How should we teach Chinese?

Hi Ken,

I am relatively new to CPOD, but struggling to learn Chinese since 20 years and find myself at a level somewhere intermediate / upper intermediate.

I greatly appreciate CPOD as a very effective way to study the language.

You asked for suggestions - here they are:

1. Once a student has a certain knowledge of a language, what vocab is needed depends highly on the professional background or the interests: Beside the lessons tought by level I would suggest for intermediate or advanced students to do common lessons focussed around specific subjects - lessons which are may be longer and more detailled, but help to acquire on a specific subject a broader vocabulary.

2. To have for intermediate and advances levels a grammar section to train specific sentence patterns - with mp3 lessons, pdfs and online exercices. The last lessons (fei .. bu ke or wulun...) where not bad, but not enough to really master it, if it is not a structure already familiar.

3. To have a section (with discussions/comments) about PC and PDA related topics around chinese language (input, mail, learning software, etc...)

4. To have for the different levels some reading materials (with mp3) at hands to practice independently from learning a new lesson.

Hei ,I suddently found Chinese is so easy,you just pay more time on the history of China and when you find her beauty,you'll learn faster.

I think there might be a fundamentally different way the East and the West go about learning a language. I have a few Chinese colleagues (born in central China, and living in China) that are giving me advice on learning Mandarin. They all tell me to read set passages and use rote memorization (I’m paraphrasing here). Many have told me that they practice English by memorizing famous documents such as the (US) Declaration of Independence! I would never think of doing that. First, I would not learn the language and second, it would be incredibly boring trying.

When I get advice on language learning from Americans who speak other languages (learned as adults), they tell me:

1. You just have to constantly be around people who speak the language (or have lots of listening with real context).

2. You should move to that country if possible to enhance #1.

3. You need to have motivation.

Now perhaps I’m misguided (because my colleague’s English is much better than my Mandarin), but I believe in context (and motivation of course). I never did learn that list of 20 random French verbs back in High School… Or perhaps context makes the learning more enjoyable and further reinforces a Westerner’s motivation to learn. I mean, who can resist a lesson on “Ordering a beer in China”? http://chinesepod.com/lessons/cold-beer/discussion Does anyone any other experience or knowledge as to how Chinese prefer to learn languages that have minimal media influence in China?

To shift the focus away from the West and to the other side of the coin, my youngest son attended a language school in 西安/Xian, forgot the exact name. Fortunately for him, they tested for level, interviewed him, and placed him in a program that he was quite happy with... easy.

On the other hand, my niece attended 台大/TàiDà /National Taiwan University in Taiwan as part of the same California State University exchange. Her advanced text was called "思想与社会/思想與社會/Thought and Society. Talk about a ball-buster!!! One semester, 170 pages, 160-200 new terms per week! She said it was sink or swim. In the end, nobody failed and many interesting new terms were coined outside the class to describe the professor.

My point is that, as one would expect, there seem to be quite different views on how to teach Chinese in Chinese culture; not unexpected given the size of the beast. So, the questions becomes much more complex than simply "East v. West.

Oops, sorry, your son is 7 years old, of course. My 2+ year old nephew is getting very good at the "wiggles"! It's a good thing that his Chinese teacher (traditionally the stricter one) is a very mellow, forward-thinking person who loves and respects kids.

Dear bai3hui4, thanks for sharing that perspective on the very traditional "sitting and absorbing Chinese" approach taken in your son's total immersion. I don't know how old your son is. But going by my toddler nephew's experience (2 months into a bilingual preschool programme; no Mandarin exposure whatsoever outside), there is a lot to be said for a more flexible, student-centered approach. Stunt toddler seems to love Mandarin, and he spouts nice-sounding Mandarin at every opportunity, but it's not difficult for me to see why he loves the word "白色", when I see that his Chinese teacher has allowed him to "colour" in the "white" kitten in his exercise book using a truly funky snowy white shag material, which he loves to stroke and touch. Yet I see that the same teacher also made the distinction in counting class between 二 and 两. It's a fine line between over-drilling students on the one hand, and on the other hand, giving them the tools to be totally confident when it counts ie when they are expressing themselves. No reason why my nephew should have to learn the difference between 二 and 两 -- the two words for "two", in Mandarin -- the hard way. Thanks!

Ouff, that was harsh! But you meant it. I will try my best not to get off (ouch! ouch!) on the poor first timers, but I'm not going to pretend either that Chinese isn't so different from English (or French, or German, or...) that it is possible for somebody to spend a few years studying the language, making up their own rules (because there are no rules, innit? Chinese is whatever you want it to be, 100% on your own terms) and then be surprised when they finally speak to a native speaker and they are not understood. Then I suppose they can turn around and blame it on the poor native speaker's "regional accent" or whatever it is that makes it easier to bear. I like Australians (including you) for being unafraid to speak plainly, so I know you will be able to handle this.

Auntie68, your dissatisfaction is typical of that felt by advanced students who go into newbie lessons expecting to be serviced in a manner that suits their own needs. If you're dissatisfied, hell, how do you think it is for those trying their first ever Chinese lesson and wanting a simple answer and getting lengthy debate? Will that encourage them to try a second lesson after this one? Don't expect to get your jollies off the first timers and you won't be disappointed.

What an interesting discussion, although I think that Ken's original intent was to criticize the traditional methods often used to teach Mandarin, as they are translated into the Western school system. This is definitely a problem - in my son's fulltime immersion program, the emphasis is on "sitting and absorbing Chinese", with little regard for differentiated learning styles. This sometimes results in a clash of cultures - the teachers don't understand that 7-year-olds get the wiggles in class, and the 7-year-olds have no intention of becoming "better listeners", because, guess what, this is a new arena for the Westerners...

P/s: To be fair to CPOD, the "Qing Wen" series does a brilliant job teaching these kinds of points. So even if Amber were to reply to a grammar question on a comments thread with words like "That seems to be a difficult question, and the team is going to see whether we should clarify this, maybe in a future Qing Wen. Meanwhile, stay tuned," it would be helpful. What is happening now, is that these questions are asked and nuisance posters like me wade in with homemade answers, which could be totally wrong and misleading, but you'd never know it unless CPOD came in and corrected me. I wonder whether CPOD could "red flag" any posters' attempts to give substantive answer to any question asked, and make sure that no harm is done by them at least. Nothing in this post was meant to sound belligerent, I hope it doesn't.

Dear wei1xiao4, I have the feeling that you are reacting mainly to my posts above. And I feel terrible if anything I wrote is making you "second guess" yourself. There's NO way to learn a language save by being brave and going in there to make mistakes. Sorry if I have discouraged anybody or chipped away at their hard-earned confidence!

Nobody -- NOBODY -- has the right to be "offended" by anybody else's mistakes.

What I was trying to say, clumsily (sorry!), was that the kinds of "unintelligible post" mistakes which I am seeing do lead me to reflect on the way Mandarin is being taught to non-Chinese people. And recently, I have begun to have the same kind of thoughts upon reading the kinds of grammar questions which appear again and again and AGAIN in the comments threads.

I don't have a Premium subscription, so I can't comment on whether CPOD's "grammar bank" is -- or isn't -- doing a beautiful job. But as a Basic subscriber, receiving only podcasts and pdfs, it's not hard to see why Chinese syntax seems to be such a weak point. Grammar and syntax -- and also usage points -- are dealt with extremely well in the podcasts, but there is no written "back-up" in any form to help learners be confident about what they think they've just learned. And recently I have been seeing more "there's no difference"-type answers from CPOD staff in comments threads. There may be no difference when you translate these words into English, but that doesn't mean that such "synonyms" aren't used in very different ways in Chinese. Eg. 高兴 vs 愉快, a question which was actually posed recently. You can wish somebody 生日愉快 or 生日快乐, but can you wish them 生日高兴？ This question may have been posed by a newbie, but it was a real substantive question which was not answered.

Given that Chinese is an "analytical" language, syntax is so very important.

I can understand John Pasden et al's very reasonable -- and sound -- wish to avoid going into too much detail with grammar, or using big words. But I still hope that CPOD will re-think this policy. It is a huge task to come up with a definitive "grammar section", which is perhaps why that project seems to have had such a difficult birth. But little grammar chunks to go with the pdfs for each lesson don't have to be "definitive", and in fact they can be tailored only to the points made in that specific lesson.

wei1xiao4, if somebody has the secret of learning without making mistakes, I hope they clue me in. Personally, I think you have to try your best and practice... and this is a learning site.

So, after reading this, I question myself whether it is more acceptable to use my bad Chinese writing to practice posting and make mistakes in the learning process, or not post in Chinese for fear of offending others or leading them astray. It took me about three years to get to the point of trying to write in Hanzi, now I'm second guessing myself. Is this the environment that we want to create here; that you have to "know you are correct" before you can "practice and learn from your mistakes"? I choose to continue to make mistakes in the hopes of getting better and I request that anyone who can help me in that goal feel free to correct me at anytime. I welcome the feedback.

@steveat3am

Yes, we are all students. but there is a difference: most university/college students have no real income for which to pay for something like this. they either have to beg their parents for the money (who may or many not agree) or use up what little limited funds they earn over the breaks.. While others are certainly students here at CPOD, they most likely have an income which is theirs to decide how to spend. It makes a difference.

Aren't we ALL "students"? Do we all get discounts?

What is the cost of a class?

As much as I also hated the idea of shelling out MONEY in exchange for something "on line", I think it is a justifiable amount. Maybe with success they can lower cost? Give discounts on re-subscriptions??

As to the comments on more "immersive" Chinese only banter, I say NO!

I think there's a certain arrogance to saying "sure, some would drop out." Why make them? There's plenty of time to do more immersive levels. Jump ahead faster if you need the challenge.

I know some people might feel they have a learning edge that way but not everyone.

Myself, I'm hard of hearing and it's a struggle to separate sounds. I also have a learning disability. (overused excuse, I know, but...) and trying to sort things out in a purely immersive environment is impossible.

I like the current format and tools of the premium subscription. I won't personally have ideas for improvement for a while. :)

Thanks for asking for input.

My only comment is this: I am a university student. I really dont have a lot of money. I certainly can not afford 240 a year (my God, thats the price of my textbooks!) so that I can have acess to all CPODS wonderful features. I would really hope that CPOD would consider a student discount or lowering the price a bit!

Goulniky,

I totally agree with you about Chinese-only banter at the earlier levels... and that a lot of listeners would likely be scared off.

Some thoughts...podcasts with English mixed in are very enjoyable to listen to, can be listened to anywhere without the need to use a computer to look up words, and are definitely very effective at teaching Chinese. Podcasts with no English banter and explanations require more effort on the user's part, but the reward is greater in the end in my opinion, and there is much greater benefit in listening to the Chinese only podcast multiple times. And I don't really mean substituting English banter with Chinese banter, but replacing English banter with useful Chinese language, such as simple definitions in Chinese, lots of sample sentences in Chinese, opposites of words, all in Chinese.

From a business standpoint, I think that producing podcasts of Chinese mixed with English is essential, especially to appeal to the masses. For most casual learners, it probably is also the best way to learn.. in that it keeps people engaged, interested, etc. From a progression standpoint though, I think that Chinese only is the best.

New guy here.

Seems like some of the grammar points are being covered in the "Qing Wen" Series (although probably elementary level).

I'm not a fan of grammar instruction (more a hard knocks fan)...but these "Qing Wen" episodes seem to go down easy.

Recommendation is to continue to use "Qing Wen" episodes to expand on grammar.

LostInAsia, thanks, I think we're on the same page here. The grammar point doesn't have to be "definitive"; all you need is a few lines to enable listeners to confirm/ re-confirm what they think they heard Jenny Zhu say in the podcast on that grammar point.

I just want to second one of auntie68's comments above... she suggested including, on each PDF, a grammar point. I think that'd be great; just choose one of the sentence patterns, and give a couple of fill-in-the-blank examples. There's already supplemental vocab; an extra couple of lines for a "grammar pattern of the dialogue" would be great. The vocab sometimes does this, but in a way that makes it all-too-easy to miss out on how to use the sentence: as an example, 連 / "even" may be in the vocab, but just from that it's hard to figure out there's often a 都 pattern involved.

I seem to remember Ken and Jenny used to do this a lot during the lesson; maybe they still do, but I'm just not noticing as much, because it's at Intermediate and Upper Intermediate that I really need this kind of help now.

P/s: I suspect that CPOD's answer to my "Mandarin On Your Terms" question is: No! It's such a fine line/ grey area between over-directing a student's learning, on the one hand, and on the other hand, being enough of a "teacher" to see (if need be, insist!) that the student work on certain weak areas that the student may not even be aware of.

Morning tvan. I agree with everything you wrote. Am kicking myself now for not being (about a million times) more careful in choosing my own words, given the extreme sensitivity associated with "making mistakes".

Please let me try to choose better words? Sorry. The point I was trying to make on "unintelligible" posts was not supposed to be about mocking learners who make mistake. No way. But for me, "unintelligible posts with big language" raise awkward -- but important -- questions about "how should we teach the chinese language" (never about the individual learner).

This is definitely not CPOD's problem, because they REALLY DO teach, and teach WELL. Whether in the banter in the podcasts, or by way of tactful, quick responses like those which Amber faithfully delivers in response to direct questions about "Is this sentence of mine correct?".

Honestly, there's no counting how many podcasts there are in which Jenny Zhu has -- firmly, deftly, and graciously -- said, in effect, "Nope. You can't do that. Not negotiable." And they are absolutely meticulous about "registers"/ "appropriateness". In the "Comments", Amber's hands are somewhat tied by the fact that she requires a direct request for correction before she can go in and correct any mistakes.

"Less-than-perfect" posts are a natural, meaningful, part of life; I welcome them. But the "unintelligible posts"-kind of mistakes do tend to stop me in my tracks, whenever I run into them. Because they raise such awkward questions about how Chinese is being taught.

I've noticed that most "unintelligible" all-Chinese posts tend to be posts where the writer is translating from English into Mandarin, rather than trying to think in Chinese. Does Mandarin "on your terms" mean that anybody can dispense with drilling, repetition, studying "examples" (a very "Chinese" thing!), basically drilling away until these forms (especially the "collocations") have been internalized well enough to pop into your head (or at least, pop up a red flag) when you are trying to write in Chinese. Hope this Auntie hasn't made things even worse!

Hi Ken

Thank you for the encouragement. I think chinesepod is the perfect way to learn chinese. At first it was surprisingly fun and easy, then it appeard different words that for my untrained ear sounded alike, so I became a little doubtful; am I able to learn this? But when I was felt tempted give up, I found the "Tone Rule" -lessons, and now I am on my way to learning Mandarin again.

The only thing that I would wish you would do more is to compare words that are alike, but have different tone and meaning like you do in the lesson "Asking for English Books" that is so helpful, at least for a Newbie like me.

I'm so glad to have this opportunity for learning Chinese, I haven't found anywhere in Norway except he universities where I can learn Mandarin, and the only Norweigian - Chinese dictionary costs about as much as 2 years of Chinesepod. You even make my English better!

speaking of facilitating, perhaps it would be easier to track thoughts and responses by allowing for a way to reply to a specific post right under that post (like topics within topics within topics...)--for clarity's sake. scrolling through pages to see who may have responded to this or that, or to weed out what has or has not already been said, while one may glean chunks of useful information in the process, 'tis a tad time consuming, which, i think, a bit of a (re)organization could remedy. And i am still shouting for at least some grammar points, understandably they could be a double edged sword for some BUT how will they know until they've been cut (by constructive feedback) ;)

auntie68, don't we as a community have an obligation to provide some of that support constructively? Based upon my observations, I've seen three reactions to grammar/character mistakes:

-- Nothing said at all -- the worst of all worlds. The offending user doesn't know he/she made a mistake, not only failing to advance his/her knowledge, but possibly leading other users down the same wrong path as well.

-- The offender is slammed by a more proficient user(s) with a 3-screen post, leading him/her to avoid further posts in written Chinese; better than no correction, but still not ideal.

-- The offender is corrected positively and simply. For the best example of this, see Amber's corrections.

The bottom line, and the point which is germane to the post subject, is that all users have something to contribute; and user errors, if corrected positively, are just as educational as "picture perfect posts" if, and only if, they are clearly and succinctly corrected, preferably by other users. This is, in my opinion, the strength of the new medium at its best. But it requires the concerted action of the user community: Cpod is only a facilitator.

This is a subject which I can't resist commenting on because (i) it means a lot to me; and (ii) Ken has so graciously asked for opinions.

After reading Ken's blog, and the very thoughtful comments thereto, I would like very much to say, "Whoa please!" and express my total bewilderment at any suggestion that language learning is all about entertaining the student or letting the student become her/his own teacher. Is that so "retrograde"?

Chinese, a so-called "analytical" language, is so different from Indo-European languages that any wannabe learner from a non-Chinese background really does need to work with a real teacher, and trust and respect that teacher.

To this extent, I can't agree with Goulniky more. I keep reading incomprehensible posts in Chinese characters on CPOD, using words which are very "advanced" for me, but which posts don't make any sense AT ALL to me because the author did not understand Mandarin syntax. For me, there is nothing sadder than unintelligible posts, using "big" language, by people who began expressing themselves freely before they had gotten a good grip on Chinese syntax. I believe in rewarding every effort, but learning is a two-way street, a dialogue between teacher and student.

I should (humbly) like CPOD to never, EVER relinquish the role of teacher, in the broadest Chinese sense.

Having said that, I hope that CPOD will be bolder in reminding us students -- as often as it takes -- NOT to fall into the trap of using the language -- and basic assumptions -- of English (or French, or German) grammar to direct their study of Chinese. To learn Chinese well, we really need to keep the mind as open and flexible as possible.

And it would not be a bad idea, IMHO, if CPOD would be a little bit less afraid of using straight talk to grasp the "Chinese grammar" bull by the horns. Judging by the number of questions following every lesson on things like word order and -- yikes! -- "predicates", why not consider having a brief grammar section in every PDF which does the simple job of confirming what the listener thinks that that he thought he heard Jenny Zhu saying by way of explaining grammar.

Finally, I'd like to ask CPOD to look more closely into their "demographic". If you find that you have a lot of overseas Chinese in your base, you may be able to make A LOT of money, in mere terms of "Basic" subscriptions, simply by raising the level of the "Basic" services a little bit. I know that you want to preserve the incentive for people to go for "Premium", but the answer may not be "keeping Beginner's so basic that only an idiot or a financially irresponsible person would resist upgrading to Premium".

Seriously, overseas Chinese will probably never need your full "Premium' services, and I'm willing to bet that many of them are gritting their teeth and toughing it out as "non-paying" subscribers because (i) at a pinch, they can get by without the pdfs; and (ii) the pdfs don't seem like enough of an incentive to become full paying members. Believe me, overseas Chinese users could easily be your easiest customers, but the trick is to bridge the gap between $60 per year and $240 per year.

Thanks for asking, CPOD!

Ken, practice is the only way to learn to write the characters, it's the only way to learn 'full stop'. There is no reason why practice would preclude having fun, but I'm not sure why 'cognitive' would mean more effective in a language learning context.

I guess I can be considered a long-term user and advocate of ChinesePod, learning without any formal classroom setting, not at all enthused by rote learning and quickly bored.

Yet for the average person that I am, repetition is key, be it in listening (great musical analogy here), talking or reading, and I do think that those who are trained to learn, such as actors or people schooled in traditional ways, have a major advantage.

You ask, how should we teach Chinese : where I think ChinesePod could improve is by starting Chinese-only discussion (banter) way earlier. That would take the crutch away and a lot of people would likely walk away, but as far as learning goes I contend this would be way more effective.

If you look at what CSLpod or iMandarinTools do (just came across that one yesterday), their intermediate levels which seem to be closer to your Elementary, hardly use any English. They are also much more systematic in their vocab repetition within and across lessons.

With ChinesePod, you really only approach this at the Upper Intermediate level, with normal speed Chinese only at Advanced.

I know everyone loves you and John and would scream if you hinted at changing anything, but that's essentially what immersion would mean, it would work and in fact I think it's essential.

Taking JPVillanueva's musical comment a little farther, my children learned to play piano/violin/viola/etc. using the Suzuki method. I am not a Suzuki teacher, but I remember that part of it was always having a tape/CD playing the songs currently being taught. While playing an instrument requires some additional technical skills, when you sat down for a lesson, you at least knew what the song should sound like. At young ages there was no comparison with most "note" students.

To be fair, Suzuki students often had problems making a transition to a more traditional musical environment involving sight reading. However, they grew up loving their music and usually continued it into later life.

I intuitively feel that there are some parallels here between classroom learning and some of the new ideas being bandied about in language. Still, I'm just an accountant, not a linguist.

I am not a linguist but I am a Professor with more than a few years behind me. If I and my colleagues taught Engineering the way that Chinese is taught, the world would be woefully lacking in may of the comforts we enjoy today. And this would for the lack of engineers.

Frankly the best way to learn in my opinion is by doing. What a teacher or a professor should do is guide the student in making good decisions and direct them away from bad decisions.

What this means for language teachers is that students need to practice the language in such a way that they have to make decisions about what words to use. It is not enough to practice rote phrases! We need to put students into roles where they are force to formulate responses based on what they have learned to date. Students need to explore the language in a guided way. And whatever is used to do this must be relevant to the student. If Chinese history or music or ,,, is not of interest to student, then the effort of the teacher will be greatly underappreciated. For business students as many of us are, we want to be learning how to talk about business and how to persuade others to buy our product. For students in college, it is all about their future. They want to know what they will need to socialize and what they will need to be successful in their future endeavors. The language instruction needs to be tailored for this to be most succesful.

In this respect, I really like what Cpod has done: they are providing relevant and timely materials rather than meaniless and emotionless epitomes of the Tang dyansty.

Keep it going, Ken!

julesong,

I used to sing in a Gospel choir 10 years ago in Seattle, and listening to your rehearsal tape during your commute was actually the preferred method; a song was taught one week, and then when we came back the next week, everybody knew the song, all the lyrics, all the harmonies. That method became somewhat more difficult to pull off when tape decks started disappearing from car stereos...

Part of that is that it was taught well, the director (Cora Jackson) had teaching music down to a science; as a language teacher, I could write a book about what I learned about teaching language from the way she teaches music.

Another part of it was that in your car, you don't just listen to your rehearsal tape, you sing along, out loud to yourself in the car; that was huge.

Finally it's worth noting that learning in this method was paperless. At first the visual learners would say, "help, I need to see stuff, I'm not an audio learner," but those complaints lasted about 30 seconds, once they realized that this method wasn't audio either, it was kinesthetic.

So am I saying that we should teach spoken Chinese with a kinesthetic method?

Yes.

Knitting works the same as driving. I reckon that no matter how intense the brain work is, there is always a lot of brain that is not devoted to the task. That extra piece of brain gets bored and starts attention-seeking behaviour that upsets the concentration. If you give it something constructive to do, like driving or knitting, it gets satisfaction from its own little achievement and leaves the rest of your brain in peace to focus fully on the lesson.

I learned, completely by accident, a while back that I could more easily memorize lyrics if I practiced the songs while driving. (A performer who can't remember lyrics easily, yep, that's me.)

I started with ChinesePod while driving to and from work, about an hour's drive each way. It has occurred to me, that the same thing is working for me... I don't know what it is about driving, but somehow the lessons penetrate and stick with me a lot better that way.

I've tried studying lessons sitting at my desk while going over the written dialogue at the same time, and while it's helpful it just doesn't work quite as well unless I've already gone over the lesson several times while driving already.

Actually the last comment was @ riddal.

wei1xiao4,

Practice is the only way to learn to write the characters, though I would suggest writing meaningful tracts designed to communicate, rather than lists of words. Fortunately it's possible to make the other aspects of learning Chinese more cognitive.

windwalker,

I sympathize. I've seen so much of this it ain't funny. What you've described is par for the Mandarin teaching course. But keep using CPod and keep practicing and you will get there nonetheless!

tsunst,

Keep doing whatever makes you feel comfortable. It's all about 'learning on your terms'. We try to embed the types of structures that will help you learn into the lessons. After that it's up to you how you consume them. If you're motivated, listening, and having fun, then you are learning for sure. I think it is also precisely this type of discussion that helps you to get better at getting better. Sharing with other learners or practitioners can lead to tremendous learning insights that make it all more motivating and more effective. For me, this is the community of practice at work. Take advantagte of it!

I'm new here at Chinesepod so it's interesting to hear how others work with the learningpocess. Every afternoon I walk my dog after work. The last 2 months I've been companied by Ken and Jenny on my afternoons i the snowy Norweigian woods - speaking out loud all the lessons. I try to read and write some caracthers also, but I feel that for the moment it's enough for me to learn Chinese and Pinyin from a foreign language. Am I doing this in a totally wrong way?

No pain, no gain! It's the same for Chinese.

wei1xiao4 I like to use Chinese Writing Master 4.0 to see the character written for me before I attempt it. This conveys the stroke order and also subtle things I might not have noticed "that stoke relative to the preceeding one is smaller" and go you get the whole picture.

There is also the book Learin CHinese Characters in which the 800 HSK1 characters are 'storied" by which I mean the constituent parts are used to create an easy to remember story eg woman + child = good and make up a story about this. To many this can be too much overhead and it is really down to the way you think.

John Pasden has remarked before that he doesn't really need to write out the characters a lot - as long as he can tie together the parts - that can be quite effective.

Also John has mentioned that learning chinese can and probably needs to be a near obsession. I liken it to launching the space shuttle - a concentrated effort is needed at first in order to learn how to learn but eventually the force of gravity lessens!

As for Ken's blog, I think learning chinese is like learning French with the words back-to-front and upside down! No wonder CHinese programs get canceled before they get off the ground. Chinesepod allows us to share the pain - "we're all alone in this together" and it's a great way to hear chinese daily and interact. They do puncture a hole into the vacuum of learning Chinese outside China!

I'm with wei1xiao4 on that one, also see my comments on Ken's blog.

The teaching methods (for Mandarin) I've experienced in universities and private classes here in (southwest) China are the worst I've seen, especially for higher-level students.

Ever teacher I've had in a class (as opposed to private tutors) seems to think that making everyone read the text aloud a dozen times actually does something. Well-documented (and old) psychological research has shown that reading aloud doesn't really help one grasp the content; the reader is too concerned with pronouncing everything correctly. Its main purpose would be pronunciation correction, which would be fine if that were the reason we're attending a 高级班, 口语 or otherwise, and if it didn't take up half the class time! But it's not why we show up; we want to learn how to comprehend things and communicate effectively!

Almost every teacher I've had has stuck to the textbook like Garfield to the last slice of lasagna in the world. We do get to produce sentences to practice grammar points, and sometimes we even get to present a topic or a point of view to the class. However, not a single teacher has ever taught us how to structure our presentations and arguments to make them more Chinese. Not a single one has ever tried to really revise or critique a student's oral presentation or story-telling, outside of correcting word-level and sentence-level mistakes (and that itself is rare!). Not a single teacher has ever focused on true communicative ability, centered around actually developing students' ability in varying language situations. They've all been happy (to varying degrees) to just throw the textbook's content at you, regardless of how useful it is, and regardless of whether or not your actual communicative ability is improving. Of course we're learning new words and characters (it's not TOTALLY useless), but for the larger language picture, you really have to develop that on your own.

In essence, the teaching methods I've experienced are pretty much the exact opposite of the methods they advocated in my TEFL course. I've had some mediocre language teachers (French and Chinese) in the USA, but every single one of them (and probably me as well, and I'm not a great teacher) EASILY outclass all the formal class instructors I've had here.

Chinese Pod, on the other hand, is golden. My passive understanding has grown tremendously since starting here, and it's even seeped into my active discourse (I don't know how many times I've used a Pod-learned word and had another Poddie nod knowingly and mouth a single word: "Pod?"). The stress is on current, communication-oriented (for the most part) language, as it should be for what the site is trying to do.. 加油加油！

I figure there are many more characters that I should learn, than ones that I can learn. Therefore if I go through sentences and whole passages, and let the ones that want to stick in my brain do so, I'm still learning the same amount with none of the displeasure. The ones that don't want to stick, well, by the time they're left over I'll have seen them (and looked them up) so many times that they'll stick by themselves.

I mean, hell, why do slog work that you don't have to do?

My approach to characters is to focus on recognizing them, not being able to write them by hand. So, my practice is mostly reading and entering into a computer. It's less tedious than writing each character hundreds of times, but my grasp of characters is a little more loosely held than if I were to do it the traditional way.

Is there another way to learn to write characters besides practice, practice, practice. Because if somebody knows one, I wish they would share it with me.

julesong: From what I have heard traditional Chinese learning seems to be very much rote learning, drill patterns etc.

Back when I was an elementary education major, I visited Seattle's Wing Luke Elementary School. From what I recall, they have a really good integrated program for both Mandarin and English immersion in the Asian communities in Seattle. We have a very large Asian community in this area. Their webpage is at:

http://www.seattleschools.org/schools/wingluke/

Looking at their programs page, I can't find anything specific about their program, however.

You're probably referring to adult learning, though, aren't you?

I'm going to be checking the resources listed at:

http://www.seattlelanguages.com/mandarin.htm

How is the traditional Chinese teaching method different from the typical western methods?