It’s been a great week for discussion and debate. I have all of you, the Big Brain, to thank for some tremendous ideas and suggestions. Here are just a few of the things I’ve learned this week from the Big Brain:
- Some people actually want the ‘brute force’ approach to language learning. Now, I have to be frank about this: Although I’m more open to the concept now, I must admit that, I used to call such adherents the ‘language fascists’ (I was young and hyper-liberal at the time!). Although I still do not accept the brute force approach philosophically, I’ve come to see this as a matter of choice – if people want it, you have to give it to them! (The ‘language fascists’ are not to be confused with the ‘language rapists’.)
- People feel very strongly about pronunciation, one way or the other. We haven’t been doing enough to accommodate that at ChinesePod. Regardless of philosophy or methodologies there are many things we could be doing to tackle pronunciation head on. I will see to this.
- We must never lose the can-do spirit. Every topic (even memorization and pronunciation) can be made interesting if we want to make it so. I’ve now got a lot of ideas on how to make pronunciation drills interesting, even cognitive! (Give me some time to test them.)
- We need to find ways to embed classifiers/measure words more effectively into the lessons. We haven’t done enough of this.
- We must continue to take an eclectic approach to the lessons. Every teacher’s teaching style is heavily influenced by his learning style, but not all learners are alike. We must accommodate differences.
- Learners are very clear on what they want. Even if they ask for things that may be theoretically suspect, we need to provide them, not because we pander, but because perceptions influence learning. If it motivates learning, then it can’t be all bad! (I’m not referring to anything specific here, in case you’re wondering.)
-It’s critical to spell out technical terms clearly before entering into a debate.
These are just some of the issues that came up on the blog. There’s another whole stream of feedback that Rian puts into a weekly report. Feedback - can’t get enough of it! (Maybe I can put one of his reports online, so you can see that your suggestions are taken on board.)
Ken Carroll
Not sure if this is possible, but in an idea. I really like the new pinyin chart and I thinking it would be really good if you dragged and drop selected syllables from the chart into a sentence and then it would tell you if the sentence is grammically correctly or not and also give you an audio pronounciation of the whole sentence.
I know that paragraph isn’t grammatically correct. LOL
Bazza,
In real conversation, no-one speaks English ‘correctly’. And here’s a little secret for you: it’s the same in Chinese!
Ken
Ken,
There you go again–listening to your customers! What a concept!
I look forward to some of these changes.
I got bored once and made a pinyin chart that when you clicked on it it played the sound for that word in the four tones… I havn’t seen the Chart that Bazza is refering to so maybe it already does this (I was going to make mine so that you chose the tone but that just never happned) Oh I got the sounds from the guy who does ADSO btw.
Bazzas idea would also be implementable from your wordbank.
Anyway I’ll be back fully on the learning band wagon in 2-3 weeks.. So i’ll resume my membership then
For the spoken part: OK.
But for the characters: There are actually other approaches to learning those apart from brute force?
Absolutely!
Henning,
You’ve asked a great question. I have a thrilling new angle (well, thrilling for me) that I want to develop in the near future, and it has to do with learning characters. For now, however, I think there are still some issues we need to resolve on the question of pronunciation. I’d like to keep that discussion going for another short while as ther are some important issues we haven’t really looked at. After that we can move on to the next theme - probably characters - possibly late next week.
Ken
Very timely Ken,
I am tying to put together some ideas for how to learn characters, I want to get a head start in a similar sort of way to the extensive listening I did at firt to get a feel for the sound of Chinese. I am stil feeling out how to do this. Instinctively there must be a better way to learn to read Chinese than scratching away producing precise characters for hours on end.
For want of something better to do I spend a few minutes a day working the different strokes with a pen. One site very helpfully described the strokes as a kind of alphabet for drawing characters. I just draw lines of simple strokes in different patterns and am building up the speed. The aim is to be able to dash of any stroke quickly and be able to easily spot the strokes used in the contruction of any character I see.
There is also a very good website that (I haven’t got the link on me). That teaches you how to read resurant signs and menus. This strikes me as good eye and basic concept familarisation. After one lunchtime on this site I was delighted to confirm the gold in “golden fields” resturant and see that the resturant calling itself “China Garden” is actually using characters “Jade Garden” (all on the way to work).
Charles, that’s exactly what it does, you can pick an individual tone or set it to play all 4 one after the other.
Ken writes: >>Some people actually want the ‘brute force’ approach to language learning. Now, I have to be frank about this: Although I’m more open to the concept now, I must admit that, I used to call such adherents the ‘language fascists’ (I was young and hyper-liberal at the time!).
This remark has been in the back of my mind for the past few days. Maybe because I’ve decided to take a more brutal approach to learning Chinese, at least till my current enthusiasm and energy wane, ha ha, and I return to learning it more gently.
My question is: What is the connection between “brute force” and “language fascism”? I thought “brute force” referred to a more intensive approach to language learning, kick-a**, stuffing 50 new characters a day into your brain, etc. etc. More gung-ho than anything. But “language fascists” (I had to look up examples of the term online) are like “language purists,” like the Academie Francaise, or my classics professor who often mentioned with disapproval, “In my day, the correct pronunciation of ‘pejorative’ had the accent on the first syllable”– very intolerant of mistakes/deterioration in the language. (I just thought– PEE-jurative? How stupid sounding)
So, to me anyway, “brute force” refers to HOW you learn (intensively) but “language fascism” refers to your attitude AFTER you have learned… So what does Ken (or anyone) mean by “brute force” if not an intensive approach to language learning? Does “brute force” include “strict perfectionism” as well?
Anyway, my take on “character learning” is– since I can barely keep a character in my visual memory long enough to look it up in the dictionary– my lifesaver has been to learn to recognize the radicals, and instead of “seeing” the character in my mind’s eye, I have to think of it in more verbal terms of identification– i.e. “the mu radical, then the lid thing on top, then the thing that looks like crossed swords underneath” which is– 校. Eventually my visual memory does recognize it and make the direct connection, but visual memory is my slowest learner. Perhaps visual memory will sharpen as it is used more. I have more to say on memory and language learning past age 40 (being 13 months qualified to comment on the subject– of being past 40, not learning Chinese) but that will be for another post. (One thing I’ve found out, I definitely tend to opine more about learning than I used to, because opining is more fun than learning characters
) Oh gosh, I have a (male) friend who is constantly going on and on about the “nature of our friendship” and I just want to say sometimes, Just stop commenting on it, it’s driving me crazy! But he genuinely seems to enjoy the philosophical ruminations for their own sake. Maybe I will do the same with learning Chinese.
Kaiselin
Kaiselin,
My interpretation of the ‘brute force’ method is when the teacher isolates an item (or mistake, or structure) and hammers it through drills or repetition. As the expression implies the brute force method is no fun. It takes the learning out of the hands of the learner and places it in the hands of a (biased) task master. The focus, by definition, is on the micro-level stuff that operates below the level of meaning. You really have to wonder howlong anyone could concentrate on that sort of thing.
I don’t think real learning ever has to be ‘no pain, no gain’, so I don’t see the point of brute force. Nor does brute force have a analogy in nature. Real learning is cognitive and sub-conscious. It doesn’t have to be fun, fun, but it has to be cerebral and allow mthe learner to think for herself.
Ken Carroll
Kaiselin in NC said:
‘Anyway, my take on “character learning” is– since I can barely keep a character in my visual memory long enough to look it up in the dictionary– my lifesaver has been to learn to recognize the radicals, and instead of “seeing” the character in my mind’s eye, I have to think of it in more verbal terms of identification– i.e. “the mu radical, then the lid thing on top, then the thing that looks like crossed swords underneath” which is– 校. Eventually my visual memory does recognize it and make the direct connection, …’
Huh? I thought everyone did it that way. Expecially the bit about lid things… and crossed legs, striped boxes, TV antennas, elbows, …
I have a book on (conversational) Sanskrit that purports to teach using the Microwave method. I’m not sure what it is, but it seems to involve immersing yourself slowly by bombarding yourself with low amplitude Sanskrit waves. No, really, has anyone else heard of this as a language teaching method?