In China, we’ve met many foreign colleagues. Whether they’ve been in China for less than a year or for many years, most of them have tried to learn Chinese. We think only around 65 to 70% of them give up after a short while. Various reasons contribute to this, such as not spending enough time learning, lack of focus, or ineffective study methods, so they still struggle to speak Chinese.
Do They Really Have the Motivation to Learn?
You might want to help your foreign friends learn Chinese, but no matter how much you wish for their success or how much assistance you provide, if they lack motivation, they will never learn. If you ask every foreigner who just moved to China, “Do you want to speak Chinese fluently?” almost everyone will say yes. However, the main reason most of them end up unable to learn is that they are unwilling to invest hundreds of hours in activities that language learners must do, such as listening to the same audio multiple times, spending a lot of alone time reading materials they don’t fully understand, and using Chinese to communicate with others when they lack confidence. They may like the idea of learning Chinese, but they dislike the actual process.
Unless you can change their attitude towards learning, there’s not much you can do to help them. But what about those foreign friends who have the right attitude towards learning? If you spend a few hours with them each week, you can become their most valuable language learning resource!
Those who have self-taught several foreign languages, especially if they’ve learned other Asian languages, will likely have their own learning systems. They will not need much specific help beyond practising speaking with you.
Others who have never learned a foreign language or haven’t studied one since adulthood may need you to teach them a few basics.
How to Teach Someone Who Knows Little or No Chinese?
- Ignore Writing Characters
This first suggestion is often controversial. Most foreigners learning Chinese should never learn to write characters. Among those who want to learn Chinese, everyone wants to be able to speak it, many hope to read books, websites, newspapers, etc., one day, and most will need to send messages and emails in Chinese. However, very few will need to hand write Chinese characters. If you want your foreign friend to learn Chinese as quickly as possible, do not waste their time teaching them how to write characters by hand (unless they are interested in calligraphy, which is a different matter). - Language is Sound
A fact that foreign language students and teachers should not forget is that a language consists of a series of sounds. To speak a foreign language fluently, we need to do two things: learn to understand the different meanings of different sounds in that language and learn to produce those sounds with the correct melody and order using our mouths.
Of course, other aspects of language such as reading, writing, and grammar can help you learn, but if our goal is to understand and speak fluently, learning to read, write, and study grammar is not absolutely necessary.
Another highly effective way to learn and practice Chinese is by singing Chinese songs, which can help learners memorise new words, patterns, and phrases more easily. A young Australian songwriter, Fiona Feng, has created dozens of songs for the purpose of learning Chinese with music. You can find these songs on the website Melody Mandarin or on YouTube. This could be a useful resource if you are thinking to enhance your Chinese skills by singing songs.
Think of a five-year-old child. At that age, how many characters does the child know? How many Chinese characters can they write? How many grammar textbooks have they read? How many grammar exercises have they completed? Yet, can they speak and understand what their parents and friends say? Children learn their mother tongue through sounds (like their parents’ words, cartoons, etc.). Unfortunately, when they start learning a foreign language in school, their teachers try to teach them speaking through written content.
It’s best to teach beginners solely through the sounds of Chinese. For the first few months to a year, don’t let your students/friends read or write any characters.
Once their speaking and listening skills reach a certain level, like being able to talk with you freely in Chinese for 10 minutes, you should then start teaching them to read and type using pinyin. At that point, the student who has learned many words will quickly learn to read those words they already understand when heard. Their reading progress will be much faster than that of a student trying to learn speaking, listening, reading, and handwriting characters simultaneously.
- Teach Using Sounds
This means having them practice useful dialogues. For example:
A: Hello.
B: Hello.
A: My name is Wong, and you?
B: I’m Tom. Are you a student too?
A: No, I work. I’m a chef. How long have you been in China?
B: I just came last month.
For a beginner, dialogues like the one above are already quite challenging. They will need to listen and repeat many times to learn it. Depending on the student’s progress, you should adjust the difficulty of the dialogues. You should also choose appropriate content to teach based on their personal background.
In the first few months of learning, don’t let them see drafts of the dialogues. Just let them listen to and speak those sentences. Once they have mastered some useful sentences, you can use those sentences to teach them new useful words.
A student who has learned the sentence “I like to go to the restaurant with my friends every Saturday” can easily learn the following new sentences:
- I like to go to the restaurant with my friends every Wednesday.
- I like to go to the restaurant with my friends every Wednesday for barbecue.
- I like to go to the nearby restaurant with my friends every Wednesday for barbecue.
- I like to go to the nearby restaurant with my boyfriend every Wednesday for barbecue.
- I like to go to the park with my boyfriend every Wednesday.
Using this teaching method will help your foreign friends develop their speaking skills. Once their speaking improves, they will find self-learning reading, typing, and listening quite easy. If they also want or need to learn to write characters, there are many online tools to help them write characters confidently.
The key is that a genuinely motivated student will find ways to self-learn most aspects of Chinese. The area where they truly need help is also the most crucial, speaking. So, don’t waste your learning time together trying to teach them things they can learn on their own.
By focusing on teaching your foreign friend speaking skills, preparing simple and useful dialogues, using common sentences to teach new words and grammar, and maintaining a patient and optimistic attitude, your teaching ability and effectiveness will be much better than that of professional teachers who use boring textbooks and attempt to teach speaking, reading, listening, and writing all at once.
The above suggestions are for beginner Chinese learners. If your foreign friend can already communicate in Chinese, helping them improve is very simple. You still need to focus on speaking. Basically, just talk to them each time you practice Chinese together, patiently listen to them, encourage them often, and avoid interrupting them to correct mistakes. Ultimately, every minute they spend practising speaking with Chinese people will improve their fluency, vocabulary, and pronunciation.
Author: Sim K
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