Here’s a fascinating report from the U Florida. It outlines how ‘Chinese students are more organized, but less imaginative than American counterparts’.
Some quotes from the article:
“Children who prefer a practical and organized learning style tend to do well in the sciences, and children generally choose career paths that complement their temperament.”
– 86 percent of Chinese students preferred an “organized” learning style, which means they preferred orderly classrooms, a set routine and firm standards of behavior – as opposed to a “flexible” style based on variety and study that feels like play. In most countries, a majority of children prefer the organized style, but the researchers describe the Chinese preference as “remarkably high.”
– Six out of 10 Chinese children preferred a “practical” learning style, showing more interest in material that has real-world applications, preferring to learn by experience and seeking hard facts. Of their American counterparts, six out of 10 preferred an “imaginative” style, which stresses discussion of ideas and possibilities.
– Chinese girls were evenly split between a “thinking” style — with an emphasis on debate, competition, and logics – and a “feeling” style, which emphasizes harmony and cooperation in the classroom. In most countries, girls overwhelmingly prefer the “feeling” style.
I think we can see the different cultural attitudes to learning and teaching Chinese here. We’ve touched on the topics of conversation practice and how to conduct speaking classes in the past – see here. Mandarin teachers tend to be trained to bring lots of structure to their classes. This is good in some ways, but it is also less flexible. Do the findings above square with your experience in Mandarin classes?
Ken Carroll
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Fascinating. It’s a shame there is no information in the Florida press release about where the paper was actually published. I dropped a note to Professor Oakland asking for a reprint.
I’ve just recently found a Mandarin teacher, but so far I’ve been the one driving the organization. That’s OK by me.
I wonder if they’ve surveyed Singapore or Hong Kong, culturally Chinese cities with a British colonial history. Singapore schools are *very* structured, perhaps much like China, though the educational model is based on the British system. My experience is that students in Singapore, through the postgraduate university level, show a marked aversion to asking questions of instructors. It’s hard to tell how much is from fear of embarrassment and how much is from their intense focus on performing well on exams. Regardless, Singapore keeps producing top-flight students at a remarkable rate.
At both Tsinghua and Shanghai Jiaotong Universities, where I saw students at symposia, students were very freewheeling, asking imaginative and at times deep questions. While they may have been more organized, they certainly didn’t seem less imaginative than the best students at American universities.
Ah, that’s my alma mater…
Did any of the results surprise you, Ken?
Ken, the last point you quote is really striking. As they progress toward university, are girls and women in China as underrepresented in the physical sciences as they are in the West?
I am taking extension classes at the Irapuato, Guanajuato, México branch of the university, Tecnológico de Monterrey. It is a wonderful school and we have a very nice young teacher from BLCU in Beijing. She speaks English “ma ma hu hu” and the Mexican students speak English in various degrees. That makes for a kind of Tower of Babel approach in the classes which are given in English. My experience with this teacher is good, however, it falls right in line with the University of Florida report. Our classes are very structured and she does not deviate even a little from the lesson plan almost as if “big brother” might be watching. If things are not done exactly the way she herself was taught it really throws her off guard. For example. She has a long complicated process for the placement of the tone marks. When I commented that it is a lot easier to remember that the “a” and the “e” always get the tone mark and the “o” gets the tone mark in any “ou” combination and all the rest of the situations the tone mark goes to the las vowel, it really threw her off and even though my fellow students accepted that with a sigh of relief she went right back to her original stance and refused to budge even a little bit. I have never been to China but I get the feeling that many things are done by the Chinese like a flock of birds all turning in unison in mid flight. Is that true?
This touches exactly on my one hesitation of having enrolled my kid in an immersion Mandarin program – that it will be all structure and less creativity. Especially since I have this stereotype in my head of an traditional American kindergarten with fingerpaints and blocks, rather than drilling characters. Are you concerned about this aspect of your daughter’s education, Ken?
John, I’m not really surprised by any of it, but it is well written and convincingly presented. That’s why I liked it.
GregTK – I don’t know if women are under-represented in the sciences, so I won’t sapeculate. Doews anyone have more to share on this?
Bob – I think you’ve identified where Chinese teachers struggle with the unexpected. Chionese teachers tend to prfect their routine through doing it again and again. In the worst case scenario, however, the teacher could spend an entire career without any major innovations to how she works. I know western teachers who actively try to puruse radically new things and who have indded changed dramatically over the years as a matter of course. I know I’m biased but I do prefer the innovative approach.
Tintin, ikf you’re talking about those Saturday schools, they tend to be quite strict. If you let me know where you are I may be able to connect you with someone.
Ken Carroll
Ken,
, we enrolled our son in a fulltime Mandarin immersion kindergarten in San Francisco which we are both excited and nervous about – since I don’t know anything about Chinese methodology, I’m clueless as to the teaching style. But his day will be 50% Mandarin, 50% English, so maybe the two methods will balance each other? If you know of anyone here though, I’d be interested – to supplement my (excellent) study on Cpod 
Thanks for your response. Actually in our crazy enthusiasm for the Chinese language
tintin there’s lots of native chinese tutors on craigslist – east bay, south bay, and penninsula, mainly. The ones I’ve talked to were quite flexible in format and style, and perfectly willing to use CPod as the curriculum.
Just an fyi -
Thanks Ma Ding, I’ll check them out.
TALLER THAN YOU – Why I think studies sometimes don’t mean too darn much.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060825/ts_nm/economy_height_dc
It’s not the studies, it’s the way the results are misinterpreted, usually in spite of the researcher’s care to put it correctly.
I’ve heard of this kind of result before. Without reading it, I’ll guess that it goes something like this:
Within any given community where there are nutritional differences among that population, those who receive adequate nutrition tend to be taller, smarter, stronger, live longer, have more stable relationships, work harder, etc etc.
So, yeah, it’s true. It’s also true that 50% of journalists have a lower than average IQ.