Chinese vs. English Language Learning

Culture vs. Methods, or Culture because of Methods?

Does language determine culture and thinking? In other words, does your mother tongue drive cultural developments, biases, and tendencies?

Perhaps, but I want to ponder a slightly different question:

Does how you learn a language determine culture and thinking?

I got to thinking about this during an event at my son’s bilingual school in Shanghai, where they strive for complete fluency in both Mandarin and English, with daily work and instruction split between the two. The two languages were often used the same way, in the same subjects, at the same school.

What was NOT at all the same was how the two languages themselves were taught. This as brought home in the parent event when Chinese parents were asking why the English curriculum was so messy, with so many materials, not standardized like Chinese.

Teaching English

English was being taught via a familiar set of UK and USA methods, using a variety of materials, videos, texts, and assignments that would fit in anywhere. These were quite diverse and drew on the deep wealth of materials and methods available from the best schools, resources, and research from around the world.

English is taught many ways.

There were various focal points, from handwriting and punctuation to grammar and structure, to vocabulary and reading, and finally, to comprehension and formation of ideas well-articulated. And remember, this is in elementary school.

This was all, to me at least, familiar and presumably effective.

Teaching Chinese

Chinese learning struck me as very different.

There was a great emphasis right from the beginning on ancient texts, especially poems, and in understanding their deep meaning and symbology. Apparently, this is standard practice, but struck me as an odd way to teach a language.

Know it all, but know it none

For example, I read some of my son’s Chinese lessons during remote learning last spring, and while I knew every word, character, and meaning, I had no idea what the point or message was. This was kinda bizarre, though not altogether unlike when we might read an old English poem and not grasp the meaning.

But it was all obvious to my Chinese wife, in part as she learned the same poems as a child. But she thought it just obvious to everyone. This struck me as a VERY unusual situation, and completely unlike the situation in English - if you are a non-native English speaker but know every word and meaning of a child’s English story, you darn well should understand the story - yet this was not the case in my son’s lesson.

This was weird.

Maybe this is why Chinese & Westerners have such divergent views & understanding of things, but it also begs the question of whether or not this is the best way to teach kids this language, or prepare them for 21st Century life.

And does this type of teaching affect these kids’ learning style, ability to think critically or outside the box, or create innovation? I imagine it must, but it’s not clear anyone is pondering this.

Who needs grammar?

Handwriting and characters are of course critical in Chinese, and oft-practiced, but there seemed to be an almost complete lack of grammar, vocabulary, or really any formal language ‘instruction’ at all. It seems you should “absorb” it somehow. From old abstract texts.

It’s like teaching language by osmosis, which is in itself not a bad thing, and in fact, forms the basis of the Pimsleur Approach that I am very fond of. But, Pimsleur uses standard texts and vocabulary, not 16th century Chaucer, so one wonders if this is a feature or a bug of Chinese language learning.

In addition, Chinese is taught using strict methods and materials, without supplements or external resources. This is good, in that it ensures every student gets the same material, but also lacks flexibility for student needs or advances in educational research. It appears to have changed little in decades.

Overall

Chinese is hard to learn, or so think the Chinese, and it takes a long time.

But I wonder if learning Chinese this way makes it much harder and slower than it really needs to be. After all, it’s visually complex, but structurally simple, with no gender, conjugation, or other things that complicate many languages.

Perhaps I’m overstating all this and am missing something, as this was just my observation in a single school, but the difference was still startling, and seemingly worthy of further pondering.

I also wonder if other regions teach Chinese differently, say in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore, and if that impacts kids’ thinking. Their students seem to grow up being more flexible and less tradition-minded, so is that from other types of instruction, more modern culture or perspectives, or something else?

For example, our Chinese employees were often very anti-abstract, focused on very practical and execution-oriented details, struggling with abstract broad technical concepts, which is odd given such abstract education. Further pondering needed.

In the end, perhaps it’s wise to try teaching Chinese more like other languages, as frankly, having followed my son’s learning, it makes less sense to me. I’m not convinced the ’tried and true’ methods have actaully been that effective the last few decades, as using old abstract texts seems confusing, and really requires leaps of odd thinking & imagination, and ends up with what everyone agrees is a difficult process.