Practical audio visual Chinese series

Language Learning Chinese
1

I know there are already language book threads but this thread is specifically about that book. Here are some of my complaints.

  1. The ethos
    ‘audio visual’ sounds to me, a lot like, ‘audio lingual’ a method used in the past for teaching English but now largely discredited.
    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio-Lingual_Method

The audio-lingual method was basically ‘listen and repeat’ so the scary thing about audio visual is that the talking part is entirely removed and we are left with ‘listen and watch’ -a worrying though, but not too far off what some of my classes are like.

  1. The language
    The language seems to me to be inauthentic. My Chinese is rubbish right now, but I have lived here for a while and I have a rough idea of how people sound when they talk. This is to say, people don’t seem to say ‘neege’ and ‘zheege’ in Taiwan but ‘nage and’ zhege’ people also don’t seem to add this weird ‘er’ sound to all their words, ‘wan-er’, ‘hui-er’ etc etc (correct me if I’m wrong.)
    It irritates me more than anything that
    A) I’m taught something Useless
    B) I’m taught beijing Chinese in Taiwan -I came here for a reason!
    C) the textbook I have to buy encourages me to speak incorrectly

  2. Use of English
    a few students in my class can speak English but not all. Rendering all the translations into English, pinyin (two types) and bopomofo takes up pages and pages of the text. I’m sure these books could be half the size without all the English. When I teach Chinese students English I KNOW that all my students have the same mother tongue and yet I don’t use Chinese textbooks -there aren’t any!

  3. the video
    the video pack that comes with it looks like it was made in 1970. It’s horrible and painful to watch

2

Actually, the video is quite updated… compared to the book.

Think about it: it is the same book for what, 40 years, and the only changes they’ve made is to split it up further and further -same content, no more pages, just more space- to charge more.

Heaven forbid making any changes to the Bible.

Has any other university put out any other book? Is any institute using their own materials/books? Why haven’t the foreign students asked for updated materials or at least a different one/methodology?

These and otehr questions are mysteries to be solved…

3

Valid concerns, but I will address one point.

People in Taiwan do use neige and zheige. Not as often as naga and zhege, but I do hear them on a semi-regular basis. It almost seems to me as if the meaning changes slightly.

zhege = this one.
zheige = this exact one right here I’m pointing at.

Could just be me… I don’t think the meaning actually changes; just something I noticed from the way that they are used.

4

[quote=“yamato”]2. The language
The language seems to me to be inauthentic. My Chinese is rubbish right now, but I have lived here for a while and I have a rough idea of how people sound when they talk. This is to say, people don’t seem to say ‘neege’ and ‘zheege’ in Taiwan but ‘nage and’ zhege’ people also don’t seem to add this weird ‘er’ sound to all their words, ‘wan-er’, ‘hui-er’ etc etc (correct me if I’m wrong.)
It irritates me more than anything that
A) I’m taught something Useless
B) I’m taught beijing Chinese in Taiwan -I came here for a reason!
C) the textbook I have to buy encourages me to speak incorrectly[/quote]
You’re being taught Standard Mandarin. The local children are also taught to speak and use vocabulary in the same way. They just don’t when they get out of the classroom. If you want to talk like the locals, I’m afraid there’s no government/university course for speaking the very unstandard local variety of Mandarin you hear on the streets. If you want to forgo retroflexes (the r sound) and turn all ‘f’ sounds into ‘h’ sounds, by all means, but it’s not going to help you learn better Chinese (in the overall sense).

People do say “huir”, although it typically comes out like “hu-e”. Also, “zheige” is a shortened form of “zhe yi ge”. Say “zhe yi ge” fast enough and it becomes “zheige”. This contraction has been codified as standard. The same goes for “neige” = “na yi ge”. As MPenguin wrote, people do use it.

5

Worst thing is last year they ‘up-dated’ the series (which means changed the covers, changed a picture or two, swapped some lessons around and added a tiny little bit of new supplementary materials/essays).

One thing that always got me in the later books was the difference in difficulty between the main text (quite easy) and the additional essays ( much more difficult). The texts seemed randomly chosen, one of my teachers pointed out that she recognized some of the texts from when she was at school. The whole series was painfully boring, but does contain all the important grammar structures that we need.

I alsp wish that someone would hurry up and bring out a better series, though I wont hold my breath!

6

[quote=“sjcma”][quote=“yamato”]2. The language
The language seems to me to be inauthentic. My Chinese is rubbish right now, but I have lived here for a while and I have a rough idea of how people sound when they talk. This is to say, people don’t seem to say ‘neege’ and ‘zheege’ in Taiwan but ‘nage and’ zhege’ people also don’t seem to add this weird ‘er’ sound to all their words, ‘wan-er’, ‘hui-er’ etc etc (correct me if I’m wrong.)
It irritates me more than anything that
A) I’m taught something Useless
B) I’m taught beijing Chinese in Taiwan -I came here for a reason!
C) the textbook I have to buy encourages me to speak incorrectly[/quote]

You’re being taught Standard Mandarin. The local children are also taught to speak and use vocabulary in the same way. They just don’t when they get out of the classroom. If you want to talk like the locals, I’m afraid there’s no government/university course for speaking the very unstandard local variety of Mandarin you hear on the streets. If you want to forgo retroflexes (the r sound) and turn all ‘f’ sounds into ‘h’ sounds, by all means, but it’s not going to help you learn better Chinese (in the overall sense).

People do say “huir”, although it typically comes out like “hu-e”. Also, “zheige” is a shortened form of “zhe yi ge”. Say “zhe yi ge” fast enough and it becomes “zheige”. This contraction has been codified as standard. The same goes for “neige” = “na yi ge”. As MPenguin wrote, people do use it.[/quote]

Thanks for the corrections about language, as i said I’m not expert. I will argue with one point you make though, that of the suggested ‘uselessness’ of learning Taiwanese mandarin. I think it’s quite normal for someone to want to sound liek their peers and the people around them. You may think beijing chinese is ‘correct’ but I find those kind of views a bit old fashioned. Taiwanese kids may get taught ‘standard’ madarin, but they are not being taught it as a language. I’ve no idea what goes on in Taiwanese schools but I imagine if the kids are taught that stuff, it’s largely foisted upon them and not used.

Bottom line, I wanna learn to speak the way Taiwanese people speak, not the way some government institution/language mavern believes it is appropriate for me to speak. I don’t think that’s too much to ask.

7

[quote=“Icon”]Has any other university put out any other book? Is any institute using their own materials/books?[/quote] ICLP uses their own books, including ones originally published as IUP (now in Beijing). The latest editions of 2 books I bought (although I’m not in the program) are from 97 & 98, and basically included an overhaul of the index & vocab lists.

There’s also 今日台灣, published by 東海大學 in Taichung, last updated in 2004 (mostly for photos, it seems). Content starts out pretty dull & typical: night markets, tai-chi, holidays. Later discussions include environmental issues, cross-straits relations & Taiwanese ethnic minorities.

The ICLP website still advertises use of the “audio-lingual method” despite it being very outdated, and they don’t seem concerned w/updating the methods or curriculum (why bother when Ivy Leaguers are still filling up classes & shelling out 4 times the going rate anywhere else in Taiwan?).

Even if every student across Taiwan complained this year, more will show up at Shi-Da & Tai-Da et al next year and pay for the same crappy classes. It’s like revenge for years of shitty buxiban English classes :stuck_out_tongue:

Until ex-pat students vote w/their feet&wallets by heading to China, there’s no incentive for schools here to improve their materials or methods.

8

[quote=“sjhuz01”]
The ICLP website still advertises use of the “audio-lingual method” despite it being very outdated, and they don’t seem concerned w/updating the methods or curriculum (why bother when Ivy Leaguers are still filling up classes & shelling out 4 times the going rate anywhere else in Taiwan?).

Even if every student across Taiwan complained this year, more will show up at Shi-Da & Tai-Da et al next year and pay for the same crappy classes. It’s like revenge for years of shitty buxiban English classes :stuck_out_tongue:

Until ex-pat students vote w/their feet&wallets by heading to China, there’s no incentive for schools here to improve their materials or methods.[/quote]

From the few people I talked to who went to both IUP and ICLP while I was at ICLP, IUP sounded like the 7th level of hell. They may be the premier program, but their methodology was strictly rote repetition. Teacher speaks, you repeat and absorb. ICLP’s was slightly better, but it depended on which teacher you had.

Some other universities in China may have updated their methodology, but I’m not holding my breath. If it works for a billion Chinese learners, why not use it for foreign language learners too? :ponder:

9

Another concern is how MARKETING professionals are so heavily involved in educational publishing. There is a divide between what people believe will sell, what teachers say they need in the classroom and what academics are finding through research. From personal experience, relatively little care is given to what students want/need, since administrators choose the books and the primary buyers are institutions (not one-off sales at bookstores).

PAVC is acceptable as a language teaching material. It was written to be able to be used outside of Taiwan for university language CFL programs. There could be so much better of a book.

There need to be more CFL texts that use an integrated approach for those of us studying in Taiwan.

10

It wasn’t til I stopped using the text books designed for foreigners (finished the PAVC series， 今日台灣，讀報學華語，新聞華語 etc…) and started reading 國語日報 that I seemed to make decent progress. As 國語日報 has ㄅㄆㄇㄈ ~ you can read artciles and have a 4-tone-workout at the same time. Although it’s aimed at 9-11 year-olds (or so I’m taught), you can still find quite a few interesting articles about science/nature/art/culture ect… and it’s not so heavy on the politics, which isn’t a really a bad thing, to top it off, it only costs 10NT. After a couple of months of reading the thing, my reading speed and comprehension have made much more improvement than with any thing I’ve used before.

Unless your living anywhere near An-He road, then I strongly recommend this method of study.

11

[quote=“Dr Jellyfish”]It wasn’t til I stopped using the text books designed for foreigners (finished the PAVC series， 今日台灣，讀報學華語，新聞華語 etc…) and started reading 國語日報 that I seemed to make decent progress. As 國語日報 has ㄅㄆㄇㄈ ~ you can read artciles and have a 4-tone-workout at the same time. Although it’s aimed at 9-11 year-olds (or so I’m taught), you can still find quite a few interesting articles about science/nature/art/culture ect… and it’s not so heavy on the politics, which isn’t a really a bad thing, to top it off, it only costs 10NT. After a couple of months of reading the thing, my reading speed and comprehension have made much more improvement than with any thing I’ve used before.

Unless your living anywhere near An-He road, then I strongly recommend this method of study.[/quote]

As a quick aside, i went to the 國語日報 for Chinese lesson last year. They have 1 month courses, 2 hours a day. Aboslutely terrible! 2 hours of the teacher talking at us and asking us to repeat phrases (that was conversation) He would ask ‘are you Japanese?’ to which I would answer ‘no I’m not’ and he would be all ‘no no no, read the book!’ so I had to say ‘yes I was’ because that was the answer given in the book :loco:

There was 0 free talk/role plays or communicative activties. THey just went through lists of hanzi telling us the meaning and how to write them.

12

[quote=“yamato”][quote=“Dr Jellyfish”]It wasn’t til I stopped using the text books designed for foreigners (finished the PAVC series， 今日台灣，讀報學華語，新聞華語 etc…) and started reading 國語日報 that I seemed to make decent progress. As 國語日報 has ㄅㄆㄇㄈ ~ you can read artciles and have a 4-tone-workout at the same time. Although it’s aimed at 9-11 year-olds (or so I’m taught), you can still find quite a few interesting articles about science/nature/art/culture ect… and it’s not so heavy on the politics, which isn’t a really a bad thing, to top it off, it only costs 10NT. After a couple of months of reading the thing, my reading speed and comprehension have made much more improvement than with any thing I’ve used before.

Unless your living anywhere near An-He road, then I strongly recommend this method of study.[/quote]

As a quick aside, i went to the 國語日報 for Chinese lesson last year. They have 1 month courses, 2 hours a day. Aboslutely terrible! 2 hours of the teacher talking at us and asking us to repeat phrases (that was conversation) He would ask ‘are you Japanese?’ to which I would answer ‘no I’m not’ and he would be all ‘no no no, read the book!’ so I had to say ‘yes I was’ because that was the answer given in the book :loco:

There was 0 free talk/role plays or communicative activties. THey just went through lists of hanzi telling us the meaning and how to write them.[/quote]

So your problem was the teacher, not the book, right? Actually that sounds like a pattern, that the teachers disappoint you, not the material. What did you think of the 國語日報 as a text? Also, Have you tried speaking to them to see if they’ll change what they are doing to address your complaints or were you silent?

13

I didn’t assert that speaking like the locals is useless; in fact, it is very useful. But if you want to learn Chinese well (incl. reading, writing), learning to strictly speak like the locals will only hinder the effort, in my opinion. This is no different than teaching kids standard English in the classroom while everyone outside the school speaks quite a different version of the language. Yet, no one is advocating teaching “street English” as the mainstream version. First, learn standard Mandarin; then adjust it to the local environment.

BTW, I don’t know what you mean by Taiwanese kids not being taught standard Mandarin as a language. Perhaps you’d like to clarify.

So who do you want to sound like? Chen Shui-Bian or Ma Ying-Jeou? Do you expect language institutes to teach all varieties of accents on the island? Even those so far off from the standard that you’d have no hope of looking anything up in the dictionary?

14

[quote=“yamato”][quote=“Dr Jellyfish”]It wasn’t til I stopped using the text books designed for foreigners (finished the PAVC series， 今日台灣，讀報學華語，新聞華語 etc…) and started reading 國語日報 that I seemed to make decent progress. As 國語日報 has ㄅㄆㄇㄈ ~ you can read artciles and have a 4-tone-workout at the same time. Although it’s aimed at 9-11 year-olds (or so I’m taught), you can still find quite a few interesting articles about science/nature/art/culture ect… and it’s not so heavy on the politics, which isn’t a really a bad thing, to top it off, it only costs 10NT. After a couple of months of reading the thing, my reading speed and comprehension have made much more improvement than with any thing I’ve used before.

Unless your living anywhere near An-He road, then I strongly recommend this method of study.[/quote]

As a quick aside, I went to the 國語日報 for Chinese lesson last year. They have 1 month courses, 2 hours a day. Aboslutely terrible! 2 hours of the teacher talking at us and asking us to repeat phrases (that was conversation) He would ask ‘are you Japanese?’ to which I would answer ‘no I’m not’ and he would be all ‘no no no, read the book!’ so I had to say ‘yes I was’ because that was the answer given in the book :loco:

There was 0 free talk/role plays or communicative activties. THey just went through lists of hanzi telling us the meaning and how to write them.[/quote]

I was talking about buying the 國語日報 newspaper from 7-11… I never mentioned anything about 國語日報 lessons, I didn’t even know they did lessons ~ I thought the newspaper was for Taiwanese kids? Well, the newspaper called 國語日報 is quite helpful anyway.

15

[quote=“lbksig”]
So your problem was the teacher, not the book, right? Actually that sounds like a pattern, that the teachers disappoint you, not the material. What did you think of the 國語日報 as a text? Also, Have you tried speaking to them to see if they’ll change what they are doing to address your complaints or were you silent?[/quote]

When I went to 國語日報 they didn’t use that book. They use a book they produced themselves which was absolutely the worst book I’ve ever seen in my entire life. the 國語日報 newspaper itself I have never read, however the English language lessons they offer at the offices near Guting are not much fun. I didn’t talk to them because I was only a student there for 1 month and had no intention of continuing.

I’ll have to check out the newspaper itself.

[quote]I didn’t assert that speaking like the locals is useless; in fact, it is very useful. But if you want to learn Chinese well (incl. reading, writing), learning to strictly speak like the locals will only hinder the effort, in my opinion. This is no different than teaching kids standard English in the classroom while everyone outside the school speaks quite a different version of the language. Yet, no one is advocating teaching “street English” as the mainstream version. First, learn standard Mandarin; then adjust it to the local environment.

BTW, I don’t know what you mean by Taiwanese kids not being taught standard Mandarin as a language. Perhaps you’d like to clarify. [/quote]

We both agree learning to speak like the locals is useful. Great. But in the next sentence you suggest learning to speak like the locals is detrimental… :s I’m not sure what you mean by ‘street English’ but there are many advocates of teaching corpus based authentic material and rightly so! I’m not interested in learning what someone in an office somewhere arbritarily believes is ‘correct’ I want to learn what people actually say. I disagree with you again that there should be any learn A first then B. If I want to learn to play tennis, for example, I wil practice playing tennis. I wouldn’t learn another simillar but related sport in order to move onto tennis. It’s inefficient. I loath language educators dictating what is ‘best’ for students, when the best thing for them is to learn to speak like normal people do. no short cuts, no easy methods, no ‘well you’re foreign so you don’t need to learn this’ etc.

I don’t see how my reading and writing will be affected either, though I 'm interested in hearing you explain this.

I think we need to be clear about where this is going. If a student asked to leanr British English rather than American English would you have these same concerns? Would you insist that she define what exactly British English were and which type she would like to learn (Do you want to sound like Tony Blair or Gorden Brown?) I don’t think it’s really worth going into, I believe my meaning is clear.

16

I switched from this book to Very Practical Chinese. This is a book specifically for Taiwan and it’s great. http://www.verypracticalchinese.com/

17

Guys, regarding The Book, I also have to point out one of my main concerns, related to the facts that I am a non Native speaker of English and also I taught Spanish for foreigners at beginners level:

There is no way someone who does not speak English can use the friggin’ book.

First of all, the teachers are not trained to work completely in the target language, meaning that they need to rely on translation for teaching. I am for translation up to a a certain point, but in thsi case it also means that they have to use the learner’s language as a crutch that is very hard to get rid of. Shida tried a couple of experiments with all Spanish speakers together for the Chinese language lessons, but that meant that the students could not integrate smoothly withe the rest of their other school mates -which could also be a probelm with the content.

Dunno about you, but when I taught people FOB, tehre were Japanese, British, Swedish, Indian, etc. in the same classroom. It was harder but necessary to use the target language for teaching, and yes, a few Engish or own language dictionary kicks. You must maximize the student’s exposure to the target language, and use the lingua franca which is teh target language.

Oh, and regarding “street language”, we were told several times by our teachers that peopel outside the college walls spoke awful Mandarin and we shouldn’t learn from them… It’s an attitude problem, I’d say.

I also told you the “you are a foreigner, you do not need to learn how to use the dictionary” anecdote.

18

American and British English are codified and standardized. If you want to learn American English, you’ll get it. What you won’t get is Ebonics from a ESL class. Imagine if there wasn’t a standard for American English. What then would be taught if a student demanded American English? A Boston accent? A Texan accent? A inner city LA gangster accent? Should there be a dictionary for each of the various accents? A different set of teaching material for each state, county, and town?

Taiwanese accented Mandarin is not standardized and is quite varied. Until one of Taiwan’s versions of Mandarin is standardized, codified and popularized, it is unreasonable for a language institute to be expected to offer up such a course.

Gordon Brown vs Tony Blair? That’s a poor analogy. Chen Shui-Bian vs Ma Ying-Jeou is more like comparing Bob Marley to the Queen.

As for why your reading will be affected, it’s simple. There is no Taiwanese accented Chinese dictionary. If you want to look something up by pronunciation? Good luck. You want to understand word play based on pronunciation? Again, good luck.

19

Shi-Da teacher’s are mostly mainland background (from my experience) with a few ‘Taiwanese’ thrown in. Mainlanders and their descendants dominate the educational system in Taiwan, especially in Taipei. Therefore they tend to downgrade Taiwanese ‘Taiwan GuoYu’ as being beneath learning sometimes. This is ridiculous, akin to learning American English in the UK when you have no intention of going to the US! There’s no reason somebody that learnt Taiwan GuoYu cannot pick up standard Mandarin later, in fact it may be a quicker and more drealistic route to follow than the other way around since one can instantly use Taiwan GuoYu and be understood in Taiwan (which is really NOT so different than standard mandarin at all, mainly a different accent and emphasis on endings mostly…). If you go to China than you can learn the local words and emphasis there very quickly…no big deal.

This situation is compounded when you realise ShiDa is focused on the university student market rather than the ‘learning Chinese for living in Taiwan’ market, leading to an excessive focus on reading an writing at the start, bland materials, and standardised texts.
ShiDa does offer other specialised classes such as literature, newspaper reading, business etc. and SOME of which used topical material which were quite useful if boring at times.

However, having tried the various lower priced Chinese teaching offerings in Taipei (couldn’t afford Tai Da, TLI and GuoYuRiBao were hopeless for me and they have few facilities and students are not so motivated), I still recommend ShiDa as by sheer force and repetition you will pick up fairly decent Chinese, given time (for me over 2 years!) and you will have a basic level of reading and writing that will stand to you. But they don’t offer night classes so again not suitable for everybody…but if you have the time available in the mornings ShiDa is a good choice for the basics.

20

Wow thanks!

This was great…the slang section was immense! I’m amazed this book is not sold in regular book stores.