Learning Mandarin Chinese in Taiwan

Some people have said they are interested in knowing more about the Chinese courses that I'm taking and how the teachers go about teaching foreigners Chinese in Taiwan. First it needs to be made clear that the Chinese that is spoken in Taiwan is similar to the Chinese spoken in Mainland China but it is not exactly the same. Both are considered Mandarin Chinese, that is one dialect of Chinese. Chinese as a language family has several different dialects that make up the whole Chinese language but most can speak a common dialect referred to in English as Mandarin Chinese. Also the Chinese as a single race, regardless of the country they are from use a single written system. Those in Mainland China use a simplified form of Chinese characters, whereas in Taiwan and other areas (such as Hong Kong and Macau) that include large numbers of ethnic Chinese, utilize traditional Chinese characters. In Mainland China they refer to the system of Chinese characters used in Taiwan as “complex Chinese” instead of "traditional Chinese," but they are in reference to the same thing.

To help you to better understand a difference in the written system, please have a look at these two characters. Both are characters for the word “love” in Chinese. One as you can see is missing a certain part of the character that represents the “heart.” The one without the “heart” is the character used in Mainland China whereas the one that contains the heart is utilized in Taiwan.

One can come to a good understanding about the difference between the Chinese spoken in these two places by considering the way English is spoken in England and in the United States. Both of course speak English but their pronunciation is slightly different and at times the word choice is a bit off. Sometimes certain words in British English mean something entirely different in American English. This too rings true for the Chinese spoken in Mainland China, often referred to as PuTong Hua , or the "average language" (direct translation) whereas in Taiwan it is referred to as "GuoYu" or the "country's language" if translated directly.

I learned a bit of Chinese when I was an undergraduate student in the United States. My Chinese teacher is actually still in the United States but she's currently working with international students at my undergraduate university. I can't really say I learned much from that class though. I then had a chance to become an exchange student at Chinese Culture University in Taipei, Taiwan. I can't really say I learned much Chinese in the courses I took there either since they basically only had two levels "advanced" and "native-speaker" when I enrolled in courses there. Of course, they called the "advanced" class beginner. Even the students that had studied Chinese for a year in their own countries had difficulties. How was I supposed to survive with next to know knowledge of Chinese. I did, however, buy several books during this time and slowly studied with a tutor. When I left Taiwan to go back to finish my masters, I was able to speak some simple sentences and follow simple conversations. When I was a lecturer at National Chiayi University, I continued my tutoring again and I think I improved somewhat. I improved to the point when I had the entrance exam for the Mandarin courses at National Central University, I tested into their 4th level. To be honest, I don't really know how many levels they have here but it seems like 8 levels. I'm currently enrolled in the 5th level and I'm taking it for the second time. I didn't feel I progressed enough the last time I took the level, so I opted to take a rest for one semester and then go back to retake the classes.

Right now I feel my Chinese speaking hasn't advanced as well as it should have in the time I've been given but I blame this mostly on the fact I don't have much time to practice speaking. I guess my reading and writing has improved and I think it was a good decision for me to retake this level. A basic week of Chinese classes for me goes like this: The teacher first goes over the new vocabulary that can range from 30-50 new vocabulary depending on the lesson. Each vocabulary word has one or two example sentences that students are asked to read aloud. From time to time the teacher will elaborate on some sentences or vocabulary words, if he feels they are particularly difficult. We are seldom asked to actually use the words orally in a sentence. We can usually finish these within two two-hour classes. Then it's on to grammar. Each lesson has about 8 to 10 grammar structures. We have fill in the blank questions for practice with 5 to 10 practice sentence per grammar point. There is a little introduction to the grammar point, which the teacher will usually teach to us in his own way and then we go one by one through the sentences reading them aloud and filling in the blanks. After this we will sometimes have a listening exercise where we need to listen to a conversation and then answer some multiple choice questions and also listen to a dialogue that contains all the vocabulary and grammar we learned. We will then usually read the conversation aloud as well. This is usually done on the third day of class. That's the basic routine with us finishing a lesson in about 3-4 days and a test on the 4th-5th day. Our homework is to write each new vocabulary about 10-20 times and use it in a sentence correctly. Besides this, we also need to complete a homework book that asks us to write an article of about 500 characters (equivalent to about 750 words in English). We also have an oral presentation every two weeks. We are also expected to read two novels before the end of the term and turn in a written 600-900 character reflection essay over each novel. Sometimes I feel the classes are overwhelming and it's difficult for me to keep up.

I also am taking a "listening and speaking" class in which I am supposed to review the things that are taught in this other 2 hour class but I feel that seldom happens. If my classmates do not ask the teacher a question, she will provide us with a lot of listening exercises which I feel are not very helpful to me because my listening is already pretty good. If I know the words, I can catch the point of the conversations. Also, the things the teacher provides to us is Chinese speakers speaking putong hua not Taiwan guoyu, so the accent and words are sometimes a bit difficult for me.

My plans are when I finish this term of Chinese in September that I will take a pronunciation course and have a tutor. I hope that I can find someone that can tutor me everyday or at least have speaking practice for 1-2 hours everyday. Maybe I will try to find two people, one for teaching and then one I can just talk with during lunch time.

Any thoughts?