A guest column by Jared Turner, The Mandarin Companion

You turn the page. A picture is off to the side as you stare at rows of pinyin. But that’s not all… there is something below the pinyin. You squint your eyes and there it is: a row of Chinese characters. At first glance, you know a lot of these. In fact, at the beginning, you don’t see a single character you don’t know. But you’re not so certain because you’re distracted; it’s that pinyin! It’s got a tractor beam lock on your eyeballs and just like the Millennium Falcon, you can’t get away. Sweat starts to bead on your forehead as you exert every ounce of will to try and focus on the characters, but you are already within the gravitational pull of the pinyin as it crushes every ounce of desire to read characters.

This, albeit dramatized, scenario is what our children commonly experience when given passages, articles, or books to read in Chinese. It’s so common to see pinyin over all of the characters that we rarely take pause to think about why it is this way and how this became the norm.

Why Books Have Pinyin Over Characters

When Chinese children begin learning characters in school, they already speak Chinese. In the 1^stgrade, Chinese characters are introduced to students as characters that represent words they already know and can speak. At the same time, “radicals” or 部首 (bù shǒu), are introduced and meanings of the individual components of a character are explained. New characters are introduced daily, along with short reading texts or 课文(kèwén). At this early stage, characters are learned via rote memorization and pinyin is not even introduced to the children. Some children are still learning their ABC’s (for pinyin as well as for English).

Daily homework includes practice writing of characters taught that day, often with additional characters assigned by the teacher. Termed as 默写(mòxiě) or “writing from memory,” rows of practice characters will be written into small notebooks used specially for writing characters. The next day in class, students are usually quizzed on the characters practiced the night before in 听写 (tīngxiě) where the teacher reads the characters and the students write each one in a booklet.

The first semester of 1^stgrade focuses on learning these building blocks of Chinese characters. They will finish the first semester with having been taught about 250 characters. Towards the end of the first semester, students begin to learn pinyin. By the second semester of the first year, the kids learn more pinyin, and when one of the reading texts for a chapter uses a character that has not been taught, pinyin is put over that character to help the reader. At the beginning, maybe 2-3 characters in the entire text will have pinyin over them.

 

By the end of the first year, the children have been taught over 600 characters and have a solid foundation in pinyin. They learned to read characters first and pinyin second.

When 2^ndgrade begins, all of the reading texts have pinyin above the characters. This is a great help because at this point characters are introduced more rapidly and it is easy to forget a character that was taught some time ago. It is provided as a reference to the readers in case they don’t remember how to pronounce the characters.

Following this process, pinyin over the characters works very well because the students have learned how to read and build a solid foundation in characters before they even began to understand pinyin or English. Characters are much more natural to read than pinyin, and they don’t carry the same rich meaning that characters do, and therefore it’s easy to ignore pinyin when it’s over a sentence.

This learning process works very well for native Chinese speakers and it is highly effective. I have experienced this firsthand, as two of my children attended a local Chinese elementary school in Shanghai.

The English Experience

For those of us for whom our native tongue uses the alphabet, by the time we are in 1^stgrade, we’ve mastered our ABC’s, been introduced to phonics, and have begun to read simple words and sentences. Words that use the alphabet are simple and natural to us. I sometimes joke that Chinese characters look like spooky animals to a new learner, but it’s not too far from the truth. If you don’t know the character, you just don’t know it. You cannot phonetically sound it out, but you can do that with English words if you know the phonics.

The Crippling Crutch

This is the learner’s conflict commonly found in Chinese textbooks and reading materials: pinyin written above the characters. The alphabet-loving-eyes are naturally pulled away from the characters towards the pinyin. After all, it’s an order of magnitude easier to read than characters, even if we knowthe characters! Even if the reader covers up the pinyin, he inevitably uncovers it to “check” or confirm what he read is correct.

So what’s the big deal? The problem is that this creates an over-reliance on pinyin and actually slows down the learner’s path to building speed of character recognition, reading speed, and fluency. This is how it works.

• A key component of reading fluency is reading speed
• Reading speed builds as the reader becomes more familiar with the characters
• The more encounters the reader has with a character, the more she will build the speed of recognition of that character.
• Pinyin over the characters distracts the reader from the characters.
• Pinyin over the characters creates over-reliance on the pinyin.
• Because the reader spends time reading both the pinyin and the characters, the overall reading pace slows down.
• Because the reading speed is slower…
  • The reader reads fewer characters
  • The reader still has time to translate inside her head
  • Progress towards fluency slows down

It is also for these same reasons that I am not a big fan of the “click your way to fluency” concept which many apps and software enable by clicking or hovering over a character for an instant pinyin and translation. They have their place and use for sure, but utilizing these aids to “read” a text does little for your progress towards fluency (mainly because you are understanding the text in English as opposed to understanding it in Chinese).

This also goes for all those books with Chinese on one side of the page and English on the other. Guess which page the kids read? I guarantee you it’s not the Chinese one. Don’t even waste your money on them.

Some may be saying, “but without the pinyin, I can’t read this Chinese text at all!” If you need pinyin over the text to read it, then you’re not reading at the right level, and you’re not learning the words you’re reading. Put it away and find something easier (if you can) and I’ll kindly redirect you back to a previous blog article about reading at the right level.

For all of you publishers and teachers out there, please do not put pinyin over text that is intended for CSL (Chinese Second Language) students. If you have to use it, only put it over the characters that the reader is not intended to know. We know this takes work and is harder to do, but this is what it takes to put the learner first! And for pete’s sake, don’t tell us just not to look at it. It’s about as effective as this button.

Pinyin is a crutch and sometimes we need a crutch to lean on. Without it our learning-lives would be much more difficult. My hope is that we not create an over-reliance on pinyin and help learners walk on their quest to fluency.

The Mandarin Companion is a publishing house based in Shanghai that features easy-to-read novels in Chinese for those learning Chinese. They focus on rewriting great literature, such as Emma, The Prince and the Pauper or Journey to the Center of the Earth. The books are fun and readable for most immersion kids by the time they get to late middle school. 

Note that the Mandarin program isn’t closing, but the school where it’s been housed since it first opened in 1996, is being demolished and will be rebuilt. The current Potomac Elementary School building opened in 1927.

In July the school’s programs will move to Radnor Holding Facility in Bethesda for the duration of construction on the new school. The expected date of return to the River Road campus is January 2020.

Reliving Memories Before School Closes in Potomac

Potomac Elementary alumni share their school days.

By Peggy McEwan/The Almanac

Former students of Potomac Elementary School were invited to the school Thursday morning, April 12, to take one last look at the school, meet old friends and relive memories before the building is demolished this summer.

#“It was fantastic, it turned out better than we anticipated, people were showing up with boxes of photos and mementos,” said Greg Barton, principal intern.

#Sisters Suzy Potter Linger, who now lives in Ohio, and Carolyn Potter Summerville, of Bethesda, were among the first to arrive.

#Both had fond memories of the school and mentioned that their father and uncle both attended Potomac Elementary in the 1920s when the school was located at the corner of Norton and Falls roads.

Please read more here.

A side note: This blog depends to a great extent on the reporting done by local newspapers across the nation, which tell the stories of their communities, schools and issues better than any other source. That’s one reason I always link to the stories rather than posting whole – it’s not only the right thing to do, but also insures they get the ad revenue that supports their work.

After the horrific shooting at The Capital Gazette in Maryland last week, let me take this moment to urge you to subscribe, in print if you can, to your local newspaper. Support the journalists who make tiny salaries finding out what’s happening in your town and making sure that nothing is hidden and things don’t happen behind closed doors.

Even if you don’t read it every day, it’s worth it. Our children are likely the last generation that will grow up with printed newspapers – get them into the news-reading habit now. Don’t let them be like the high school student I recently met who, seeing the stack of newspapers in front of me, said “Wow, I don’t think I’ve ever actually held a printed newspaper before. I just read everything on Instagram.”

By REBECCA MULLEN
For the Daily Hampshire Gazette

HADLEY — “I don’t think it’s hyperbolic to say that you are all extraordinary,” faculty speaker Bruce Rubin said in his address to the Pioneer Valley Chinese Immersion Charter School’s Class of 2018.

Of the 11 graduates, 10 were International Baccalaureate Diploma Candidates, four were National Honor Society members and all will go on to pursue higher education.

The Class of 2018 was the second class to graduate from PVCICS, a K-12 charter school which opened in the fall 2007. Classes are taught in both English and Mandarin. The graduation was held Friday evening in the school’s gymnasium.

Rubin’s speech highlighted the ways the students had pushed the envelope over the course of their education.

“You are not afraid to challenge orthodoxy and authority,” Rubin said to the class. “‘Just because’ is not a response that you are willing to accept.”

Please read more here.

Please read more here.

I know this idea is anathema to some parents,who want to know their kids are working hard at Chinese. But really, there is a ton of research showing that the absolute best way to get literate it to read, a lot. It’s called Extensive Reading and it’s not just in Chinese. There’s a whole Foundation that works on the topic in English, for example.

Here’s an article from the folks at Mandarin Companion about it. They do really nice – and fun! – books that work for kids in Mandarin immersion. Worth getting for your kid once they hit 4th of 5th grade.

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Reading Pain or Reading Gain? Reading at the Right Level

“So, what should I read to improve my Chinese?” he asked as I looked disapprovingly at his book. Zach* had come to Shanghai as part of an exchange program to study business and Chinese. With no previous Chinese skills, he studied hard and quickly worked through the basics of the language. After a few months, I invited him over for a nice home cooked meal and to see how he was doing. He excitedly showed me his recently purchased copy of Jack Welch’s autobiography… in Chinese. He opened it to show me his progress; I saw how the margins were covered with pinyin and every other word had underlining with a definition scribbled beside it. He had been at it for a week and was pleased that he had struggled through two pages and “learned” a lot of new characters.

Please read more here.

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And here’s another one, from a Chinese teacher

How to Learn Fluent Chinese: Start Reading!

One of the things I love about having kids in Mandarin immersion is that for us non-Chinese parents, our lives are deeply enriched by being welcomed into a world that we otherwise never would have been a part of, broadening our gaze in wonderful ways. My daughters did poetry recitation contests all through school, certainly not something I’d ever encountered growing up and yet an important part of Chinese culture. This story about YingHua students Melanie Tan and Malana Young gives a taste of that. Congrats to them!

KINGSTON NJ – YingHua International School (YHIS) elementary students Melanie Tan and Malana Young, both received 1^st place for two different events at the 45^th annual Association of Chinese Schools (ACS) conference.  The competition drew students of Chinese heritage from all over the northeast of America, from New England area to as far as Maryland and North Carolina.

Ms. Young proudly brought home the 1^st place prize for middle age student individual speech contest.  Ms. Young, 14 years old from Skillman, New Jersey was born into an English-speaking family with a diverse background.  Ms. Young started learning Chinese when she was four and joined YHIS, a Chinese-Immersion school, in second grade.  YingHua’s education has helped her learn to speak the language like a native.  To ensure her speech, “The secret of the statue”, was fluent with words pronounced clearly and smoothly, she practiced for weeks working closely with teachers at YingHua.

Please read more here.

 

 

I realize my only knowledge of Prince Edward Island comes from reading all the Anne of Green Gables books as a child (not a bad way to know a place, really.) I had no idea that it has had a huge influx of Buddhist monks and nuns. Now they’re opening an immersion school. That will give us five religious Mandarin immersion schools in North America, two Catholic – All Souls in Los Angeles and Maryknoll in Honolulu and two non-denominational – Reid Temple Christian Academy in Maryland and Zeeland Christian School in Michigan.  

Beth

New Chinese-English school planned for P.E.I.

Leader of P.E.I. monks, nuns behind new school launching next fall

The latest venture of the P.E.I. monks’ religious leader is a new, private school in which students will learn in both Mandarin and English, planned to open next fall.

Buddhist monks on P.E.I. have built extensive facilities on the Island, while at the same time an influx of Chinese immigrants to P.E.I. in the last few years means Mandarin is the main immigrant language spoken on P.E.I., as it is in the rest of Canada.

“If you’re interested in being a global citizen, it would be a language that would be very beneficial to you,” said Derek McEwen, the CEO of HOPE International Education Foundation, who will also be the school’s principal. McEwen worked as a teacher and principal for years and was director of English curriculum for P.E.I.’s Department of Education.

Please read more here.