Ellen Bialystok is a cognitive neuroscientist who has found that bilingualism can delay the symptoms of Alzheimer's. Chris Young for The New York Times
A cognitive neuroscientist, Ellen Bialystok has spent almost 40 years learning about how bilingualism sharpens the mind. Dr. Bialystok, 62, a distinguished research professor of psychologyat York University in Toronto, was awarded a $100,000 Killam Prize last year for her contributions tosocial science. An edited version of our conversations follows.
Q.How did you begin studying bilingualism?
A.You know, I didn't start trying to find out whether bilingualism was bad or good. I did my doctoratein psychology: on how children acquire language. When I finished graduate school, in 1976, therewas a job shortage in Canada for Ph.D.'s. The only position I found was with a research projectstudying second language acquisition in schoolchildren. It wasn't my area. But it was close enough.
As a psychologist, I brought neuroscience questions to the study, like "How does the acquisition of asecond language change thought?" It was these types of questions that naturally led to thebilingualism research.
The way research works is, it takes you down a road. You then follow that road. So what exactly did you find on this unexpected road?
A.As we did our research, you could see there was a big difference in the way monolingual and bilingual children processed language. If yougave 5- and 6-year-olds language problems to solve, monolingual and bilingual children knew,pretty much, the same amount of language.
But on one question, there was a difference. We asked all the children if a certain illogical sentencewas grammatically correct: "Apples grow on noses."
The monolingual children couldn't answer. They'd say, "That's silly" and they'd stall. But the bilingual children would say, in their own words, "It's silly, but it's grammatically correct." The bilinguals, wefound, manifested a cognitive system with the ability to attend to important information and ignorethe less important.
Q.How does this work?
A.There's a system in your brain, the executive control system. It's a general manager. Its job is tokeep you focused on what is relevant, while ignoring distractions. It's what makes it possible for youto hold two different things in your mind at one time and switch between them.
If you have two languages and you use them regularly, the way the brain's networks work is thatevery time you speak, both languages pop up and the executive control system has to sort througheverything and attend to what's relevant in the moment. Therefore the bilinguals use that systemmore, and that regular use makes that system more efficient.
Q.One of your most startling recent findings is that bilingualism helps forestall the symptoms of Alzheimer's disease. How did you come to learn this?
A.Bilingual older adults performed better than monolingual older adults on executive control tasks.That was very impressive because it didn't have to be that way. It could have turned out thateverybody just lost function equally as they got older.
We looked at the medical records of 400 Alzheimer's patients. On average, the bilinguals showedAlzheimer's symptoms five or six years later than those who spoke only one language. This didn'tmean that the bilinguals didn't have Alzheimer's. It meant that as the disease took root in theirbrains, they were able to continue functioning at a higher level.
Q.So high school French is useful for something other than ordering a special meal in a restaurant?
A.Sorry, no. You have to use both languages all the time. You won't get the bilingual benefit fromoccasional use.
Q.Would bilingualism help with multitasking?
A.Yes, multitasking is one of the things the executive control system handles.
Q.Bilingualism used to be considered a negative thing - at least in the United States. Is it still?
A.Until about the 1960s, the conventional wisdom was that bilingualism was a disadvantage. Someof this was xenophobia.
Thanks to science, we now know that the opposite is true.
Q.Many immigrants choose not to teach their children their native language. Is this a good thing?
A.There are two major reasons people should pass their heritage language onto children.
First, it connects children to their ancestors. The second is my research: Bilingualism is good foryou. It makes brains stronger.It is brain exercise.
The New York Times
(China Daily 06/12/2011 page11)
Showing posts with label chinese language learning. Show all posts
Showing posts with label chinese language learning. Show all posts
Sunday, June 12, 2011
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
IMF bombshell: Age of America nears end Commentary: China’s economy will surpass the U.S. in 2016
By Brett Arends, MarketWatch
This column has been updated to include a reaction from the IMF.
BOSTON (MarketWatch) — The International Monetary Fund has just dropped a bombshell, and nobody noticed.
IMF sees China topping U.S. in 2016
According to the latest IMF official forecasts, China's economy will surpass that of America in real terms in 2016 — just five years from now. Brett Arends looks at the implications for the U.S. dollar and the Treasury market.
For the first time, the international organization has set a date for the moment when the “Age of America” will end and the U.S. economy will be overtaken by that of China.
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/imf-bombshell-age-of-america-about-to-end-2011-04-25
And it’s a lot closer than you may think.
According to the latest IMF official forecasts, China’s economy will surpass that of America in real terms in 2016 — just five years from now.
Put that in your calendar.
It provides a painful context for the budget wrangling taking place in Washington right now. It raises enormous questions about what the international security system is going to look like in just a handful of years. And it casts a deepening cloud over both the U.S. dollar and the giant Treasury market, which have been propped up for decades by their privileged status as the liabilities of the world’s hegemonic power.
More China news: U.S., China to hold economic talks in early May, Shanghai hit by tightening, China 2011 trade surplus may shrink to 2% of GDP
According to the IMF forecast, which was quietly posted on the Fund’s website just two weeks ago, whoever is elected U.S. president next year — Obama? Mitt Romney? Donald Trump? — will be the last to preside over the world’s largest economy.
Most people aren’t prepared for this. They aren’t even aware it’s that close. Listen to experts of various stripes, and they will tell you this moment is decades away. The most bearish will put the figure in the mid-2020s.
China’s economy will be the world’s largest within five years or so.
But they’re miscounting. They’re only comparing the gross domestic products of the two countries using current exchange rates.
That’s a largely meaningless comparison in real terms. Exchange rates change quickly. And China’s exchange rates are phony. China artificially undervalues its currency, the renminbi, through massive intervention in the markets.
The comparison that really matters
In addition to comparing the two countries based on exchange rates, the IMF analysis also looked to the true, real-terms picture of the economies using “purchasing power parities.” That compares what people earn and spend in real terms in their domestic economies.
Under PPP, the Chinese economy will expand from $11.2 trillion this year to $19 trillion in 2016. Meanwhile the size of the U.S. economy will rise from $15.2 trillion to $18.8 trillion. That would take America’s share of the world output down to 17.7%, the lowest in modern times. China’s would reach 18%, and rising.
Just 10 years ago, the U.S. economy was three times the size of China’s.
Naturally, all forecasts are fallible. Time and chance happen to them all. The actual date when China surpasses the U.S. might come even earlier than the IMF predicts, or somewhat later. If the great Chinese juggernaut blows a tire, as a growing number fear it might, it could even delay things by several years. But the outcome is scarcely in doubt.
Europe wrestles with Greece solutions: Germany and other strong euro-zone countries want the Greece's private-sector creditors to bear some of the burden, while the European Central Bank doesn't want to do anything that would cast Greece into default.
This is more than a statistical story. It is the end of the Age of America. As a bond strategist in Europe told me two weeks ago, “We are witnessing the end of America’s economic hegemony.”
We have lived in a world dominated by the U.S. for so long that there is no longer anyone alive who remembers anything else. America overtook Great Britain as the world’s leading economic power in the 1890s and never looked back.
And both those countries live under very similar rules of constitutional government, respect for civil liberties and the rights of property. China has none of those. The Age of China will feel very different.
Victor Cha, senior adviser on Asian affairs at Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies, told me China’s neighbors in Asia are already waking up to the dangers. “The region is overwhelmingly looking to the U.S. in a way that it hasn’t done in the past,” he said. “They see the U.S. as a counterweight to China. They also see American hegemony over the last half-century as fairly benign. In China they see the rise of an economic power that is not benevolent, that can be predatory. They don’t see it as a benign hegemony.”
The rise of China, and the relative decline of America, is the biggest story of our time. You can see its implications everywhere, from shuttered factories in the Midwest to soaring costs of oil and other commodities. Last fall, when I attended a conference in London about agricultural investment, I was struck by the number of people there who told stories about Chinese interests snapping up farmland and foodstuff supplies — from South America to China and elsewhere.
This is the result of decades during which China has successfully pursued economic policies aimed at national expansion and power, while the U.S. has embraced either free trade or, for want of a better term, economic appeasement.
“There are two systems in collision,” said Ralph Gomory, research professor at NYU’s Stern business school. “They have a state-guided form of capitalism, and we have a much freer former of capitalism.” What we have seen, he said, is “a massive shift in capability from the U.S. to China. What we have done is traded jobs for profit. The jobs have moved to China. The capability erodes in the U.S. and grows in China. That’s very destructive. That is a big reason why the U.S. is becoming more and more polarized between a small, very rich class and an eroding middle class. The people who get the profits are very different from the people who lost the wages.”
The next chapter of the story is just beginning.
U.S. spending spree won’t work
What the rise of China means for defense, and international affairs, has barely been touched on. The U.S. is now spending gigantic sums — from a beleaguered economy — to try to maintain its place in the sun. See: Pentagon spending is budget blind spot .
It’s a lesson we could learn more cheaply from the sad story of the British, Spanish and other empires. It doesn’t work. You can’t stay on top if your economy doesn’t.
Equally to the point, here is what this means economically, and for investors.
Some years ago I was having lunch with the smartest investor I know, London-based hedge-fund manager Crispin Odey. He made the argument that markets are reasonably efficient, most of the time, at setting prices. Where they are most likely to fail, though, is in correctly anticipating and pricing big, revolutionary, “paradigm” shifts — whether a rise of disruptive technologies or revolutionary changes in geopolitics. We are living through one now.
The U.S. Treasury market continues to operate on the assumption that it will always remain the global benchmark of money. Business schools still teach students, for example, that the interest rate on the 10-year Treasury bond is the “risk-free rate” on money. And so it has been for more than a century. But that’s all based on the Age of America.
No wonder so many have been buying gold. If the U.S. dollar ceases to be the world’s sole reserve currency, what will be? The euro would be fine if it acts like the old deutschemark. If it’s just the Greek drachma in drag ... not so much.
The last time the world’s dominant hegemon lost its ability to run things singlehandedly was early in the past century. That’s when the U.S. and Germany surpassed Great Britain. It didn’t turn out well.
Updated with IMF reaction
The International Monetary Fund has responded to my article.
In a statement sent to MarketWatch, the IMF confirmed the report, but challenged my interpretation of the data. Comparing the U.S. and Chinese economies using “purchase-power-parity,” it argued, “is not the most appropriate measure… because PPP price levels are influenced by nontraded services, which are more relevant domestically than globally.”
The IMF added that it prefers to compare economies using market exchange rates, and that under this comparison the U.S. “is currently 130% bigger than China, and will still be 70% larger by 2016.”
My take?
The IMF is entitled to make its case. But its argument raises more questions than it answers.
First, no one measure is perfect. Everybody knows that.
But that’s also true of the GDP figures themselves. Hurricane Katrina, for example, added to the U.S. GDP, because it stimulated a lot of economic activity — like providing emergency relief, and rebuilding homes. Is there anyone who seriously thinks Katrina was a net positive for the United States? All statistics need caveats.
Second, comparing economies using simple exchange rates, as the IMF suggests, raises huge problems.
Currency markets fluctuate. They represent international money flows, not real output.
The U.S. dollar has fallen nearly 10% against the euro so far this year. Does anyone suggest that the real size of the U.S. economy has shrunk by 10% in comparison with Europe over that period? The idea is absurd.
China actively suppresses the renminbi on the currency markets through massive dollar purchases. As a result the renminbi is deeply undervalued on the foreign-exchange markets. Just comparing the economies on their exchange rates misses that altogether.
Purchasing power parity is not a perfect measure. None exists. But it measures the output of economies in terms of real goods and services, not just paper money. That’s why it’s widely used to compare economies. The IMF publishes PPP data. So does the OECD. Many economists rely on them.
Brett Arends is a senior columnist for MarketWatch and a personal-finance columnist for The Wall Street Journal.
This column has been updated to include a reaction from the IMF.
BOSTON (MarketWatch) — The International Monetary Fund has just dropped a bombshell, and nobody noticed.
IMF sees China topping U.S. in 2016
According to the latest IMF official forecasts, China's economy will surpass that of America in real terms in 2016 — just five years from now. Brett Arends looks at the implications for the U.S. dollar and the Treasury market.
For the first time, the international organization has set a date for the moment when the “Age of America” will end and the U.S. economy will be overtaken by that of China.
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/imf-bombshell-age-of-america-about-to-end-2011-04-25
And it’s a lot closer than you may think.
According to the latest IMF official forecasts, China’s economy will surpass that of America in real terms in 2016 — just five years from now.
Put that in your calendar.
It provides a painful context for the budget wrangling taking place in Washington right now. It raises enormous questions about what the international security system is going to look like in just a handful of years. And it casts a deepening cloud over both the U.S. dollar and the giant Treasury market, which have been propped up for decades by their privileged status as the liabilities of the world’s hegemonic power.
More China news: U.S., China to hold economic talks in early May, Shanghai hit by tightening, China 2011 trade surplus may shrink to 2% of GDP
According to the IMF forecast, which was quietly posted on the Fund’s website just two weeks ago, whoever is elected U.S. president next year — Obama? Mitt Romney? Donald Trump? — will be the last to preside over the world’s largest economy.
Most people aren’t prepared for this. They aren’t even aware it’s that close. Listen to experts of various stripes, and they will tell you this moment is decades away. The most bearish will put the figure in the mid-2020s.
China’s economy will be the world’s largest within five years or so.
But they’re miscounting. They’re only comparing the gross domestic products of the two countries using current exchange rates.
That’s a largely meaningless comparison in real terms. Exchange rates change quickly. And China’s exchange rates are phony. China artificially undervalues its currency, the renminbi, through massive intervention in the markets.
The comparison that really matters
In addition to comparing the two countries based on exchange rates, the IMF analysis also looked to the true, real-terms picture of the economies using “purchasing power parities.” That compares what people earn and spend in real terms in their domestic economies.
Under PPP, the Chinese economy will expand from $11.2 trillion this year to $19 trillion in 2016. Meanwhile the size of the U.S. economy will rise from $15.2 trillion to $18.8 trillion. That would take America’s share of the world output down to 17.7%, the lowest in modern times. China’s would reach 18%, and rising.
Just 10 years ago, the U.S. economy was three times the size of China’s.
Naturally, all forecasts are fallible. Time and chance happen to them all. The actual date when China surpasses the U.S. might come even earlier than the IMF predicts, or somewhat later. If the great Chinese juggernaut blows a tire, as a growing number fear it might, it could even delay things by several years. But the outcome is scarcely in doubt.
Europe wrestles with Greece solutions: Germany and other strong euro-zone countries want the Greece's private-sector creditors to bear some of the burden, while the European Central Bank doesn't want to do anything that would cast Greece into default.
This is more than a statistical story. It is the end of the Age of America. As a bond strategist in Europe told me two weeks ago, “We are witnessing the end of America’s economic hegemony.”
We have lived in a world dominated by the U.S. for so long that there is no longer anyone alive who remembers anything else. America overtook Great Britain as the world’s leading economic power in the 1890s and never looked back.
And both those countries live under very similar rules of constitutional government, respect for civil liberties and the rights of property. China has none of those. The Age of China will feel very different.
Victor Cha, senior adviser on Asian affairs at Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies, told me China’s neighbors in Asia are already waking up to the dangers. “The region is overwhelmingly looking to the U.S. in a way that it hasn’t done in the past,” he said. “They see the U.S. as a counterweight to China. They also see American hegemony over the last half-century as fairly benign. In China they see the rise of an economic power that is not benevolent, that can be predatory. They don’t see it as a benign hegemony.”
The rise of China, and the relative decline of America, is the biggest story of our time. You can see its implications everywhere, from shuttered factories in the Midwest to soaring costs of oil and other commodities. Last fall, when I attended a conference in London about agricultural investment, I was struck by the number of people there who told stories about Chinese interests snapping up farmland and foodstuff supplies — from South America to China and elsewhere.
This is the result of decades during which China has successfully pursued economic policies aimed at national expansion and power, while the U.S. has embraced either free trade or, for want of a better term, economic appeasement.
“There are two systems in collision,” said Ralph Gomory, research professor at NYU’s Stern business school. “They have a state-guided form of capitalism, and we have a much freer former of capitalism.” What we have seen, he said, is “a massive shift in capability from the U.S. to China. What we have done is traded jobs for profit. The jobs have moved to China. The capability erodes in the U.S. and grows in China. That’s very destructive. That is a big reason why the U.S. is becoming more and more polarized between a small, very rich class and an eroding middle class. The people who get the profits are very different from the people who lost the wages.”
The next chapter of the story is just beginning.
U.S. spending spree won’t work
What the rise of China means for defense, and international affairs, has barely been touched on. The U.S. is now spending gigantic sums — from a beleaguered economy — to try to maintain its place in the sun. See: Pentagon spending is budget blind spot .
It’s a lesson we could learn more cheaply from the sad story of the British, Spanish and other empires. It doesn’t work. You can’t stay on top if your economy doesn’t.
Equally to the point, here is what this means economically, and for investors.
Some years ago I was having lunch with the smartest investor I know, London-based hedge-fund manager Crispin Odey. He made the argument that markets are reasonably efficient, most of the time, at setting prices. Where they are most likely to fail, though, is in correctly anticipating and pricing big, revolutionary, “paradigm” shifts — whether a rise of disruptive technologies or revolutionary changes in geopolitics. We are living through one now.
The U.S. Treasury market continues to operate on the assumption that it will always remain the global benchmark of money. Business schools still teach students, for example, that the interest rate on the 10-year Treasury bond is the “risk-free rate” on money. And so it has been for more than a century. But that’s all based on the Age of America.
No wonder so many have been buying gold. If the U.S. dollar ceases to be the world’s sole reserve currency, what will be? The euro would be fine if it acts like the old deutschemark. If it’s just the Greek drachma in drag ... not so much.
The last time the world’s dominant hegemon lost its ability to run things singlehandedly was early in the past century. That’s when the U.S. and Germany surpassed Great Britain. It didn’t turn out well.
Updated with IMF reaction
The International Monetary Fund has responded to my article.
In a statement sent to MarketWatch, the IMF confirmed the report, but challenged my interpretation of the data. Comparing the U.S. and Chinese economies using “purchase-power-parity,” it argued, “is not the most appropriate measure… because PPP price levels are influenced by nontraded services, which are more relevant domestically than globally.”
The IMF added that it prefers to compare economies using market exchange rates, and that under this comparison the U.S. “is currently 130% bigger than China, and will still be 70% larger by 2016.”
My take?
The IMF is entitled to make its case. But its argument raises more questions than it answers.
First, no one measure is perfect. Everybody knows that.
But that’s also true of the GDP figures themselves. Hurricane Katrina, for example, added to the U.S. GDP, because it stimulated a lot of economic activity — like providing emergency relief, and rebuilding homes. Is there anyone who seriously thinks Katrina was a net positive for the United States? All statistics need caveats.
Second, comparing economies using simple exchange rates, as the IMF suggests, raises huge problems.
Currency markets fluctuate. They represent international money flows, not real output.
The U.S. dollar has fallen nearly 10% against the euro so far this year. Does anyone suggest that the real size of the U.S. economy has shrunk by 10% in comparison with Europe over that period? The idea is absurd.
China actively suppresses the renminbi on the currency markets through massive dollar purchases. As a result the renminbi is deeply undervalued on the foreign-exchange markets. Just comparing the economies on their exchange rates misses that altogether.
Purchasing power parity is not a perfect measure. None exists. But it measures the output of economies in terms of real goods and services, not just paper money. That’s why it’s widely used to compare economies. The IMF publishes PPP data. So does the OECD. Many economists rely on them.
Brett Arends is a senior columnist for MarketWatch and a personal-finance columnist for The Wall Street Journal.
Monday, September 27, 2010
Parents Debate the Merits of Chinese
Maybe they should sign their youngest children up for toddler league T-ball, instead?
http://blogs.wsj.com/metropolis/2010/09/27/parents-debate-the-rise-of-mandarin-at-elementary-schools/
By Yuliya Chernova
The growth of Mandarin classes at elementary schools in and around New York City stirred debate at UrbanBaby.com, a popular forum website for parents.
As The Journal reported, more schools around the city this year started offering — and in some cases requiring — Mandarin instruction, including New Explorations Into Science, Technology and Math (known as NEST+m), PS 20 on Manhattan’s Lower East Side and PS 310 in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. The rise of Mandarin stems, in part, from separate programs backed by the U.S. and Chinese governments that offer resources for the classes.
The UrbanBaby discussion took on the issue of whether Mandarin is appropriate for elementary-school children. Some writers on the anonymous forum suggested that there is no need to introduce a difficult language so early on, arguing that children won’t gain proficiency anyway when taught just once a week. As one commenter put it:
anyone who has tried to teach toddlers a foreign language that no one in their household speaks (inc nanny) will realize that the classes are just not enough - you need to either live there and immerse or have the immersion at home for it to take hold.
Other commenters suggested that it’s harder to find Mandarin practice outside of school, making it even more unlikely that the language would stick for young students. Some contributors to the forum argued that Spanish will be the predominant and most useful second language in the U.S. for years to come, so schools should focus on it. One commenter was skeptical about language instruction in general for elementary students: “But is it really necessary for a child at the age of 5 to be taught some random language? I can think of 10 other things that could be done with that time.”
Some contributors spoke out in support of early exposure to Mandarin. One person, identified as a NEST+m parent, argued that “the daytime class gives you a place to start if you decide to embrace it. Otherwise just do the minimum and treat it like on of the other non-core subjects e.g. dance.”
Another self-identified parent of a student in the NEST+m Mandarin program said the once-a-week class was “more about the culture/geography so far and less about the language,” which served as an important introduction to China generally.
http://blogs.wsj.com/metropolis/2010/09/27/parents-debate-the-rise-of-mandarin-at-elementary-schools/
By Yuliya Chernova
The growth of Mandarin classes at elementary schools in and around New York City stirred debate at UrbanBaby.com, a popular forum website for parents.
As The Journal reported, more schools around the city this year started offering — and in some cases requiring — Mandarin instruction, including New Explorations Into Science, Technology and Math (known as NEST+m), PS 20 on Manhattan’s Lower East Side and PS 310 in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. The rise of Mandarin stems, in part, from separate programs backed by the U.S. and Chinese governments that offer resources for the classes.
The UrbanBaby discussion took on the issue of whether Mandarin is appropriate for elementary-school children. Some writers on the anonymous forum suggested that there is no need to introduce a difficult language so early on, arguing that children won’t gain proficiency anyway when taught just once a week. As one commenter put it:
anyone who has tried to teach toddlers a foreign language that no one in their household speaks (inc nanny) will realize that the classes are just not enough - you need to either live there and immerse or have the immersion at home for it to take hold.
Other commenters suggested that it’s harder to find Mandarin practice outside of school, making it even more unlikely that the language would stick for young students. Some contributors to the forum argued that Spanish will be the predominant and most useful second language in the U.S. for years to come, so schools should focus on it. One commenter was skeptical about language instruction in general for elementary students: “But is it really necessary for a child at the age of 5 to be taught some random language? I can think of 10 other things that could be done with that time.”
Some contributors spoke out in support of early exposure to Mandarin. One person, identified as a NEST+m parent, argued that “the daytime class gives you a place to start if you decide to embrace it. Otherwise just do the minimum and treat it like on of the other non-core subjects e.g. dance.”
Another self-identified parent of a student in the NEST+m Mandarin program said the once-a-week class was “more about the culture/geography so far and less about the language,” which served as an important introduction to China generally.
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Great video: Chinese in U.S. Schools
Terrific Asia Society on why our children should be learning Chinese.
http://www.asiasociety.org/video/education-learning/chinese-language-schools?utm_source=Asia+Society+eNews&utm_campaign=f6f01c7ae8-eNews_012610&utm_medium=email
http://www.asiasociety.org/video/education-learning/chinese-language-schools?utm_source=Asia+Society+eNews&utm_campaign=f6f01c7ae8-eNews_012610&utm_medium=email
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Chinese Workshops Available for Schools
Many schools, teen centers, and community centers are organizing After School Chinese programs for their students and members.
Interactive, age appropriate Chinese programs can help inspire learning and transition middle school students to high school Chinese classes.
For more information on CLSC private tutoring, corporate program, Elementary and Middle School workshops, or other programs please visit www.ChineseLanguageSchool.org or contact them at info@chineselanguageschool.org.
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
Learning Chinese
from China Daily (many of us have been there, and we feel this author's pain):
The rain of pain falls mainly on the brain
By Patrick Whiteley (China Daily)
"When does the magic happen?" most Chinese language beginners ask. How long does it take before they can roam from Xi'an to Yunnan and have the ability to speak freely to all and sundry?
But my biggest [complaint] is a little more selfish. "When does the pain stop?" I always ask.
Every time I study Chinese my head hurts so much. My poor old brain churns and burns and turns until I can't handle it anymore.
When I first started learning Chinese about two years ago, the brain pain began after about 10 minutes when everything became jumbled and confused.
The tones, the intonation and every word sounded the same. For example there are more than 40 meanings for "shi" depending on tone and context.
There was only one word beginning with "shi", which I was able to exclaim very loudly, but considering China Daily is a family newspaper, I will refrain from repeating it here.
There is also the sneaky grammar. My friends are not waiting (zai xia lou) "down stairs" they are waiting stairs down (zai lou xia).
The boy wearing the green shirt never leaves the bakery instead, "wearing the green shirt, the boy leaves the bakery".
Speaking was always difficult, but there was no use replying to anything because I couldn't understand what was being said.
Expats, of all ages and who speak good Chinese, assure us beginners that things get better, and the pain does stop.
This is kind of true. Today I can spend up to 90 minutes on Chinese lessons without suffering brain seizures. After such constructive and productive sessions, I applaud my teacher before collapsing into a heap.
"About three to four years," says Patrick Brown, Canadian Broadcasting Commission's Beijing correspondent, referring to when the pain stopped for him.
The veteran journalist began Chinese at age 42 and has been covering China for the past two decades. He says speaking and listening became easier after three years, but insists the learning process never stops because the language is so rich, ompact and detailed. Watching Chinese TV soap dramas is one of the best ways to learn.
"One of the biggest difficulties is actually training the ear, and this takes a lot of time," he says.
I've been watching Chinese television every day for two years and it's still a blur because everybody speaks so fast. I can pick up a few new words, but by the time I process the meaning the speaker has rattled off another sentence.
When I'm learning new words, it always feels like I'm pushing a heavily loaded wheelbarrow up a slippery mud-mountain and I'm forever sliding backwards.
The wheelbarrow is filled with shengci (new words), which I'm using to build a pathway. I load the wheelbarrow with a couple of hundred new words and push up that slippery slope laying down words where I can.
But I sometimes overload the barrow and it slips back and slams into my shins. Or it completely falls over and some days I feel like I've lost everything.
All Chinese learners know that sinking feeling. I need to be tougher and follow the advice of Tom Berenger's tough army sergeant character in Platoon. "Take the pain," he screamed to a wounded soldier writhing in agony in the Vietnam jungle.
Or maybe I should heed the words of that other great action man, Arnold Schwarzenegger, who would say in that Austrian accent: "No pain, no gain." One thing is certain, like Arnie's indestructible terminator, I'll never give up on my mission.
After every Chinese lesson, I pick myself off the floor, rub my aching head and tell my teacher, "I'll be back."
(For help with your Chinese language learning, or your children's, please visit www.ChineseLanguageSchool.org.)
From: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/showbiz/2009-04/20/content_7694317.htm
The rain of pain falls mainly on the brain
By Patrick Whiteley (China Daily)
"When does the magic happen?" most Chinese language beginners ask. How long does it take before they can roam from Xi'an to Yunnan and have the ability to speak freely to all and sundry?
But my biggest [complaint] is a little more selfish. "When does the pain stop?" I always ask.
Every time I study Chinese my head hurts so much. My poor old brain churns and burns and turns until I can't handle it anymore.
When I first started learning Chinese about two years ago, the brain pain began after about 10 minutes when everything became jumbled and confused.
The tones, the intonation and every word sounded the same. For example there are more than 40 meanings for "shi" depending on tone and context.
There was only one word beginning with "shi", which I was able to exclaim very loudly, but considering China Daily is a family newspaper, I will refrain from repeating it here.
There is also the sneaky grammar. My friends are not waiting (zai xia lou) "down stairs" they are waiting stairs down (zai lou xia).
The boy wearing the green shirt never leaves the bakery instead, "wearing the green shirt, the boy leaves the bakery".
Speaking was always difficult, but there was no use replying to anything because I couldn't understand what was being said.
Expats, of all ages and who speak good Chinese, assure us beginners that things get better, and the pain does stop.
This is kind of true. Today I can spend up to 90 minutes on Chinese lessons without suffering brain seizures. After such constructive and productive sessions, I applaud my teacher before collapsing into a heap.
"About three to four years," says Patrick Brown, Canadian Broadcasting Commission's Beijing correspondent, referring to when the pain stopped for him.
The veteran journalist began Chinese at age 42 and has been covering China for the past two decades. He says speaking and listening became easier after three years, but insists the learning process never stops because the language is so rich, ompact and detailed. Watching Chinese TV soap dramas is one of the best ways to learn.
"One of the biggest difficulties is actually training the ear, and this takes a lot of time," he says.
I've been watching Chinese television every day for two years and it's still a blur because everybody speaks so fast. I can pick up a few new words, but by the time I process the meaning the speaker has rattled off another sentence.
When I'm learning new words, it always feels like I'm pushing a heavily loaded wheelbarrow up a slippery mud-mountain and I'm forever sliding backwards.
The wheelbarrow is filled with shengci (new words), which I'm using to build a pathway. I load the wheelbarrow with a couple of hundred new words and push up that slippery slope laying down words where I can.
But I sometimes overload the barrow and it slips back and slams into my shins. Or it completely falls over and some days I feel like I've lost everything.
All Chinese learners know that sinking feeling. I need to be tougher and follow the advice of Tom Berenger's tough army sergeant character in Platoon. "Take the pain," he screamed to a wounded soldier writhing in agony in the Vietnam jungle.
Or maybe I should heed the words of that other great action man, Arnold Schwarzenegger, who would say in that Austrian accent: "No pain, no gain." One thing is certain, like Arnie's indestructible terminator, I'll never give up on my mission.
After every Chinese lesson, I pick myself off the floor, rub my aching head and tell my teacher, "I'll be back."
(For help with your Chinese language learning, or your children's, please visit www.ChineseLanguageSchool.org.)
From: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/showbiz/2009-04/20/content_7694317.htm
Monday, May 18, 2009
Great article for those new to Chinese
Thanks to Wendy Lin for a wonderful article. I thought the clear explanations on how Chinese differs from English, especially in sentence structure, was great.
For more info on learning Chinese, please visit www.ChineseLanguageSchool.org.
Make Chinese Learning Fun, Easy, and Sustainable
by Wendy Lin
The Chinese language is like any other foreign language. It has an easy and a complex part. Chinese people have said, “Knowing yourself and your opponents well before the battle is the key to win.”
How Chinese is easier than other languages
1. Verbs do not have different tenses: e.g. Chinese people would say “I go to China last year.”, “I go to China next year.”
2. Nouns are neither singular nor plural: e.g. “one book”, “ten book” are both correct.
3. Genders do not exist orally as they would in English, French, or any other western language.
4. Characters remain unchanged. Because of this, one character could cover several English words. For example, the Chinese Zodiac only has one character to represent each of the twelve animals, but in English, there are several different translations for one animal. Therefore you might have seen several editions for the Chinese Zodiac signs.
5. Numbers, months, dates, and weekdays are easy to learn: You only need to learn the numbers from 1 through 10, and you will be able to count from 1 through 99, since the numbers between 11 and 99 are a combination of numbers 1 through 10. In addition, you only add an additional character “month” plus the numbers 1 to 12, and you will be able to name all 12 months of a year. It is the same for dates and weekdays; add the character “day” or “weekday” followed by a number.
6. The structure of questions and statements is the same but the question word is used:
a. The use of question word “嗎／ 吗 Ma”:
The question word “Ma” is used when the response “yes or no” is expected, and it is placed at the end of a statement. When it does, it will convert a statement into a question.
e.g. 今 天 是 五 月 十 日 今 天 是 五 月 十 日嗎
b. The use of question word “幾／ 几 ji”:
幾／ 几 is a question word for numbers. When it replaces all the numbers in a question, it converts the statement into a question.
e.g. 今 天 是 五 月 十 日 今 天 是 幾 月 幾 日？
c. By applying the formula, “Positive Word + Negative Word = Question Word”, students can flexibly conduct a dialogue. This avoids the learners having to deal with the complicated structure and makes the learning more flexible.
e.g. 是 不 是 ， 好 不 好 ， 有 沒 有 ， 大 不 大 ， 高 不 高 …
Chinese is not phonetic, as are all romance languages. The whole process of learning a new word takes about triple the effort as learning English. In order to make Chinese learning less frustrating and easy to adopt, all the listening, speaking, reading, and writing should be introduced step by step. It makes the learning objectives clearer as well.
The character, the basic unit of the Chinese language, is so much more different from the words of romance languages that make many people think that Chinese is very difficult to learn. In order to build up a good foundation and prevent repeated mistakes in writing characters, the stroke order should be carefully introduced. Moreover many characters share the same components. Once students are familiar with the strokes, it will help them write a new character that contains the same components without help. Counting the number of strokes will also help students to look up a character in a dictionary. Conventionally, the Chinese dictionary arranges the characters by the number of strokes in the character.
To prevent frustration and make the learning easier and more acceptable, the difficult parts especially should not be applied onto the beginners, instead teachers should emphasize on the easy aspects in the language.
The difficult aspects of learning Chinese other than writing characters:
Sentence structure is another challenge to a non-Chinese speaker. There might be several ways to express one situation, for example, “I have learned Chinese for two years” is the same as “I Chinese have learned for two years”, and “Chinese I have learned for two years”. Or, “What is your name?” in English could be “Your name is called what?” or “ You are called what name?”. In some cases, some words can be omitted and the meaning remains the same.
Measure words are another obstacle even to native speakers. For native speakers, measure words were introduced to children at a young age. Since sentence structure is not a major problem to them as it is to the second language learners, they are able to concentrate on distinguishing the different usages of different measure words. However, it is quite confusing to non-Chinese speaking learners.
Wendy Lin/Author of the book series "Practical Chinese" and the "Daily Chinese"
www.practicalchinese.com
practicalchinese@gmail.com
For more info on learning Chinese, please visit www.ChineseLanguageSchool.org.
Make Chinese Learning Fun, Easy, and Sustainable
by Wendy Lin
The Chinese language is like any other foreign language. It has an easy and a complex part. Chinese people have said, “Knowing yourself and your opponents well before the battle is the key to win.”
How Chinese is easier than other languages
1. Verbs do not have different tenses: e.g. Chinese people would say “I go to China last year.”, “I go to China next year.”
2. Nouns are neither singular nor plural: e.g. “one book”, “ten book” are both correct.
3. Genders do not exist orally as they would in English, French, or any other western language.
4. Characters remain unchanged. Because of this, one character could cover several English words. For example, the Chinese Zodiac only has one character to represent each of the twelve animals, but in English, there are several different translations for one animal. Therefore you might have seen several editions for the Chinese Zodiac signs.
5. Numbers, months, dates, and weekdays are easy to learn: You only need to learn the numbers from 1 through 10, and you will be able to count from 1 through 99, since the numbers between 11 and 99 are a combination of numbers 1 through 10. In addition, you only add an additional character “month” plus the numbers 1 to 12, and you will be able to name all 12 months of a year. It is the same for dates and weekdays; add the character “day” or “weekday” followed by a number.
6. The structure of questions and statements is the same but the question word is used:
a. The use of question word “嗎／ 吗 Ma”:
The question word “Ma” is used when the response “yes or no” is expected, and it is placed at the end of a statement. When it does, it will convert a statement into a question.
e.g. 今 天 是 五 月 十 日 今 天 是 五 月 十 日嗎
b. The use of question word “幾／ 几 ji”:
幾／ 几 is a question word for numbers. When it replaces all the numbers in a question, it converts the statement into a question.
e.g. 今 天 是 五 月 十 日 今 天 是 幾 月 幾 日？
c. By applying the formula, “Positive Word + Negative Word = Question Word”, students can flexibly conduct a dialogue. This avoids the learners having to deal with the complicated structure and makes the learning more flexible.
e.g. 是 不 是 ， 好 不 好 ， 有 沒 有 ， 大 不 大 ， 高 不 高 …
Chinese is not phonetic, as are all romance languages. The whole process of learning a new word takes about triple the effort as learning English. In order to make Chinese learning less frustrating and easy to adopt, all the listening, speaking, reading, and writing should be introduced step by step. It makes the learning objectives clearer as well.
The character, the basic unit of the Chinese language, is so much more different from the words of romance languages that make many people think that Chinese is very difficult to learn. In order to build up a good foundation and prevent repeated mistakes in writing characters, the stroke order should be carefully introduced. Moreover many characters share the same components. Once students are familiar with the strokes, it will help them write a new character that contains the same components without help. Counting the number of strokes will also help students to look up a character in a dictionary. Conventionally, the Chinese dictionary arranges the characters by the number of strokes in the character.
To prevent frustration and make the learning easier and more acceptable, the difficult parts especially should not be applied onto the beginners, instead teachers should emphasize on the easy aspects in the language.
The difficult aspects of learning Chinese other than writing characters:
Sentence structure is another challenge to a non-Chinese speaker. There might be several ways to express one situation, for example, “I have learned Chinese for two years” is the same as “I Chinese have learned for two years”, and “Chinese I have learned for two years”. Or, “What is your name?” in English could be “Your name is called what?” or “ You are called what name?”. In some cases, some words can be omitted and the meaning remains the same.
Measure words are another obstacle even to native speakers. For native speakers, measure words were introduced to children at a young age. Since sentence structure is not a major problem to them as it is to the second language learners, they are able to concentrate on distinguishing the different usages of different measure words. However, it is quite confusing to non-Chinese speaking learners.
Wendy Lin/Author of the book series "Practical Chinese" and the "Daily Chinese"
www.practicalchinese.com
practicalchinese@gmail.com
Saturday, May 16, 2009
Chopstix Preschool Mandarin Chinese Class
How young is too young to begin learning Chinese?
Do your children ever express interest in learning Chinese, or hearing more about Chinese culture? (maybe after watching "Nihao Kailan"??)
When my older daughter (now 13) was 2, she started asking me how to say certain words in Mandarin Chinese ("Mommy, how do you say 'dog' in Chinese? How do you say 'flower' in Chinese?).
I had to admit that, mainly, I didn't know. I enlisted a friend of mine, Susan Lem, who taught Emily a few things, but since she had moved from Taiwan when she was very young, and because she hadn't paid attention in Chinese school, she didn't remember a lot.
So, even she started saying how her daughter (also 2) should be learning Chinese.
It occured to me one day, that if I set up a small Chinese program for preschoolers, I could charge a small fee, Emily and her friends could learn a few words, and I could donate the proceeds to groups that worked with children in Chinese orphanages (synergy!)
Serendipitiously, I met Dr. Joseph Ho and his wife, Catherine, of Stamford, CT. Catherine graciously volunteered to teach, and Chopstix was born.
For information on Chopstix preschool Chinese classes for children ages 18 months to 5 years old, please visit www.ChineseLanguageSchool.org or email us at info@chineselanguageschool.org
Do your children ever express interest in learning Chinese, or hearing more about Chinese culture? (maybe after watching "Nihao Kailan"??)
When my older daughter (now 13) was 2, she started asking me how to say certain words in Mandarin Chinese ("Mommy, how do you say 'dog' in Chinese? How do you say 'flower' in Chinese?).
I had to admit that, mainly, I didn't know. I enlisted a friend of mine, Susan Lem, who taught Emily a few things, but since she had moved from Taiwan when she was very young, and because she hadn't paid attention in Chinese school, she didn't remember a lot.
So, even she started saying how her daughter (also 2) should be learning Chinese.
It occured to me one day, that if I set up a small Chinese program for preschoolers, I could charge a small fee, Emily and her friends could learn a few words, and I could donate the proceeds to groups that worked with children in Chinese orphanages (synergy!)
Serendipitiously, I met Dr. Joseph Ho and his wife, Catherine, of Stamford, CT. Catherine graciously volunteered to teach, and Chopstix was born.
For information on Chopstix preschool Chinese classes for children ages 18 months to 5 years old, please visit www.ChineseLanguageSchool.org or email us at info@chineselanguageschool.org
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