Advice for Those Teaching and Learning Chinese

Recently, a br. preparing to put together a Mandarin course for those interested in the Chinese field asked me to share with him any advice I had to give. The points I shared with him, based on my own years of experience as a Mandarin teacher and student, and that I find are agreed upon by those I've spoken to with experience in the Mandarin-learning process, are below. (The points generally apply for Cantonese as well.) I hope they will be found to be helpful.

• Emphasize the need to learn the pinyin and the tones very well from the very start, and to be disciplined about getting them right.


• These are the foundation for how the students will hear and speak Mandarin. If the foundation of a house is not laid right, the whole structure will suffer every day after that.


• Especially for students who have not been exposed to the alien sounds and tones of Mandarin before, the beginning is when students are forming habits re the languages, and a little extra time and effort spent getting it right at the beginning can save possibly years of time and effort unlearning and overcoming bad habits and errors that would otherwise be picked up.


• Getting good at the “sound” of Mandarin is like learning a new musical instrument. One has to understand the theory, but there is also no substitute for “hands-on” practice, because physical mechanisms of one’s body are involved—one’s hearing mechanism has to learn to properly distinguish the sounds of Mandarin (Job 12:11), and one’s speech mechanism and the involved muscles, etc. have to learn to produce those sounds. Practice is what allows those mechanisms to develop the “muscle memory”, nerve connections, etc. that will allow them to eventually distinguish and produce the right sounds without conscious thought, like a good pianist can play faster than his mind can consciously guide his fingers, because through practice his fingers have “learned” and “remembered” on their own how to do so.


• Emphasize the need for the students to work out regular, ongoing arrangements for themselves to keep learning after the course is over, perhaps by choosing projects for themselves.


• Some have noticed a tendency for Mandarin students to progress to a certain level as a result of their initial Mandarin course, then “plateau” or even gradually decline after that if they don’t do anything specific to counter it.


• “Use it or lose it” has been found to truly apply to learning and using languages!


• Persistent progress over an extended time, even if it's slow, adds up. That ends up with better results than quick progress for a short time, followed by neglect—one should be like the tortoise, not the hare.


• Some may feel that they are not making much progress, even though they have been trying for an extended time. Actually, they probably have been making gradual progress without noticing it. E.g., as one stares at an analogue clock with just hour & minute hands, it does not seem to be moving. However, if one gets busy with something and checks back later, as long as the clock mechanism was working, one will see that the clock hands have indeed moved. Progress in Mandarin can be like that, as long as we have a learning mechanism set up and it keeps working.

Update: There is a very good article that language-learners should read in the January 8, 2000, issue of Awake!, pages 12-13, called “You Can Learn Another Language!”. It is currently online here.

Update: This subject is explored in more depth in the “General Advice for Those Teaching and Learning Chinese” series of posts over at tiandi.info, starting with this one.