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A better way to learn Chinese BBC article | ||
Tags: Writing System | Mandarin | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5071 days ago 2237 posts - 6731 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 1 of 13 24 March 2013 at 1:07pm | IP Logged | ||
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The BBC had an article today on its website about a recent research paper purporting to have found a better way to learn Mandarin characters: A better way to learn Chinese
There are links within the article to the ubiquitous "Why Chinese is so Damned Hard", another article on dissatisfaction within China about elementary textbooks designed to teach reading and to the research paper itself. This may be interesting to Mandarin learners. Edited by iguanamon on 24 March 2013 at 2:51pm 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| stelingo Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5641 days ago 722 posts - 1076 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Czech, Polish, Greek, Mandarin | Message 2 of 13 24 March 2013 at 1:44pm | IP Logged | ||
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I got this message when clicking on your link:
'We're sorry but this site is not accessible from the UK as it is part of our international service and is not funded by the licence fee. It is run commercially by BBC Worldwide, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the BBC, the profits made from it go back to BBC programme-makers to help fund great new BBC programmes.' Could you maybe copy and paste the article, please? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5071 days ago 2237 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 3 of 13 24 March 2013 at 2:02pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hmmm, that's a twist- not accessible from the UK! It's usually the other way around. Got to love the digital fence. Rather than post the whole article- it's two pages. I'll direct you to a public proxy server where you can enter the following link http://www.bbc.com/future/story/201303 15-a-better-way-to-lea rn-chinese. For some reason forum software inserted a space in the link in the word "learn". Remove the space after pasting the link. Proxy servers allow you to get around the digital fence, although video is a lot tougher.
Odd that the Beeb wouldn't allow people within the UK to access content intended for an international audience. One would think Brits would be entitled to do so because of the license fee and public funding. Edited by iguanamon on 24 March 2013 at 2:04pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5341 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 4 of 13 24 March 2013 at 2:56pm | IP Logged | ||
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Interesting! The researchers point out that there are two traditional ways to learn Chinese characters.
Learn the most common characters first without using the structure. This is pretty much the traditional method used for native speakers, though some countries don't always teach the most common characters first. Learn the basic radicals and characters before learning the characters which are built out of them. This is pretty much the Heisig method. The researchers suggest a third method: Teach component characters before composite characters, but cleverly optimize the order so you still learn the most common characters first. This is basically the same as the Heisig method, but reordered for maximum efficiency. I'm a little disappointed that the article doesn't credit Heisig's previous efforts in this area, and I hope the researchers did so in their original paper. Does anybody feel like tracking down a link to the original paper? 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5071 days ago 2237 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 5 of 13 24 March 2013 at 4:02pm | IP Logged | ||
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The link to the paper is here, where you can download an eight page pdf, Cornell University Efficient learning strategy of Chinese characters based on network approach and within the article itself under "develop a learning strategy". Edited by iguanamon on 24 March 2013 at 4:04pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| lichtrausch Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5769 days ago 525 posts - 1072 votes Speaks: English*, German, Japanese Studies: Korean, Mandarin | Message 6 of 13 24 March 2013 at 4:45pm | IP Logged | ||
Absolutely not. A core part of the Heisig method are its fantastical mnemonics which people using the method I quoted often reject. Edited by lichtrausch on 24 March 2013 at 4:46pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| OneEye Diglot Senior Member Japan Joined 6659 days ago 518 posts - 784 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin Studies: Japanese, Taiwanese, German, French | Message 7 of 13 24 March 2013 at 6:02pm | IP Logged | ||
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It isn't Heisig's method, although it does contain some similarities. This method talks about using the phonetic
components to learn characters, which Heisig completely ignores. I've often thought it would be great for there to be a resource using Heisig-like ordering, which also takes into account how the characters are actually put together. Something like Harbaugh's book, with the order more pedagogically appropriate, but hopefully based on more recent research than the 2000-year old 說文解字, which is wrong at least as much as it's right. We'll see if they get it right. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Flarioca Heptaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5691 days ago 635 posts - 816 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Esperanto, French, EnglishC2, Spanish, German, Italian Studies: Catalan, Mandarin | Message 8 of 13 24 March 2013 at 7:27pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks a lot, iguanamon!
In their paper, there's a link to their website, among which we may find, for instance, their very interesting and potentially useful learning order list. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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