Diane and I have communicated recently on Mandarin here on the PLC lately. It is a subject I know nothing about. I have spent, however, years teaching across the hallway from Annick Chen and Linda Li in two different schools. Annick was the Colorado 2015 TOY and Linda has been described by Stephen Krashen as “the best language teacher in the world”. I have observed them. They are incredible. And neither has ever chosen to comment on the current state of Mandarin instruction in the TPRS community. That is for a reason. Below is a response to Diane about the general topic, again, of which I know nothing except that I feel that I know something, and I want to share my thoughts here in the safe place we have built for such sometimes volatile discussion, all for the good of the order, however, because it is a safe space. Here’s what I’m thinking:
With only 200 in the group of Chinese CI teachers after all these years, it seems that the movement has in some way stalled. The intellectualization of reading with CCR seems to have taken over and that may be the culprit. Why?
It seems to me as if the current Mandarin leadership has turned an iron scowl to the TPRS community, saying that since Chinese is different (how?) it cannot be taught in the same way as more other cognate-rich languages. I do not see this. I do not understand the reasoning.
I know that cognates in modern languages are very hard to hear and recognize in speech. Yes, in reading the students can of course see them, but certainly not in speech. So the “lack of cognates” group is throwing out a red herring there, and the cognate awfulizing is far more than is needed.
I think that doing this – putting the focus on reading too much – protects that group from having to reach their kids with the auditory piece at levels where language acquisition really occurs. The best way to avoid moving into the heart is to stay in the mind. But with beginners in Chinese? Really?
The almost obsessive concern with reading that you all have in your community is derailing the train. The desire to get reading going far earlier than what is best – in my opinion – is not helping anyone. Reading should come far later than you say and the early focus should be almost uniquely on the auditory pieces as happens in real life. Why not do it that way?
We need to reach our students at the level of play and fun – which is all auditory – before starting to teach them reading. This is true in any language. My thinking on reading in French and Spanish – in all the languages, really – is that we need to only read what we have written together about what we have created and experienced together, for the first months and maybe even the first year or even two years.
I am concerned that these heavy intellectualizing teachers will drive the Mandarin train further down into the intellectual caverns of non-productivity. No one, not even Krashen and Mason, seems to be stopping that train.
So it will travel further and deeper into the mountainside, to keep the Chinese movement from the sunny fields of open dialogue that – painfully but at least openly – we now enjoy in our vigorous dialogue in TPRS/CI about best practices. Someone needs to at least start a new railroad company to lead the Mandarin teachers to sunnier lands, the sunny lands of auditory acquisition first and everybody just chill on the reading piece.
What do you think Diane? Am I way off on the reading thing? Or is my intuition that teaching reading is just an excuse to avoid the oral/aural piece in Chinese because it is so hard (read: requires human interaction)? Are I wrong? It is highly probable. But straighten me out.
You know that my focus is that we teachers now start moving our focus from the head, from intellectualizing, into the heart, into connections and emotions and fun and enjoyment of our group connections and our creativity when working together.
How on earth are babies – beginners in the language – going to be able lift those reading weights when they are not ready to lift a listening barbell? Would I indeed invent a complex set of weight lifting equipment for toddlers, or would I wait to offer that equipment to the child only when she was old enough to benefit from it?
Shouldn’t the trajectory be first stories, then reading, then academic vocabulary? Why, then, must we force the reading on students at the same time that they should be building listening proficiency through stories, as well as forming positive associations with the language and becoming happy members of a group? Time is limited, and auditory input is king in our field and, again, is not centered, doesn’t occur, in the analytical part of the brain.
Of course, I have no right to say any of this, since I am not an expert, so there is that.
This is what I see as the problem: in Mandarin there has been for some time a suspicious proclamation that for years now has kept the field of Chinese TPRS instruction cut off from the rest of us for the odd reason that teaching Chinese must somehow be done in a different way.
After all, isn’t it true that if we have learned nothing else after all these years that, if nothing else is true, we must be out of our minds to teach a foreign language?