It's time for a bit of Chinese language Throwback Thursday. I remember how the Chinese school can be summarized as students memorizing without understanding. The problem wasn't the Lǎoshīs (老師) but the system that ran them as persons. I decided to write this article to "bring up a trauma" associated with the Chinese education system.
From Kiko Chinese, this picture shows the common complaints from children. Standard Chinese is so hard! The Chinese schools tend to lose students because they keep failing in Grade 2 or Grade 2 in Chinese. In fact, I remember someone failing Chinese four times back in the 1990s. Another one was three years in Grade 3 Chinese, where the Chinese teacher was even stricter than the Grade 2 Chinese teacher. The real issue was that there wasn't any real learning because the old traditional Chinese system wasn't doing anything right. People were treated as if Hokkien were their first language.
However, we realize that people can't really memorize what they can't understand. As you look into the reality. Children were memorizing mini-conversations without understanding. The Chinese teachers often used threats like, "If you don't know Chinese, you'll never get a job." That statement is false because people in the city hall or in the barangay don't speak Chinese. I believe thata white lie is often an act of desperation. As I look at the picture, it shows these things:
- Chinese is indeed difficult to learn, because it's new.
- The foundation is all about learning how to read and write, not "I don't care if you coudn't read as long as you pass."
- If students are put in the "just pass it model", eventually they will be saying that Chinese isn't just a bit hard, but really hard.
Sure, the answer to the "bon toi" (refers to mini-conversations) was quite long. However, if we choose to dig into the meaning, we can memorize the answer to the bon tois with better ease. This time, siansi can say from "I don't think Grade 1 only has one bon toi." to "Let's all start learning this bon toi, this way." Given that we've shifted from Zhuyin to Pinyin, there are really fewer reasons to fail.
The HSK1 vocabulary helps create the bridge for the bon toi and the answer to the bon toi. This is all about how to build the fundamentals rather than just "recite and recite" without understanding. This makes me think that:
- For the current generation, this will help them realize the pain the previous batches passed through.
- For those reviewing Mandarin in an adult Grade 1 conversation class, some people would admit their reasons why they didn't like Chinese.
- It also means the Chinese School Assocation needs to constantly evolve the way Mandarin Chinese should be taught.