Foreign Languages Fade in Class — Except Chinese

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/21/education/21chinese.html

by rmah • 16 years ago

15 32 16 years ago

rmah• 16 years ago

I know it's an oldish article (from Jan 2010), but I still think it's both a little frightening (another sign of China's economic rise) and heartening (we're able to adopt).

One point of interest, the Chinese government now pays to send teachers to the US to teach Chinese in US schools.

MoreMoschops3• 16 years ago

Is not China's economic rise a comforting thing, rather than frightening?

w1ntermute4• 16 years ago

Considering the fact that they are a political enemy, of course it's a frightening thing.

VengefulCynic• 16 years ago

Mandarin is spoken by roughly 1 billion people. Most Americans only speak English. Learning a second language, especially one spoken by that many people can only be a good thing. That said, while I certainly feel that any efforts to get Americans to learn languages in addition to English are a good thing, I can't help but being suspicious of the agent and financial backer of the program that facilitates these teachers: the Chinese government.

Put it this way, can you imagine the Chinese government being receptive if the US State Department offered to send over several hundred English-language teachers and pay part of their salaries?

alextp• 16 years ago

I think, however, that the Chinese government itself pays for americans to teach english in China.

dublinclontarf2• 16 years ago

Not just Americans, anyone from a country whose mother tongue is English. And not just this, English or at least passign the English exams is a requirement for EVERY UIVERSITY DEGREE. I teach Tradtitional Chinese Medicine undergrads and postgrads, and they all need to pass the English tests to get their degree.

Although the vast VAST majority can only speak a few words, something of a failure when you think that they study English in School for hours each day from middle school, all the way through Universty and only 1%(probably less) have any level of fluency.

In my University of 20,000 students there are about 4-5 students whose English is good enough for me to have a conversation. Including the teachers, there is only one person in the Entire college who I would say has excellent English.

So in short, take this with a pinch of salt, China does quantity, not quality.

MoreMoschops3• 16 years ago

You mean like the US government funded Peace Corp, who do teach English in China? To quote one statement, "Currently 114 Volunteers are teaching English in more than 62 universities, including five medical colleges and four vocational colleges".

jiberishcloth• 16 years ago

giardini• 16 years ago

Despite any teaching efforts I don't believe they will be _learning_ it soon, especially the written form. It takes years longer to learn any Chinese dialect than to learn English.

w1ntermute4• 16 years ago

It takes years longer to learn any Chinese dialect than to learn English.

Do you have any proof of this? It's not like Chinese is inherently more difficult than English. You are underestimating the difficulty of learning English as a second language for a native Chinese speaker.

thailandstartup• 16 years ago

I believe it is inherently more difficult - http://www.pinyin.info/readings/texts/moser.html

rsheridan6• 16 years ago

How many of these kids will actually achieve any sort of fluency in Mandarin? When I was in school, everybody took easy languages like French and Spanish, and almost none of them ended up with any sort of fluency. How are they going to handle a hard language like Mandarin?

I'm not against learning a second language (I took 4 semesters of non-required elective language classes and then learned over 2000 kanji on my own), but if you go into it half-assed it's a waste of time.

sabat• 16 years ago

In the 1980s, we used to get articles about how we'd all better start learning Japanese. Now it's the Chinese.

I'll believe it when I see it actually happen.

ImFatYoureFat• 16 years ago

The problem with this (at least in theory) is that unless US schools devote as much time to learning mandarin, or spanish for that matter, as chinese and taiwanese schools spend teaching english the effort is useless. I have studied mandarin for several years and traveling to anywhere outside of rural china makes my efforts seem largely pointless. There is always a chinese person who speaks far better english than I do mandarin. Essentially unless these schools plan on starting kids in mandarin from kindergarten an going through high school and using it for at least 3 hours every school day, these kids are never going to catch up to chinese children's second language proficiency.

Jd3• 16 years ago

Moreover, the Chinese do not want to speak Chinese with you but would prefer English.

That said, this is only true in certain circumstances and among the younger generation. Among bureaucrats, for example, you will be hard pressed to find good English spakers.

Spreadsheet• 16 years ago

wo zhi dao zhong wen

kiba2• 16 years ago

We should learn X language for X reasons!

Seriously though, it's like saying that you should get a liberal art education. Most people will just goes around carrying quadratical equations, biology trivia, bad impression of Shakespeare and biased historical views and other sort of random information. Now we will remember random Chinese characters and Chinese phrases too. They are certainly useless to the average Joe because they're just a bunch of disconnected facts.

There's no emphasis on teaching people to be rational thinkers who can make use of said random information or learn to cope with imperfect information. It's hard to teach anyway. Can you imagine finding 6 million teachers who know these kind of stuff? Never mind launching a serious Chinese language program so that we don't get people who only know random amount of stuff about the Chinese language.

tkahn6• 16 years ago

It's a very common thing to hear that eventually Chinese will become the language of commerce. I think this is wrong for a few reasons.

1. Chinese is relatively hard to learn

2. English is relatively easy to learn

3. English is part of the standard curriculum in most of the world's schools and therefore has immense momentum.

4. Despite America's economic troubles, I believe we're still the leaders in technological innovation. It's my impression that China's economy is fundamentally based on manufacturing and exporting Western products. How many original and innovative products have come out of China in comparison to the US?

I think Chinese is a good language to learn if you're involved with manufacturing and international business, but English will remain the language of technology.

mootothemax• 16 years ago

1. Chinese is relatively hard to learn 2. English is relatively easy to learn

I think that depends on what your native language is. Certainly I know that Chinese people struggle with English.

blintson• 16 years ago

I lived in Japan for two months. I've been to China for a week. I'm fluent in Japanese and I've taken a Mandarin class.

There is no doubt in my mind that English is the superior language and we'd all be better off if the Chinese would learn English rather than the other way around.*

* We'd probably be better off still if we all learned Esperanto, oh well.

Jd3• 16 years ago

I spent several years of my life learning Mandarin and, although I am about ready to enter a Masters program so that I will become proficient in both Japanese and Classical Chinese, I strongly doubt the utility of any and all of the above for most professionals. While there is certainly a large degree of discipline and effort necessary to be fluent in these languages (I am technically fluent in both Mandarin and German, although technical fluency seems a low bar to meet) this means little all things considered.

Why? Ask yourself what you will do with the language once you have learned it. Unless you have a strong interest in classical literature or contemporary politics, both of which would essentially making the transition to an academic career, it is hard to justify the time invested in learning such a language, esp. when the best and brightest speakers of that language also speak yours and have more hours (cumulative over more than a decade) to become proficient in yours than you do for theirs.

Now, you might say, what if I go to China and attempt to make something of myself among the economic maelstrom?

Well, what exactly will you do? Have you thought that far ahead? I was there, in several cities, with part-time work as a translator among other things. My experience and the experience of close associates is that, despite frantic generation of infrastructure and cheap consumer products for sale in the United States, there simply isn't a lot going on that would qualify as "interesting," and "interesting" and "challenging" work is what I personally thrive on. Also, since you cannot be a Chinese factory worker, you will be limited to making dubious investments with generally disreputable business partners (see the China Law Blog, an excellent resource on this topic and the enforced opacity of the Chinese Legal system), or serving as a middleman for cheap consumer products. You could also try to promote human rights or green tech but, frankly, why do you need to go overseas to do that? There are lots of opportunities in the US to promote environmental consciousness or reduce sex slavery.

Moreover, from what folks who invest at a much higher level than I have access to, corruption is rampant and infects virtually every aspect of public life and the necessary shift to transparency which should accompany liberalization (e.g. open media) has not happened, meaning that corruption often increases instead of being exposed (reporters are routinely dismissed who do not tow the party line).

So learn Mandarin, sure, if you are really interested in it. I spent approximately four years of my life on it, worked as a translator, co-founded for a non-profit dedicated to China-related issues, worked in a think tank on economic policy and China. I learned a lot about how the world works and, ultimately, how poorly it all works.

Of course, it might also be an eye-opening experience as to what is happening in the United States. Another commentator on this thread remarked how trade will optimally decrease wars. Yes, it is possible to subject virtually everything to an economic motive and many policy makers in the United States seem to see complete integration of Chinese and American systems as an ideal. Decide for yourself what that means.

wondermnd• 16 years ago

Not a total waste. At least you will get better service at the local Chinese restaurant....

But seriously, from the tech angle, China is becoming a dominant force in the global technology supply chain, whether it be services or products. Trying to depend on English only as the sole form of communication is not efficient in long term. It will indeed become much more useful in commerce. At the very least some immersion in the language will allow you to understand a little bit about the culture and country, which is actually much more important....

Jd3• 16 years ago

Please explain why dependency on a single language that everyone knows as the sole form of communication is less efficient than multiple languages.

Please also explain which global tech sectors China is becoming a dominant force in.

As for immersion and understanding the culture, I completely agree.

dublinclontarf2• 16 years ago

I don't think I can upvote this comment enough (only once sadly), especially China law blog (it's really good). Yes Chinese is an interesting language (I love it's lack of or minimalistic grammar), and the character system though difficult is flexible enough to become the writing system of any spoken language in the world.

But knowing Chinese is not much of an ecomomic advantage, it's better than knowing nothing but it's not worth the effort. I'm learning out of nessisty, osmossis if you will. Living here and my wife being Chinese(although that made no difference, she speaks English to me all the time and hasn't got the patience to help me learn) I kind of have to.

When I leave (and for most people that's a certainty) I'll be able to appear a little snobbish, "oh you can speak Chinese, how wonderful".

foulmouthboy• 16 years ago

I am very discouraged by how dismissive most of the comments are in regards to learning another language regardless of what it is. I thought this was a group of HACKERS. Understanding another language, especially one as challenging as Mandarin is beneficial education to learning the capabilities, strengths and structures of communication.

To me, the "English is enough", is totally akin to fanboy mentalities surrounding technology. I supposed you've only bothered to learn C or Java and are completely indifferent to even bothering with any other language. Obviously, this is an extremely limited view.

Additionally, exposure to another language provides exposure to other cultures. In this day and age of internationalization, exposure to a variety of cultures beyond what's within walking distance is extremely important.

I know a lot of HNers are dismissive of formal education in general, and maybe knowing Chinese isn't directly applicable to most, but come on. We need to teach our kids early on that it's OK to learn for the sake of learning

silencio• 16 years ago

Agreed. Even worse are the comments talking about how difficult Mandarin/Chinese is to learn compared to English, so let's just stick to Spanish and French. Well, I wonder just how many people learned English or a similar language as their first language. Some people fluent in some languages are going to find another that is completely different to be difficult. Welcome to reality. (Although if my high school foreign language classes were any indication, similarity of languages was something most people had a very hard time grasping...only a few could see that Spanish/French/Portuguese had some things in common and took advantage of that to learn languages faster. We had a mandatory Spanish 1/French 1 freshman year curriculum, and some people just struggled the whole year long and chose the language they struggled with less for the next year.)

> In this day and age of internationalization, exposure to a variety of cultures beyond what's within walking distance is extremely important.

My first languages were English and Korean, and I had no difficulty whatsoever in a couple semesters' worth of Mandarin classes, and I'd like to think I can hold some kind of basic conversation in Mandarin and understand basic written Chinese text. The downside of trying to use my knowledge though, is realizing just how little i18n/L10n support there is in applications out there (for starters...TextMate completely fails because it assumes fixed-width - see http://img.skitch.com/20100724-kcjdt411djee6u59p4pc9x5qe6.jp...). If for that reason only, hackers should care :)

For what it is worth, I've taken a bunch of language courses just for the hell of it. Languages intrigue me, even if I never end up speaking it ever again (ask me how often I speak Spanish in Los Angeles....never...). I never did it for any economic advantage, I'm probably never going to spend more than a week of my life in China as a tourist, but it's interesting. I can walk around in Chinatown and understand what signs say, I know how to address people correctly, et cetera. That's all.

Foreign Languages Fade in Class — Except Chinese

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