Two types of Chinese classes are commonly seen: intensive and extensive.
Intensive Chinese classes are most likely offered through summer programs at colleges and universities outside China and through year-round programs in China.
Students enrolled in this type of class have three or more contact hours of Chinese every day. On the other hand, the term extensive refers to those Chinese classes that meet one hour a day, four or five times a week. Another difference between
intensive and extensive classes is that students who take intensive Chinese are not likely to take any other subjects or classes at the same time, whereas for students of extensive classes, Chinese is only one of the perhaps three to five courses they take as a full-time student. The differences between the two types of classes determine the way and the speed in which students in these classes learn Chinese and, indeed, call upon teachers to use different teaching techniques to coordinate with students’ learning patterns and enhance their learning progress.
Traditional intensive Chinese classes favor the “duck-feeding,” or, rather, teacher-centered method. That is, in this class, teachers give lectures on how to speak, listen, read, and write Chinese and students digest the content after class.
In the last several decades, intensive classes, such as those offered at the Chinese Summer School at Middlebury College and many American university-sponsored study abroad programs, are divided into four segments: (1) the full-size class (大 班, dà bān) with 20 to 25 students; (2) the medium-size class (中班, zhōng bān) with approximately 10 students; (3) the small-size class (小班, xiăo bān) with approximately 5 students; and (4) the individual session (个别谈话, gèbié tánhuà).
Each of these four segments has its own function: the full-size class is designated for lectures and some practice; the medium-size class for further explanation, practice and comprehension of key language components of that day; the small-size class for practice speaking and grammatical elements, and the individual session for helping students with their own questions and problems in learning the materials covered on that day. This model has been used successfully for years at Middlebury language schools. It seems that the key factor in the success of this model is that teachers there use a student-centered method in all segments of the class. Needless to say, the particular setting of the Middlebury intensive classes, the adoption of a total immersion policy and teacher training, as well as division of classes into four segments have also contributed to the success.
Other than using a student-centered approach, providing challenging content and enrichment opportunities are two other characteristics necessary to successful teaching and learning within the intensive Chinese class environment. Students who choose to take intensive Chinese are often those who have both the desire and determination to acquire a high degree of language competence in a relatively short period of time. In other words, these are highly motivated students and the degree of motivation is directly proportional to the level of challenge a teacher can introduce into the lesson. Because of this, teachers in this environment can challenge students at every level of learning by providing diverse and exciting learning opportunities and giving them new tasks daily so that by the end of each day, each week, each month, students will experience a sense of achievement (cf.
Walker 1989 and Kubler 1997).
Students enrolled in Chinese classes of the extensive type make up a majority of the total population of those students studying Chinese as FL. This student population varies substantially from that of intensive classes in terms of motivation, background and purpose in learning the language. It is, therefore, to a certain extent, more challenging to teach extensive classes than intensive classes.
Even though the student-centered method may still be the most favored in extensive classes, the challenging approach may not work here because it may scare potential good students away from the class by piling too much on too quickly. Hence, at the beginning of extensive classes, the teacher needs to determine the motivation, background and purpose of each student who has signed up for the class, and then plan lessons and choose teaching techniques accordingly. For highly motivated students, the challenging approach may be useful. Students with a Chinese background may require more reading and writing lessons. Students taking Chinese because their parents want them to or only to fulfill a certain requirement will present the biggest challenge because, teachers have to find ways to engage students’ own interest in learning the language.
Finally, students who want to learn the language, but are not good at it challenge teachers to be patient and work continuously to build their confidence in this foreign language-learning environment.
3.6 Accuracy
For more than twenty years, teachers and researchers have been divided into two camps over the issue of accuracy in teaching and learning Chinese as FL. The main issue concerned here is with accuracy of students’ competence in using and communicating in Chinese. Although this is not an issue that arose exclusively within the field of teaching Chinese as FL (see Van Ek 1976, Widdowson 1978, Rivers 1983, Zimmerman 1997, Nation 2001), it has certainly engendered numerous exciting debates, sometimes emotional and personal, among Chinese teachers. One camp may be classified as “the accuracy-oriented” group and the other as “the proficiency-oriented” group. The accuracy-oriented group asserts the importance of teaching students to use correct tones, grammar and discourse connectors in conversation and accuses the proficiency-oriented group of only paying attention to reaching a certain communicative goal without accurate use of grammar. The proficiency-oriented group, on the other hand, argues that since the purpose of acquiring a foreign language is to develop students’ communicative competence in Chinese, it is most important to teach students how to reach a certain communication goal. For example, when teaching students how to order in a Chinese restaurant, the proficiency camp emphasizes teaching students how to be understood when ordering their dish without worrying about achieving perfect tones or syntax, whereas those in the accuracy camp insist that accurate grammar and tones be used with accuracy translating into communicative competence.
Observant teachers soon realize that the disagreement between the two camps is not substantial and can be modified relatively easily so that both camps’ points of view can be integrated and incorporated, i.e. proficiency with accuracy. Using this approach, students may have to learn the topic-comment structure to effectively and accurately order a dish at a restaurant, as demonstrated below:
(3.2) 服务员： 你们想吃点什么？
fúwùyuán: nĭmen xiăng chī diăn shénme?
[Waiter： What do you want to eat?]
学生： 有没有什么特别的中国菜？
xuéshēng: yŏu méiyŏu shénme tèbié de zhōngguó cài?
[Student: Do you have any special Chinese dish?]
服务员： 有、有、有。比如：红烧茄子、糖醋鱼、酸辣汤什么的。
fúwùyuán: yŏu, yŏu, yŏu. bĭrú: hóngshāo qiézi, tángcù yú, suānlà tāng shénme de.
[Waiter: Certainly. For instance, (we have) eggplant sautéed in soy sauce, sweet-and-sour fish, hot-and-sour soup, etc.]
学生： 红烧茄子有什么好吃的？
xuéshēng: hóngshāo qiézi yŏu shénme hăochī de?
[Student: Eggplant sautéed in soy sauce? How good is that?]
服务员： 那你要个糖醋鱼吧？！
fúwùyuán: nà nĭ yào ge tángcù yú ba!
[Waiter: Then, how about sweet-and-sour fish?!]
学生： 糖醋鱼是不是有很多糖？
xuéshēng: tángcù yú shì bú shì yŏu hĕnduō táng?
[Student: Is there a lot of sugar in sweet-and-sour fish?]
服务员： 有一些糖，有一些醋。甜甜的，酸酸的，好吃极了。
fúwùyuán: yŏu yixiē táng, yŏu yixiē cù. tiétié de, suānsuān de, hăochī jíle.
[Waiter: There is some sugar and some vinegar. It is a bit of sweet and a bit of sour.
It tastes really good.]
学生： 可是，我是学生，没有很多钱。糖醋鱼是不是很贵？
xuéshēng: kĕshì, wŏ shì xuéshēng, méiyŏu hĕnduō qián. tángcù yú shì bú shì hĕn guì?
[Student: But, I am a student and do not have a lot of money. Is sweet-and-sour fish very expensive?]
服务员： 不太贵。九块钱一个。
fúwùyuán: bú tài guì. jiǔ kuài qián yigè.
[Waiter: Not really. It is $9 each.]
学生： 好吧。不过吃了糖醋鱼，晚上就没钱再买饭了。
xuéshēng: hăo ba. buguò chī le tángcù yú, wănshàng jiù méiyŏu qián zài măi fàn le.
[Student: Okay. But if I have sweet-and-sour fish, I won’t have money to buy anymore food later.]
In this dialogue, when the student seeks information from the waiter, it is natural to use the topic-comment construction (i.e. 红烧茄子有什么好吃的？
hóngshāo qiézi yŏu shénme hăochī de？糖醋鱼是不是有很多糖？tángcù yú shì bú shì yŏu hĕn duō táng?) This is also true of the waiter’s direct answer. Although the topic-comment construction may not be the only construction suitable for this situation, it appears if students learn some typical patterns that work in a certain situation, it will increase the proficiency as well as the accuracy of communication.
3.7 Conclusion
This chapter has introduced and discussed a number of approaches, models, and factors relevant to the methodology of teaching Chinese as FL. Now, can we draw a definite conclusion regarding which method is the best? Probably not. Every comparison is relative and based on when, where, why and how of the teaching and learning, how these are conducted over time and who is involved in the process. One method may turn out disastrous when employed by one teacher, but may be successfully implemented by another and vice versa. Similarly, an effective method used in one program does not necessarily guarantee its effectiveness in another. All these variables oblige teachers to assess students and curriculum anew in each class situation before determining which teaching method should be used in class. It is certainly true that some methods are, in general, better than others, but no method is always better than another.
Experienced teachers change their teaching strategies when they teach different classes, or when the learning environment and schedules change; flexibility, sensitivity to students’ need and adaptability are three of the most important tools in any teacher’s pedagogical toolbox.
Pronunciation
4.1 Introduction
Tone (声调, shēngdiào) is one of the two most distinctive features separating Chinese from Indo-European and many other languages in the world (the other feature is the writing system to be discussed in Chapter 5). Every Chinese character has a tone and every tone is built in lexicon, which means tone affects the meaning of words. Because of this property, Chinese tones have attracted not only numerous linguists and Chinese philologists to investigate their characteristics and functions, but also specialists on Chinese language acquisition who try to discover an effective way for students of Chinese as FL to acquire tonal competence. Although studies show that the modern dialects of Chinese present a wide variety of tonal systems ranging from three to ten different tones (Chen 2000: 13–19), this chapter only discusses the tonal system and tonal acquisition of Mandarin Chinese. Among the many modern Chinese linguists, Chào Yuán-rèn (赵元任) is considered one of the most versatile scholars who not only helped to shape the field of modern Chinese linguistics, but also made an immeasurable contribution to the field of Chinese pedagogy. He developed a method to measure the four tones in Mandarin Chinese on a pitch scale of 5 (Chao 1930), as illustrated below. This tool helped unravel the mystery of Chinese tones.
Tone 1: high level 55 as in mā 妈 “mother” or in wēn 温 “warm”
Tone 2: middle rising 35 as in má 麻 “hemp” or in wén 闻 “hear”
Tone 3: low falling rising 214 as in mă 马 “horse” or in wĕn 吻 “kiss”
Tone 4: high falling 51 as in mà 骂 “curse” or in wèn 问 “ask”
The four different diacritics over the vowels illustrated above represent the four tones in Mandarin Chinese. They are so simple and easy to understand that they, in the years since their first publication, have become the most commonly used teaching and research method describing the four tones. Notice that each tone has at least two numbers to describe pitch range: the first number stands for the starting pitch value and the last number for its ending pitch value. The middle number, shown for the third tone, stands for the point of changing pitch contour.
4
The duration of each pitch range stays approximately the same as that of a syllable final accompanying the tone (e.g. ā, én, iăo, ìng). In addition to the four distinctive tones, Mandarin also has a neutral tone most likely attached to function words (e.g. le “aspect marker”, ma “interrogative marker”, de “possessive marker”), second character of compound words (e.g. 漂亮 piàoliang “beautiful”
and 认识 rènshi “to recognize”), or reduplicated words as in bàba 爸爸 “dad”, māma 妈妈 “mom”, jiĕjie 姐姐 “older sister”, etc. Unlike the four tones discussed above, the neutral tone is normally unmarked. Occasionally, one may see a little circle above to mark the neutral tone (e.g. å), but most teachers and researchers simply do not mark it.
After Chao’s introduction of marking tones with numeral numbers, many researchers began to pay attention to issues relevant to the perception and production of these four tones by both native Chinese children, students of Chinese as FL, and researchers (Chao 1948b, Kiriloff 1969, Cheng 1973, Li and Thompson 1977, Yue-Hashimoto 1980, Shen 1985, Miracle 1989, Repp and Lin 1990, Fox and Qi 1990, Blicher et al. 1990, Chen 1997, McGinnis 1997). The results of these studies have benefited Chinese teachers by improving their understanding of the characteristics of tones and their behaviors in acquisition.
However, it is not clear how many teachers are willing to incorporate those research results into teaching Chinese as FL, either because of their limited knowledge of the physiology involved in tone production or because of the complex concept involved in perception, which will be addressed in Section 4.3.
Another issue that has attracted many researchers’ and teachers’ attention is tone sandhi, which refers to the situation in which certain tones adjacent to one another in natural oral discourse, change in consequence of this juxtaposition.
Mandarin has a number of instances of tone sandhi; however, I will focus only on the three cases that students have to learn in order to achieve communicative tonal competence. The first and the most important tone sandhi in Mandarin involves the third tone. When two third-tones are next to each other, the first third tone usually transforms into the second tone. Also, when the third tone is followed by any other tone, it transforms into a half third tone, namely the first half marked
“21” on the pitch scale (i.e. 214 => 21) (see Duanmu 2000: 237–54 for detailed discussion on tone 3 sandhi). The other two well-known cases of tone sandhi in Mandarin are related to the character 一 yī “one” and the character 不 bù “not”.
Both of the characters change their original tones (一 yī first tone and 不 bù fourth tone) when they are followed by the fourth tone; they either change to the second tone (e.g. 一个 yī gè => yí gè；不是 bù shì => bú shì) or change to the neutral tone (e.g. 一个 yī gè => yi gè；不是 bù shì => bu shì) depending upon speakers or discourse styles. If they are pronounced as the second tone, the words are likely emphasized in discourse. If they are pronounced as the neutral tone, however, they are likely unstressed (as used most in natural oral discourse).
When discussing tones, I must also mention pīnyīn (拼音). Pīnyīn, which is
“spelling and sound” in Chinese, is a Roman alphabet, diacritical mark notation system that indicates how a given character is pronounced. Pīnyīn consists of two
components: initials (声母, shēngmǔ) and finals (韵母, yùnmǔ). Mandarin Chinese has 23 initials and 34 finals, as shown in Tables 4.1 and 4.2 (cf. Chao 1948b, Li and Thompson 1981, Norman 1988).
Table 4.1 Initials in Mandarin Chinese
Labial b(u)o p(u)o m(u)o f(u)o wo
Alveolar de te ne le
Velar ge ke he
Palatal ji qi xi yi
Dental sibilant zi ci si
Retroflex zhi chi shi ri
For pronunciation reasons, a vowel is added to each of the initials listed in Table 4.1. The Table also uses the traditional order in which those initials are learned by native Chinese schoolchildren. Some teachers may introduce the contents of the Table as a sort of Chinese alphabet at the beginning levels, while others prefer to use more technical terms, such as initial, labial (唇音, chūn yīn), and retroflex (圈舌音, juănshé yīn). Among these 23 initials, the four retroflexes and three palatals (腭音 é yīn) have generated the most discussion among researchers and received the most attention from teachers and students due to the difficulty and complexity involved in the place and manner of articulation of those initials, which I will explain in more detail in Section 4.3.
Table 4.2 Finals in Mandarin Chinese a ai ao an ang
e ei en eng er
i ia iao ian iang ie iong iu in ing
u ua uai uan uang ui uo un
ou ong
ü üe üan ün
Most of the finals in Table 4.2 can define characters by themselves without an initial (e.g. 爱 ài “love”, 安 ān “peace”). A few others need an initial to complete them, such as lĕng 冷 “cold” or lóng 龙 “dragon”; Mandarin does not have a character pronounced eng or ong with or without a tone. When using Table 4.2, one should be aware that if a final begins with an i or u and is used without an initial, it is realized in pīnyīn orthography as y or w, as in ian=>yan and uan=>wan. If the final starts with ü and stands alone, y should be added to the pīnyīn representation, as üe=>yüe.
In the acquisition of Mandarin finals, those with the e and ü sound are most challenging to English students than the rest of the finals because English does not have either vowel. (For French students whose native language has the ü sound, however, only e is relatively difficult to acquire.) These facts suggest that whatever sounds (vowel or consonants) do not exist in students’ native language pose potential acquisition problems. It is essential for teachers to be fully aware of students’ background and difficulty, and more importantly, find suitable ways to tackle students’ difficulty and help them acquire pronunciation competence. This is the goal of this chapter. In the following section, I discuss the common teaching and learning models used by most universities and colleges in North America.
Then Section 4.3 offers some explanation of the common problems encountered during the pursuit of pronunciation competence. Finally, Section 4.4 recommends some activities that can help students learn tones and pīnyīn effectively.