Teaching Children Chinese Using Katrina Liu's Bilingual Chinese Book Approach

I remembered writing about those obsolete Chinese textbooks that can never be used for the Asian Century. I'll flat-out admit (now) that one reason why I hated studying Chinese (or school, in general) is how robotic school teaches you to be. It's funny how parents demand academic excellence and then wonder why the initiative of the child is killed off. In the past Chinese education, the big problem was memorizing and memorizing without understanding. We called these memorizations both biak diam (recitation) and biak sia (written memorization). However, these never taught you how to speak--only memorize. Teachers can talk day in and day out about how Mandarin is the second most widely spoken language. However, giving information just doesn't help if too much memorization is the focus. It wasn't until college that I found memorization meaningful because memorizing the English meaning was absolutely needed. What's even worse is some people have their Chinese diploma but they can't understand Mandarin at all!

An approach worth thinking about is teaching Chinese as a second language. Remember, students enter the Chinese class to learn Chinese. Instead, what I felt was that we were required to learn Chinese first before entering the class. Talk about entering a math class requiring a person to learn the lesson first before the teacher teaches it. It becomes plain pointless! This American-born Taiwanese/Chinese author Katrina Liu, a mother of two children, has written a series of what might be best called the Chinese language textbook. In Amoy, we called it hua gu che. In Mandarin, that would be the 华语书 (Huáyǔ shū). 

The author's self-introduction talks about her life growing up in America and how she found her identity as both Chinese and American:

Hi! My name is Katrina Liu and I’m proud to call myself an American-born-Chinese/Taiwanese mom of 2 and children’s book author from San Francisco, CA.

I grew up in the 80s/90s and went to a predominantly white elementary school. I pushed away everything about my culture because of how badly I wanted to fit in with the other kids. I purposely stopped speaking Chinese at home and hated eating Chinese food. I never truly appreciated my heritage until I became an adult. 

As a child, you’d find me do creative things, whether it was designing friendship bracelets, making short films, writing poems, or drawing storybooks. As I got older, I began teaching myself graphic design and website design. My first job out of college was with a small publishing company as a print and web designer. I eventually moved away from the print industry and into tech. Went on to get my MBA, ended up in Silicon Valley working in product management. 

After a decade in my professional career, I became a mom. As I watched my first daughter, Mina, grow, I witnessed the pure joy she has when drawing with a crayon or creating her own world with play-doh. It made me realize how much I missed the arts. After late hours in the office, I’d rush home with excitement to read bedtime stories to her. We’d cuddle, admire the colorful illustrations and giggle as I made funny voices as I read.

As Mina was about to embark on her next milestone of going to school, l hoped and wished that she would have a better experience than I did. That she could feel confident in herself and proud of her culture and heritage. I also wanted her to have the opportunity to be bilingual ---something that I always regretted pushing away during my childhood. I knew it would be a challenge living in the US in a prominently English-speaking environment.

That’s how I came up with the idea to write my own bilingual children’s books in both Chinese and English for non-native speaking families like ours. There was nothing more fulfilling than creating something that was meaningful to me and my children. 

Fluency in a language is most easily gained if a child is exposed within the first few years of life. I created these books for non-native speakers and like-minded parents interested in fostering the development of dual-language with their children.

My mission is to add more Asian faces into the world of children’s books and to leave a legacy for my daughters by creating books where they can see themselves reflected in them.

As an independent author, this passion project is self-funded. If you support my mission to add more Asian representation to children’s books and dual language learning, I hope you will share my books with your community, friends, and family.

I'm also a self-publishing book coach. If you're interested in publishing your own children's book, check out my book coaching services.

To learn more, Chalk Academy has interviewed me about my process and project. You can read the interview here.

Thank you!

As mentioned earlier, Fuhao Zhuyin is becoming more and more obsolete. That's why I wrote that I support Taiwanese politician Ye Yi Jin's proposal to abolish Zhuyin entirely. Some people make up the excuse (and most of them are boomers) that Zhuyin is "superior" because it's a totally different language. Yet, Zhuyin is rarely used these days like a typewriter. Sure, the wrong Romanization leads to wrong pronunciation. It's because the Pinyin table is still based on the Zhuyin table. Pinyin is basically still Bopomofo using Latin alphabet letters. I still call Pinyin Bopomofo (read here). Learning Zhuyin means having to learn a different set. Even worse, the teachers are made to throw a full velocity of stuff to memorize before one can even read. Please, you can't teach Chinese like that in non-Chinese dominant countries such as the Philippines.

The book's usage of Pinyin and English will provide several benefits. Whether old schoolers want to admit it or not, Zhuyin is getting left behind. From the Inspire Mandarin blog, we can read why Pinyin has become more and more widely used:

1. It is more internationally used by the fact that it uses Latin script. It is relatively easier to type even if you don’t have the input set up in your computer. The keyboard is the same as QWERTY, so there are almost no obstacles to start typing Chinese. 
2. Its use of Latin script makes it more beginner-friendly after all! Even for someone who has never learned Pinyin, he can still try to guess it by reading it with the pronunciation method he is used to though it won’t sound accurate, but it reduces possible struggles in many life situations. For example, for tourists, when they see the Pinyin marked under a road sign, though they’re not sure, chances are they can still get by to successfully communicate with people about where they want to go. 
3. Learners usually find more resources with Pinyin too. That’s the reality. Since the users of Pinyin are much more than Zhuyin’s, and plus other advantages, there are more materials using Pinyin than Zhuyin. 

The objective has always been to use phonetics to learn to read, right? Zhuyin worked with native Chinese but not with non-Chinese speakers or those outside Taiwan or China. What I didn't like back then was how backlogged we are still stuck with Zhuyin. I was soon told to just forget my Chinese diploma. Not even if I applied for a job in any Chinese company in Cebu would they require it. Many of the sales personnel of Xiaomi and Huawei are yet to be taught Mandarin or have a Chinese diploma. Many times, a diploma can end up as just a piece of paper if learning is hardly done. Good grades without learning should never be considered a good grade. Pinyin has been more helpful to me than Zhuyin. I ended up seeing Mandarin as important when I started to look at resources with Pinyin, saw some Taiwanese TV shows, and heard some Mandarin songs played on the radio.

Even better, the use of the bilingual approach means memorization means something. Memorization is part of learning but too much memorization is like taking too of a good thing. Anything good in excess is bad for your health. Junk food is called junk because it contains excess salt and excess sugar. Any good food contains the right amount of salt and sugar. If people understood what they were memorizing, then recitations and written exams would make more sense.

Let's just say that the story for the day is about milk tea. Having both English and Chinese with Pinyin makes it more sensible. It would be memorizing stuff like this:

• Question (问题, Wèntí): 波霸奶茶的三大成分是什么？ (Bōbà nǎichá de sān dà chéngfèn shì shénme?)
• Translation: What are the three ingredients of pearl milk tea?
• Answer:  这三种成分是波霸、牛奶和茶. (Zhè sān zhǒng chéngfèn shì bōbà, niúnǎi hé chá.)
• Translation: The three ingredients are boba, milk, and tea.

Each and every exam will require the student to write down the Pinyin, translate the question to English, write down the answer in Chinese, in Pinyin, and write down the English translation. However, there's still the need to practice Chinese grammar and sentence-making. Sentence-making should be part of the given Chinese Language quizzes as well. Teachers may even need each and every student to repeat to practice proper pronunciation. 

As the Chinese century emerges, new methods of teaching Chinese have to be done. It's more than time to dump old-age traditions that aren't working anymore. The real problem has not been much on the teacher but the system that they're all forced to follow.