learning chinese

[Neil_H]

The only English person I have ever met that can speak Chinese was an Auditor in to do the companies financial accounts back in the spring. Our accountant mentioned to me that he has lived in China so I thought I would go and test him whilst he was busy at the photo copier. I came up from behind him and said "Zhou Shung Hao" (not sure of spelling). He stopped like a man that had been shot in the back. He turned round and we talked some mandarin. He had lived in China for over a year during his University degree. He reminded me a bit of Mark Rosewell (Dar Shan) as his English seemed to be going a bit slurred at times. He had apparently lived out with the peasants at times during part of his study into Chinese people.

I would not be surprised if he had been a member on this forum at some point.

[zhen_shuai]

Ditto on the 'you're going to earning a lot of money comment'.

On the other hand there are lots of reasons why NOT learn Chinese: http://www.thechinaexpat.com/5-reasons-why-learning-chinese-could-be-a-waste-of-your-time/

I study Chinese because I find it intellectually stimulating and I enjoy being able to talk to people who don't speak English. The hardest thing about studying any language is that the only way you can justify the opportunity cost is it if you go all the way to near-native, at which point you've probably invested a couple of years.

On the other hand, as someone on that first website pointed out, "There’s more to life than opportunity costs."

My family complains about me always choosing sad Chinese movies. Seems like most Chinese movies are sad, though. Or at least the ones that get distributed overseas.

[gato]

My family complains about me always choosing sad Chinese movies. Seems like most Chinese movies are sad, though. Or at least the ones that get distributed overseas.

Yeah, the sad movies are usually banned in China. You'll find more happy movies if you stick with movies that are showing in China. Most of them are either comedies or pro-government propaganda.

[wushijiao]

On the other hand there are lots of reasons why NOT learn Chinese: http://www.thechinaexpat.com/5-reaso...-of-your-time/

I think that the sort of post (and that Economist article) has a lot of merit.

But, it's kind of nice to know that there's sort of a general, uninformed sentiment out there that "China will economically take over the world", "we need to all send our kids to learn Chinese", "studying Chinese is a way to get rich", and so on. I think, at the very least, those popularized notions build the market for a large amount of Chinese teachers and professors!

[realmayo]

those popularized notions build the market for a large amount of Chinese teachers and professors!

... but will they flood that market with Chinese-speaking Westerners?

[Meng Lelan]

But, it's kind of nice to know that there's sort of a general, uninformed sentiment out there that "China will economically take over the world", "we need to all send our kids to learn Chinese", "studying Chinese is a way to get rich", and so on. I think, at the very least, those popularized notions build the market for a large amount of Chinese teachers and professors!

That sentiment was very prevalent about a couple years ago but I'm not seeing this sentiment as much as I used to. The "learn-Chinese" momentum doesn't seem to be building up very much. Or maybe it's just what I'm seeing here in Texas, I don't know. Chinese teacher training programs are just starting to come up here in Texas but the supply of Chinese teaching jobs is really questionable.

[wushijiao]

Chinese teacher training programs are just starting to come up here in Texas but the supply of Chinese teaching jobs is really questionable.

Interesting. I wonder to what extent that has to do with the recession, and to what extent it had to do with pre-Olympics hype (in 2007 and 2008 )? In any case, I guess I had assumed that demand was only increasing.

... but will they flood that market with Chinese-speaking Westerners?

Haha...my guess is probably not (if decades of Spanish and French education is any sort of indicator)....

[Neil_H]

What sort of drop out rate is there once people start to find how hard it is to progress with Mandarin? I can imagine lots of people hearing the hype and starting the basic courses or buying the beginners books then reaching that hurdle and deciding it is too difficult to continue.

The teacher I met the other day said there were 16 people on her beginners course last season. This season only 4 came back to try the intermediate course. The course needed 10 people to run so it was cancelled.

This makes me think that going past the beginner stage to intermediate is where things get difficult from the language perspective and from the availability of training material and resources.

When speaking to the same teacher she told me she knew a lady who had been learning for over 10 years who was no better than my level.

[renzhe]

This makes me think that going past the beginner stage to intermediate is where things get difficult from the language perspective and from the availability of training material and resources.

Yes.

In many places, getting a university degree in Chinese is the only way to get courses going past the elementary level.

There are great resources available, great textbooks, great podcasts, and when you approach intermediate level, you can often profit from native-speaker materials like TV shows and books. But you need a tutor and/or lots of self-study.

The drop-out rate in most Chinese language courses that I've seen is staggering. I have yet to find an intermediate-level course here, even advanced beginner courses have all been cancelled.

[Meng Lelan]

This makes me think that going past the beginner stage to intermediate is where things get difficult from the language perspective and from the availability of training material and resources.

This proves to all of us that only loonies like 你和我 go beyond intermediate level. The Chinese School where I teach, we never have trouble finding absolute beginners (age high school and beyond) but after the first year they usually take off on their own - study abroad, marry a Chinese spouse, sign up for skype tutoring, etc. the possibilities are endless beyond the beginning class.

[zhen_shuai]

My first year class at university had 30 plus kids in it and there were two other sections, so all together there were something like 90 kids enrolled. By the second term that had dropped to two classes of maybe 20 students each and by the last term there were only about twenty students in both classes combined.

As far as advanced courses, I think there are 10 Chinese majors right now in a school of almost 30,000. I don't think we will be flooding the market any time soon!

[OneEye]

My first year class at university had 30 plus kids in it and there were two other sections' date=' so all together there were something like 90 kids enrolled. By the second term that had dropped to two classes of maybe 20 students each and by the last term there were only about twenty students in both classes combined.

As far as advanced courses, I think there are 10 Chinese majors right now in a school of almost 30,000. I don't think we will be flooding the market any time soon![/quote']

Sounds about like where I'll be next year. 275 students majoring in either Asian Studies or Asian Cultures and Languages out of 50,000 students in the university. The ACL program has 6 different languages to major in (Chinese, Hindi/Urdu, Japanese, Malayalam, Sanskrit, and Tamil), while the AS program has 2 regional specializations (East or South Asia). I can't imagine the number of Chinese majors is all that high.

[Scoobyqueen]

The drop-out rate in most Chinese language courses that I've seen is staggering.

My friend did Arabic for her degree. They started out with 60 students, with two graduating at the end. Would be interesting to see what drop out rate Chinese has at uni level.

[Meng Lelan]

That's absolutely staggering, scoobyqueen.

At my university in Illinois, there were 36,000 undergrads back in 1988. Thirty came for first year Chinese. I took second year Chinese in China, came back to take third year Chinese - only five students were in my 3rd year Chinese class.

[wushijiao]

Although, to put these crazy drop out rates for Chinese and Arabic into perspective, I think you'd have to compare them to less "exotic" languages- like Spanish or French. I bet at most universities there are around 10 times as many people at the 101 level in those languages compared to the higher levels. Nonetheless, I bet the drop out rate is much higher for Arabic or Chinese. However, I wonder to what extent that is due to people just giving up, and what to what extent is it due to people reckoning that they'll probably need to immerse (or study full time0 t succeed. Personally, I dropped out of college Chinese after one semester for that reason.

[kurii]

Speaking from observation, French and Japanese are the two most popular languages studied in my city. Only insanity would lead you to learn Chinese, I'd say, if you aren't ethnically Chinese. In my Uni, the Japanese Department is noticeably larger than the Chinese Department; Chinese courses on offer decline year by year. To save their jobs, the teaching staff customly design useless courses in line with the demands of Chinese students. These are 武侠小说欣赏, 中国电影鉴赏, 中国书法, just to name a few. To pass them requires no effort. Most people enroll to earn academic credit easily. There is a wee number of serious students though; basically white people.

[jbiesnecker]

My experience at university was similar to kurii's, though I graduated just at the beginning of the Chinese hype, in 2003. The Japanese department was about 5x larger, and actually granted a degree, whereas we just had a couple of courses (four, I believe, when I graduated, and anyone who wanted more would just do independent study with one of the professors).

I imagine the dropout rate for Chinese is still incredibly high, and probably higher now that it's a cool thing to do. The kids I took class with were pretty hardcore and motivated (having started before it was trendy), and they still dropped like flies.

[Meng Lelan]

kurii, I wonder where you are. Here in Texas, Japanese and American Sign Language are skyrocketing in popularity in the high schools.

[xiaocai]

One of the reasons might be that Japanese pop, and probably traditional now, culture is not only just five times more influential than its Chinese counterpart. How many kids will grow up without watching one Japanese anime series or playing one Japanese game? They all make up a significant positive (well, mostly) input into the image of Japan. But want you can learn about China as an ordinary person in any western country from main stream media? I don't think think it will be as interesting to the majority. And please, don't ask me why, cause the answer will very likely make this forum censored like many others.

[mudhead]

After retirement I went to McGill University and studied Japanese. The East Asian Studies Dept there teaches all three CJK languages. Japanese and Chinese have about the same enrollment: 60 in first year, down to 30 in third year in Chinese and 20 in third year Japanese. About half the students in first year Japanese are Chinese girls who already know the characters, very frustrating to a Western beginner! In Korean, for reference, there are about 30 students in first year and 20 in second.

This dropout rate does not seem proportionally much different from Western languages: second-year Spanish and Russian both have about half the students of first-year, for example. (You can't count French because it's the official language of the province and most people speak it already.)

Are Canadian students more serious than American students? Or maybe the multi-ethnic makeup of our city means that people have better background for studying Eastern languages. (There are lots of Chinese in Montreal, many fewer Japanese.)