In praise of the Defrancis textbooks and readers

[stapler]

I know this has been discussed many times before on this forum, but these textbooks and readers are amazing. So much so that I really wanted to make another post about them! I believe they're still some of the very best resources for beginning Chinese language learners.

 

I've recently returned home for a small holiday. While rummaging through my cupboards inspecting what personal items I've stashed away I found a pile of books I picked up from a library sale a few years ago. Amongst them is the Defrancis Intermediate textbook. This book is not that useful to me anymore but I flicked through the book out of curiosity. I was immediately struck by the high quality of the conversations. I feel like this is the only textbook I've read that seems to capture what spoken Mandarin actually sounds like.

 

The entire book is in pinyin (which is something I will talk about in a moment). Here are just a few randomly selected sentences from the first conversation:

 

Měiyǐng, sāndiǎn bàn le dou. Zěnmo fēijī hái méi lái ne?

 

Bàba nín kàn! nèibiar fēiguolai yíge fēijī

 

Duìle. Dōngběibiar zhèige fāngxiang duì. Shì cóng Rìběn lái de fēijī.Dàgài shi Wénshán zuò de fēijī... Fēijī luòxialai le.

 

He! Zhèige fēijī zhēn dà. Bàba, zènmo dàde fēijī néng zuò duōshao rén ne?

 

What really stood out to me was the way some words are stripped of their tone. The first sentence for example ends "ban4 le dou". Reading this aloud sounds much more natural to me than the usual output I'd make, giving "dou" a full and clear first tone. And the same again in the second sentence "fei1 guo lai". Speaking a 'natural' speed, I feel like giving full force to the tones on "guo lai" sounds stilted.

 

I like that Defrancis generally uses "zhei" and "nei" - and even "mo" (rather than "me") - where I'd expect many native speakers to use it.

 

But perhaps the small thing that really struck me was seeing 这么 written as "zen4mo". I've heard this so often in almost every Mandarin accent but unlike "zhei" and "nei" I feel like it's almost never commented on. That Defrancis chooses to use it - and along with the general 'casual' flow of the sentences - really makes me feel like I'm hearing 'real' Chinese in a way I've never experienced in any other textbook.

 

In the book's introduction I read that they recorded the conversations then wrote the dialogues. In this way they captured more authentic speech. It seems to me such a simple technique I really don't know why it isn't used more often. - And indeed if you go listen to the audio recordings of this book they're infinitely better than most other Chinese textbooks when it comes to authenticity.

 

Are modern textbooks actually worse than Defrancis? It's clear there is a lot of commercial incentive to dumb them down. But this wouldn't explain why they avoid using more authentic speech. Has there been some kind of massive change in pedagogical theory that promotes more artificial speech to help learners? Or am I just wrong and the Defrancis dialogues not actually any different from those encountered in your average Chinese textbook?

 

-- pinyin side rant

 

I'm intrigued by the idea of doing everything in pinyin. I find it much more challenging than reading characters. I'm not convinced that this is because Chinese characters are a better writing system. It probably has more to do with not being used to reading pinyin. But it made me think: 'what would it be like to read a whole novel in pinyin?'. It also made me think: 'what if my relative difficulty reading pinyin is not just a matter of not being used to it? Would this mean that its a problem with my phonological awareness? After all, when I parse Chinese characters I pretty much do it in a way that ignores a lot of attention to the actual sounds of the language. And if this is the case, can reading things entirely in pinyin help my phonological awareness more than reading characters?'

 

I think this is hard to answer. The characters still represent sounds and as such aren't much different from pinyin. And even when reading English and its alphabet I still filter out the sounds of the language to increase reading speed. Surely after getting used to pinyin the same thing would happen and I'd be in the same situation with the Chinese characters. It is definitely better to just actually listen to the audio recordings themselves. Perhaps the only benefit - assuming reading in pinyin can help with phonological awareness - would be as a second-rate or backup method to improve phonological awareness when you don't have access to real audio.

 

I haven't looked into, but I assume Defrancis used pinyin rather than characters because he wanted to divert more of the student's attention to the actual sounds of Mandarin rather than studying characters (a task that needs no practice in the sense of learning a skill, but merely a lot of mechanical repetition).

 

 

 

 

 

[889]

I'm also a great fan of the DeFrancis books, as I've mentioned here before.

 

I assume he uses Pinyin because it lets the student make the first attacks on Chinese at a faster pace.

[Tomsima]

Yes. I love the defrancis series, and definitely believe there is still not a better textbook series for Chinese out there.

 

Outdated vocab aside (warning: unhealthy doses of 原子能...), and of course the age old 'traditional/simplified' choice (its not a choice, do both...), the only thing I can think of that makes these books unpalatable to people today is its unabashed approach to language learning as a process requiring time, commitment, repetition. NPCR is great for coaxing people into learning Chinese from an age where attention spans are measured in seconds, but it ultimately falls short in getting you anywhere beyond HSK 4 level Chinese. And yes, it is 'textbook' mandarin.

 

Not only are the defrancis books great, but the audio that is freely available to download is a massive resource for all sorts of audio-based revision exercises. 

 

As for pinyin, correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe Defrancis was in support of pinyin replacing characters as a better system for improving literacy in China. This I disagree with, because, and simply because, I think characters are so much fun to work with, they look nicer than pinyin, are more interesting, tell more stories, are much more fun to write. They might require more attention at the beginning than an alphabet, but the rewards are massive years down the road. I'd love to know what Defrancis thought in his later years, after writing influential books on the writing system for his entire career.

[mungouk]

On the pinyin-only side (although I doubt anyone is seriously proposing it?):

 

I've been blazing through a memrise deck recently trying to complete the 600 words for HSK 4.  Half of it has both hanzi and pinyin presented in separate sections.

 

I have to say that for words which look/sound identical in pinyin (ie. same spelling, same tone) but which have different hanzi, this is really confusing. 

And generally, not being able to see Hanzi with a semantic component as well as a phonetic one is something I really missed.  I find this really helps with recall.

 

Do schoolkids in China learn pinyin before hanzi?

 

I come from a generation who learned to read and write English using the Initial Teaching Alphabet in primary (elementary) school, which meant a modified version of the Roman alphabet, always written on the blackboard in yellow chalk, before being introduced to standard Roman in white chalk.  Nowhere near as different as pinyin and hanzi, but still weird, looking back on it.

 

 

 

[Shelley]

My two cents: Defrancis is excellent, only down side is that it uses full form characters. This is not a problem in its self but does make it difficult to use if your plans include mainland china. 

 

I started to use them but excluded the pinyin only volume from my studies except for reference. I think its much easier to use characters. As has been said the sheer number of homophones makes it confusing, whereas the character is clear. I know there are also characters that are written the same with a different sound but context can help with this and I have not come across as many of these as the former.

 

I am fortunate to have inherited the complete set of these and so feel I should use them, I do like them but am torn between this and NPCR which I have used for most of my Chinese studies. 

 

Does anyone think I could use them both together? Or would this be ridiculous? I am tempted to use Defrancis one week and NPCR the next. I have the full form version of NPCR which I could use for continuity.

 

[889]

I think for any language it's good to use several resources. Some always point out things others don't.

 

As for DeFrancis, it's not just a question of the texts themselves. To get full benefit of the DeFrancis method, you need a teacher who's committed to using it. That means quick-paced drills. That's a lot of work not just for the student, but for the teacher as well. Has anyone found a teacher today willing to teach in that 1960s-style?

 

Finally, those studying other languages who like the DeFrancis approach will like Jorden's Japanese and the various FSI textbooks. All very 1960s.