Re: Learning Chinese Is Too Tough

On Nov 22, 4:13 pm, PaPaPeng <PaPaP...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Learning Mandarin

False Eastern promise
Nov 22nd 2007http://www.economist.com/world/britain/displaystory.cfm?story_id=1018...
From The Economist print edition

The craze for teaching Chinese may be a misguided fad

"CHINA will be the dominant power in the 21st century and the
employment opportunities that speaking Mandarin will give are
immense." Thus Anthony Seldon, headmaster of Wellington College, at a
conference in 2006 entitled "Why every school should offer Mandarin".
Nearly two years later, the spectacular growth of the language in
British schools shows no sign of slowing. More than 400 secondary
schools now teach it, according to the Specialist Schools and
Academies Trust, which is lobbying to bring Mandarin into the national
curriculum. And Britain is not alone in its enthusiasm for the
language: some 30m foreigners are studying Mandarin today, and Chinese
authorities expect the number to rise to 100m by 2010.

In a few decades China may indeed overtake America as the world's top
economic power. Will Britons who make the effort to learn its language
be rewarded with better careers? Barring some kind of sea change in
global language learning, the answer will almost always be no.

With its tones and horribly complicated writing system, Mandarin is
much harder to learn than most European languages. The Foreign Office,
for example, gives its officers four times as long to get from
beginner to operational level in Mandarin as it does in Italian,
French or Spanish--and only those with the greatest aptitude for
languages are selected for it. The vast majority of Westerners who
travel to China to study Mandarin give up, go home and forget what
they have learned. Undergraduates at British universities find it hard
to adjust to a workload heavier than that for other subjects, and many
drop out.

For those determined to become fluent in Chinese, a good level to aim
for is a score of six in the national standard "Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi"
exam. This is the qualification foreigners need to enroll alongside
local undergraduates at a Chinese university. A graduate in Chinese
from a British university should reach that grade (though many do
not). So should someone with good linguistic ability who studies
Mandarin in China full-time for three years.

But is learning moderately good Chinese worth the opportunity cost?
After all, in three or four years a British graduate could get most of
the way to qualifying as a lawyer, for example. According to the
Association of Graduate Recruiters, those who hire British graduates
attach little importance to language skills in general. So to justify
the extra effort needed, the demand for fluency in Mandarin would have
to be way above demand for, say, French.

Yet anecdotal evidence suggests that there is little call for Britons
with Mandarin. One reason is that many Chinese already speak
reasonable English. In China's bigger cities children often start
learning English in reception year. It is compulsory for all from the
start of secondary school to the second year of university. To study
for a doctorate, even in fine art or the poetry of the Tang dynasty,
students need to show fluent literacy in English. An academic career
is closed to those who cannot do so.

Outside the classroom, too, there is widespread conviction that a
child's prospects will be limited if he does not learn English. Senior
managers with no capacity in the language are becoming a rarity.
China's elite professionals are often bilingual because most of them
went to university in America, Britain or Australia.

For this reason, Britons at home never need to use Mandarin in their
dealings with Chinese firms. Haier, a white-goods maker, for example,
reports that every Chinese employee posted to its 15 overseas
industrial parks, 22 trading companies, 30 plants and eight R&D
centres outside China speaks good English.

Within China companies can hire an expatriate who speaks Chinese. Or,
more often, they take their pick from an abundant supply of local
graduates in English who are happy to work for 2,000 yuan (£130) a
month. "I took an 80% pay cut to come here because I wanted to learn
the language," says Ken Schulz, a software engineer from Silicon
Valley who studied Chinese full-time for four years at Beijing's
University of Language and now works in the capital at WorkSoft, an
outsourcing firm. "I'm the only foreigner in an office of 1,200
people, and I hardly get any opportunity to use my Chinese."

At Search Bank, a Beijing employment agency, Hai Yuen points out that,
whereas the value of compensation packages for expat executives has
been shrinking over the past ten years, the number of Chinese-speaking
foreigners she handles has been rising. Better language skills, she
reckons, are a product less of market demand than of a general
enthusiasm for China. Reason enough, perhaps, to learn the language.

In the Silicon Valley, American children are learning Mandarin
starting at 3 years old. By elementary school, they can speak English
and Mandarin perfectly. They are prepared for the future.

Amerasian children start at the very beginning with both languages.

.

Quantcast