primary school mathematics and had given up on school. At the root of it, they hadn’t memorised the times tables like the other kids. We didn’t do any rote learning, we just mucked around and did interesting thinking stuff with a calculator until it was easier to just write down the answer than to do that same thing with the calculator yet again. They had memorised the contents of the times tables by personal experience, and went from the bottom to near the top of the class in three months. They felt that they were doing something to numbers, rather than numbers doing something to them, and that’s all it took to make them numerate. Had rote learning been their only option, they would have withdrawn permanently.
A lot of us adults feel the same about how we want to do our memorising of a new language. We don’t have parents and laws to hold us, so we can withdraw any time it gets tedious, and most of us will do so.
Aunty,
Maybe we should establish some clearer defititions: When I refer to memorization, I mean the (often mindless) repetition of lists or other types of information – rote memorization as you describe it. There seems to be little doubt that such behaviors can affect only the short term memory and offer no educational benefit that I can think of.
The classroom methods you describe, however, are not memorization (by my definition/Chinese definition) but sound cognitive strategies. Treating input (linguistic, mathematical, etc) creatively and finding new ways to explore it from differenet angles have the effect of familiarizing the learner with the input, but without the tedium of repetition. These are are psychological strategies that I too would definitely recommend, but I wouldn’t call them memorization.
Ken Carroll
Chris and Bob, I think the idea of memorizing jokes is great! I’ve never even thought of that as a way to learn Chinese or as a way to memorize something. I realized that after all these years of studying Chinese, I don’t even know a single joke or how to even tell a joke in Chinese! Great idea! I’m looking at Yesasia.com now for a joke book to buy.
Memorizing lists…Lord, how dreary. List format doesn’t work well for me, but making my own flashcards on index cards does work. I’ve started writing down example sentences on the back of the cards now too, using the sentence I got the word from. Flashcards are handy ’cause you can separate out the ones you have a hard time remembering, and work with those. Or re-shuffle the deck. Friends/relatives sometimes get a kick out of testing you with them as well. And they’re very portable.
But bottom line: studying Chinese, especially characters, does require a certain degree of drudgery and rote memorization. Maybe that’s why the language has such a high attrition rate. And sometimes I have gotten so sick and tired of looking up the same character again and again that I have finally just forced myself to memorize it once and for all.
Thanks for the warning, Andrea and others. Nobody wants me to learn Chinese, except me, and the reason is that I enjoy it. I have no intention of learning anything that “does require a certain degree of drudgery and rote memorization”, ever.
I have not found that to be necessary with my Chinese study to date. Given your warning and my attitude, should I give up now? No, I don’t think so. You see, I figure that if you’re right, it won’t happen for a while. I can’t see myself encountering any of that essential “drudgery and rote memorization” within my current plans for the next couple of years or so, and I can relax and enjoy it until then.
Once I’ve been able to avoid encountering this distasteful stuff for a couple of years, well, I don’t see why I couldn’t manage it for another year as well. So I think I’ll keep on having fun here, and consider at the end of each year what I plan to do for the next year, and whether I can organise it to be drudge-free or not. In case you’re still around when I’ve exhausted all drudgeless means of learning by having fun, I’ll let you know when that time comes.
I don’t think it is necessary to subject yourself to rote memorization and drudgery that Andrea spoke about. There are ways to make anything interesting, if you know how. So far, we’ve tried to do that on CPod. Now we’re going to tackle some slightly more gnarly subjects (droills, pronunciation exercises) but try to do so in an intersting way.
Ken Carroll
Anyone tried learning songs? Helps me a lot, did it with every language I ve learned. With English as a kid (I m Greek), that was unintentional, I was just into english-lyric (rock mostly) songs. Then Italian (not much of a sacrifice, they have lovely songs) and now I do it with chinese (a more structured procedure) as follows:
I choose a song that I like. First I try to write the lyrics in pinyin based on what I am hearing (as an exercise). Then, for the (few) sentences that are complete and make sense, I write the hanzi version (the ones I know anyway). Then I find the lyrics in hanzi (very easy just google the name of the song in hanzi plus 歌词) and complete/correct the pinyin version (using the dictionary). After that, I look up all the words that I don’t know the meaning of and choose which ones I want to learn (you can’t learn them all, besides some are too poetic and hardly useful). Finally I try to write an english “translation”, for which I usually end up running to my laoshi crying for help. At the end of course, I learn the song and sing it often.
The benefits are multiple: I enrich my vocabulary and I can remember the words more easily (song phrases stick to my head, and are good examples of word usage), I get the accent right by listening and singing (careful with Hongkongese singers’ accent in Mandarin, can be misleading), and last but not least, I m super popular with chinese people in Karaoke, he he! Highly recommended.