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A peak behind the window explaining why HK teaches Chinese/Canto as a second language so poorly.
Thread
Thread
So my daughter is almost six and had about a year and a half of 2/3 Canto medium of instruction kindergarten. All she really came away with is some nouns. She can translate 'bacteria' but can't engage in even the most basic conversional questions like "how old are you?'
She got into an English Medium if Instruction (EMI) school that has special classes for students like her that don't have a Chinese speaking parents. It's over Zoom, which is going to suck anyways, and I want to like the teacher.
But the priorities and approach are way off
But the priorities and approach are way off
Her class is 1B. Alphanumeric combos like that are extremely normal in Chinese/HK classes, but the teacher decided to rename it 1義. Which would be 1义 in Simplified, but is 13 strokes in traditional.
This has to be written at the top of every worksheet.
This has to be written at the top of every worksheet.
Along with a Chinese name she wad just given on Monday. So the class begins with the assumption that a six year old can write four characters with almost fifty strokes altogether without knowing how to write Chinese yet.
https://twitter.com/Comparativist/status/1303909081728524290?s=19
https://twitter.com/Comparativist/status/1303909081728524290?s=19
How do I know they know they can't write Chinese yet? Because today's lesson was teaching the basics of strokes. The teacher didn't even think it worth pausing to explain what strokes *are*, because it's too intuitive for her.
As in I had to mute the teacher to explain that strokes are the building blocks of all Chinese characters. That these weren't just new words. Which is what all the students probably thought.
So to recap: I had to spend most of the class right next to her with @plecosoft open showing character stroke order animation just to write her name and class at the top of a worksheet for a class teaching the names of different strokes but not their meaning or significance.
There's a debate about whether it's best to learn written and oral Chinese at the same time. But if you take a 101 class as an adult, you're learning to write and say 你好 first.
Not 40 strokes of this in the first wk when you still can't recognize and answer "how old are you?"
Not 40 strokes of this in the first wk when you still can't recognize and answer "how old are you?"
What kills me is that the teachers really are trying but they just don't know how to teach Chinese to non-native speakers. There's a lack of resources, experiences, and training. https://twitter.com/williamnee/status/1303911851827163136?s=19
Pleco, the @elkmovie’s life work. A subtext others might not have picked up is that the other parents and domestic helpers were likely not people with apps like this from their own history of trying to learn Chinese.
It was hard enough for us *with* stroke order animations. https://twitter.com/grimycardstock/status/1303910058288271360
It was hard enough for us *with* stroke order animations. https://twitter.com/grimycardstock/status/1303910058288271360
These are all extremely peculiar Chinese L2 curriculum design choices to any laowai/gwailo that’s ever studied Mandarin. https://twitter.com/foarp/status/1303938553991360512
I’ve taken two Canto courses before and think some of this is unique to Canto L2 instruction.
- little recognition that more strokes = harder, so start with few stroke characters for beginners
- not a lot of emphasis on highlighting basics that are unfamiliar newbies. https://twitter.com/comparativist/status/1303936172486307841
- little recognition that more strokes = harder, so start with few stroke characters for beginners
- not a lot of emphasis on highlighting basics that are unfamiliar newbies. https://twitter.com/comparativist/status/1303936172486307841
In a normal Mandarin class you come across 有沒有[have / don’t have] pretty quickly and the book and/or teacher stops to give a few more simple verb+verb negation examples (i.e., 是不是 [is/isn’t]) that are pretty unique to Chinese. Canto teachers blow right past this w/o comment
Hence, I really doubt that even in a F2F learning environment the teacher will stop to explain that strokes like 一 build radicals like 口, both of which are also words, but are alos used to construct simple characters like 名 and can also be used twice in characters like 國
Note the lack of romanization (i.e. Jyutping) next to the characters. So far as I can tell, the purpose of today’s lesson was that the teacher wanted to drill them into memorizing the names of these strokes so the students would write them when heard. https://twitter.com/comparativist/status/1303910069256372232
I don’t think skipping side-by-side Jyutping where you’d find Pinyin in any Mandarin worksheet or book was a design choice. It simply never occurred to them. https://twitter.com/comparativist/status/1303960704295133184
Just as it went over their heads that writing 10+ stroke characters 2x a day earlier didn’t check the ‘learned’ box (so half next class would be struggling trying to write names + class at the top), they’re oblivious that the kids definitely didn’t learn those stroke names today.
