The cost of language learning

Here is the podcast

The Sydney Morning Herald, March 18, 2007 reported the following

Former immigration minister Amanda Vanstone has racked up a bill for private Chinese language lessons worth at least $31,000 that have been covered by taxpayers, according to a newspaper report.

Fairfax

newspapers reported the final amount for the Immigration Department could total $70,000 and includes a $3,600 airfare to

China

for the Senator's teacher.......

She however failed to impress a seasoned Mandarin-speaking businessman when delivering a speech in Mandarin in

Canberra

last year, with the man describing it as 'excruciating'."

Language learning is an activity that attracts a lot of spending. People take courses, buy books and CDs, travel and hire tutors. Students come to Vancouver to enroll in schools and in 6 months can easily spend $20,000 of their own or their parents money to learn English, with varying results.

I buy lots of books and CDs related to language learning. Today I do not spend money on teachers. I remember my first Chinese teacher. I was a Canadian Government Trade Commissioner in training in Ottawa in 1967. I heard that the Canadian Government was looking for someone to learn Mandarin in anticipation of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Canada and The People's Republic of China. I started taking lessons from a private tutor just in order to demonstrate my interest in the language in the hope that it would improve my chances of being selected as the government language student.

In four months I learned nothing. I only remember that this teacher placed a great deal of emphasis on the fact that Chinese uses "counters". Just as in English we refer to a sheet of paper, or a piece of paper, Chinese does this for most nouns. There is a generic counter "ge" but there are a large number of specific counters like "a sheet of". In retrospect this information is only modestly useful and certainly not worth spending a lot of time on. It is more important to do a lot of listening and reading and learn  a lot of words. If I get the odd counter wrong or just use the generic "ge", that works just fine.

Nowadays I would just buy Colloquial Chinese and listen and read daily and I would be much further ahead. ( Or I would join The Linguist!) But that is because today I know how to learn languages. The vast majority of people do not know how to learn languages so they are at the mercy of language teachers who can choose to teach whatever they think is important. And, of course, back then my employers would have had no way of assessing my Chinese, so telling them that I had studied with a teacher for 4 months was more useful to my strategy than saying that I had been studying on my own. By the way, my strategy worked. I was chosen to go to Hong Kong to study Mandarin.

I do not mean that a tutor or teacher is not useful. However, I believe that a teacher should be used the way we use a tennis coach or skiing instructor. A small amount of teaching or coaching can be helpful if combined with a lot of practice and self-study. It is when we rely on the time with the teacher or in the classroom as the main learning activity that we are largely wasting our money.

Comments

[Chris]

Interesting post. I've mentioned before, that I'm learning Mandarin at University. Putting the inexcusably large course costs aside ($550 a term...*wince*), I do find the classes to be quite good. I feel as though I've accomplished something new each lesson, and after four weeks, I have a rough feel for the language.

One nice thing is that the dialogues learned in class are actually posted as voice files on the website, for students to download and listen to in their own time, Granted, they're hardly interesting, but it gives a good grounding in the language.

On a slight tangent, I did recently buy Johan Björkstén's "Learn to Write Chinese Characters" which, if I use it regularly, should greatly aide in writing and recognising characters. Good book.

Oh, and I might mention that learning French and Mandarin side-by-side is not the best idea. Try reading pīnyīn after an hour of French or vice versa. Totally confusing!

[Chris]

Always forget something...for German audio content, there's this website (meant to post this in the previous blog):

http://www.vorleser.net/

...which has hundreds of free audiobooks ranging from poems, to fairy tales to novels. The Gebrüder Grimm stories are simple enough for intermediate learners, but fairly tough for beginners. The Sir Arthur Conan Doyle audiobook for example is more advanced and a lot more difficult. Has been very helpful. Most of them come with transcripts, which is also rather helpful.

Also for German, there is the popular podcast "Schlaflos in München", which is brilliant. Interesting, fun and most of all, natural. They're generally about 25-40 minutes in length. Currently, there are about 413 shows.

[Chinese]

I often heard learning chinese student say they are only interested by the oral aspect, maybe because they are affraid of the amount of characters they would have to study.
It's maybe longer to learn both pronunciation and characters for the first weeks, but when you get familiar to the construction of chinese characters it helps you to remember the pronunciation.

To links that might help students:

Online dialogs for beginners (mp3):
http://www.chinese-tools.com/learn/chinese

Chinese characters introduction (stroke by stroke order, etymology, etc...)
http://www.chinese-tools.com/learn/characters

Hope it'll help...

[Steve Kaufmann]

Chris,

Thanks for the German tip. I will follow up. I do not mean disrespect to those who go to class and take full advantage. I know I can be a little opinionated at times. The main thing is to stay in control of one;s own learning.

I hope our Linguist system will help you in Chinese, once we get it going.

Steve

[Mariama]

Hi Steve,

I am living in China now. I always point Chinese people who want like to improve English to your websight. I also try to follow your system when I learn Chinese: listening, reviewing, working on my pronunciation and doing a lot of reading and listening using Chinesepod and cds/books I bought. But I am having trouble learning to read and speak standard Chinese without a teacher. I read different textbooks and review a lot but when I go outside I can't read anything. Do you have any advice/ does anyone have any advice?

Thank you,

Mariama

[Steve Kaufmann]

Mariama,

By all means find yourself a teacher. Everyone learns in a different way to some extent. However, do not expect that the teacher will teach you. Do not rely on the teacher. One or two lessons a week will be enough. The teacher will be your guide, coach and friend. You still have to learn on your own.

Learning to read Chinese is difficult. You can control the characters you will encounter in your own reading. Keep reading and gradually increasing your vocabulary. You cannot control which characters you will find when you go outside. You are also a little more anxious when "outside". Just keep reading and learning "inside" and soon you will be able to read more "outside".

The same is true with speaking. You can control your listening and repeating. You cannot control what people will say to you or how they will react "outside". Just keep studying "inside", create a larger and richer langue world inside, and gradually your ability to function 'outside" will improve. Do not get discouraged. What you describe is normal.

[RIchard]

Mariama,
May I suggest while you are in China, instead of getting a teacher, you should consider getting a language exchange partner.

Chinese Pod is very good. However there is only one problem. The material is inauthentic (perhaps with the exception of advanced section), ie. They have to simplify the material (speaking unnaturally slow, syllable by syllable, simplified vocabulary etc.) so beginners can it follow easily.

The only way to learn authentic Chinese is from authentic Chinese material, such as books, radio shows, TV shows, TV soaps, talking to native speakers etc. The only catch is that you need pretty good listening comprehension and fluency in reading Chinese characters.

This is where your language partner comes in helping you to get over the gap. You can ask your language partner to transcribe any authentic spoken Chinese for you, if you can offer to do the same with English material.

The trick to learn Chinese characters is to start with simple ones (those with low stroke count) and learn each of them by writing them out in correct stroke order. The complicated characters can be broken down into simple components.

The best way to start is to ask a native speaker to show you the correct stroke order, and have your partner hold your hands while writing out each character. In this way, not only you will remember the visual image of each character, you will also imprint motor memory onto your brain. This will improve character recognition and even more so with handwritten characters.

I am afraid I have not yet given you any specific suggestions relevant to your situation. Perhaps if you can describe a bit more in detail about what stops you from learning to read and speak chinese without a teacher, I might be able to come up with more specific suggestions.

[chinese learner]

>The trick to learn Chinese characters is to start with simple ones

I really disagree here! You need to learn according to frequency. You need to know the top 500 as a starter (really starting with the top 100 or so). There are simple ones and difficult ones.

If you are in China you can buy short story books for Chinese primary kids. They have no English, but the early starter ones have Pinyin.

To increase your reading ability you need to:
1. read
2. read
3. read

A book I like is: "Rapid Literacy in Chinese". It teaches 750 characters. It's a good starting point.

[Jin]

Hello, Steve.
I'm a big fan of your podcasts.
I have a recommendation about audio quality, there are lots of distortions in your podcast, maybe due to the poor quality mic. When your voice becomes louder than usual, it is distorted. Comparing to other podcasts, your podcast's audio quality is little bit poor, sometimes problematic for listening with earphones. I think audio quality is very important, because most subscribers listen to your podcast repeatedly. Poor sound makes ears fatigued fast. I recommend M-audio's Podcast factory (http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/PodcastFactory-main.html). Have a nice weekend.
Many Thanks.

[Teeya Door]

I also learn Chinese language by a special and innovative service in Beijing Chinese School. I like to learn in live class with teachers from Beijing directly. I also like to practice Chinese with volunteers freely everyday. Watching Chinese learning TV on CLTV is also interesting and helpful to practice listening and learn more about Chinese culture.

[Ai Learn Chinese]

There are some free podcast mp3 Chinese lessons designed by Shanghai East Radio Station on Learn Mandarin. You can try.

[learn chinese]

chinese-online is a place to Learn Chinese(http://www.chinesepal.cn/first/learn-chinese/index.htm), to find free chinese tutor to teach chinese madarin, a place to be!