Teach English in Sahuteng Zhen - Yushu Zangzu Zizhizhou

This note discusses the challenges faced by students of English from mainland China who, in contrast to students from Hong Kong, have not often been exposed to English and who have had a completely different education system. It can be postulated that one of the most important aspects to consider when teaching English to new people is understand the affects that their previous experiences of learning languages have had on their skills and capabilities. In particular, the teaching of their mother tongue or any other languages within their learning culture. Teaching mainland Chinese students can be the most challenging because their previous experiences are often some of the most different from those people from Western cultures. They have learnt mandarin in a formal didactic environment which is very different from our own in the West. Starting from a very young age their learning of language has been formal. The Mandarin unit of language is not a letter but rather a character known as a logogram that is made up of strokes, which only when combined represent a word or minimum unit of meaning. Although the available strokes are only about twelve in number, the resulting groups of them making up logogram character are effectively arbitrary and this results in the need for thousands of such “units” that must be learnt without the use of phonetics. Each resulting logogram represents a syllable with a single sound. A particular tone (first – higher and flat, second - rising, third – falling then rising, forth - rising) being a necessary component of spoken meaning in order to help create enough lexical variation. However, this tone is not symbolised in the logogram with an additional symbol in the way that it is with the accents used in French, for example. Where the language overlaps with the West such as in technology naming and the words need to have multiple tones such as “television” then two logograms must be used. This means that when speakers with such a background are exposed to learning English, it tends to be more difficult to adapt and be able to change the stresses through words with multiple syllables. It may be difficult to hear these changes when listening to English, especially at first. The accents in China vary very widely such that words can be slurred together and even missed out by the speakers from some places such as Beijing. The rhythm of speaking mandarin is also very different to English as, in contrast, it is not a stress-timed language with each character taking about the same amount of time to say. This means that the way they speak English will tend to sound flat and staccato or perhaps slurred depending on the region of China from where they come from. It may be difficult for the student to hear the way an English native speaker naturally stresses the important words in a sentence to improve meaning rather than to do so in order to provide the word’s meaning as they do in Mandarin. In their learning experience using a didactic style with little time set-aside for discussion, the spoken language comes first, followed by written language teaching in stages, initially using Pinyin which is quickly replaced by learning the strokes of the characters, followed by the characters, then short phrases with more complex characters, language passages and then long passages of different types such as poetry or prose. In contrast, most English Language teaching methods stress discussion and Student contributions to the lesson with sounds and words being developed together. This will be an unfamiliar environment to the Mainland Chinese person who may withdraw before they become accustomed so it is necessary to adapt the teaching style. Beginning with a highlighting of the difference will help make the student feel more comfortable. Some of the sounds used in English speaking are not used in Mandarin so they must be learnt using mouth shape and physical demonstration. In particular, the English sounds /l/ and/r/ cannot generally be differentiated by Mandarin speakers. Mandarin sentences are not as strictly Subject-Verb-Object as English sentences and they sometimes miss out the subject altogether. Therefore, the student may produce English that is not as formal as necessary. Plural words also do not exist in Mandarin but rather a number word is placed in front of the noun. Thus, they need extra time to learn the English language methodology of representing plurals with an “s” at the end of the noun. In summary, the different experience of learning that the students have experienced makes adapting the teacher’s style much more important. Sensitivity to cultural differences is always essential for successful teaching.