Seeking opinions about Mandarin pegagogy re. pronunciation

Language Learning Chinese
1

To practising or aspiring Chinese pedagogues; when and to what extent should pronunciation (tones in particular) be taught and practised explicitly?

My vocabulary is limited as is my grammatical knowledge. I can only read the few characters necessary for effective navigation of roads and cities. I cannot write anything (although it causes great hilarity when I try to). BUT my pronunciation is not too bad. Of course I still have a foreign accent, but generally I speak clearly and intelligibly, with fairly accurate tones. Certainly, people to whom I’m speaking often assume, based on my pronunciation, that my Chinese ability is far greater than it really is, and will respond to any question of mine with a torrent of speech that flows over my head like water.

This didn’t come easy. I studied the phonemic system of Mandarin twice over; the first time with a very strict person from Beijing, the second over two weeks intensively at TLI.

The key thing about the way I studied it was that each time, it was before studying any of the particular course’s functional language, grammar, syntax and vocabulary. This seems to be the norm for Mandarin pedagogy, yet it seems to go against modern research into foreign- or second-language learning, which favours an integrated approach. It’s treated me well enough, but it was pretty frustrating at times, and I think there might be many people who it didn’t suit.

Yet there remain a great many foreigners who, having studied a great deal and reached a high level in other respects, still make a mish-mash of their pronunciation, especially tones.

So, as a matter of interest, what do you suggest? Is it worth starting to teach some functional language from the very beginning, despite the fact that doing so might ‘embed’ bad pronunciation habits which would be impossible to root out later? Or is the current practice the best; isolating and working on the phonemic system first, risking frustrating and alienating learners?

Would your recommendations vary according to the purpose of language learning? Would you go easy on the study of tones for somebody who just wanted some daily functional ability, and study them harder with someone who wanted a university-level course with all the four skills?

How important is clear pronunciation of Mandarin anyway?

2

The tones are extremely important for making oneself understood in Chinese, so I would always stress them right from the start. However, one has to recognise that some people will just never get them, or will only get half way there. The thing is not to let students who happen not to have the tone talent feel discouraged.

3

I think you’re right about differing abilities re. tones. I think that my previous musical training especially regarding things such as recognising pitch intervals helped. I don’t know whether it’s really innate since it has been shown that, at least regarding musical training, very few people are genuinely ‘tone deaf’, but anyway it seems that at the point where they start learning Mandarin some people have greater abilities to pick up tonal use quickly. Perhaps this is a case for ‘streaming’ of group classes into a sub-group who feel comfortable with and want to consciously work on tonal pronunciation, and a sub-group who prefer to concentrate on the other aspects.

I do believe that you’re right also that tones are really quite important to intelligibility. For what it’s worth, I very rarely have the problems with ‘lockup’ that were mentioned on another thread, and I believe that this is to some degree due to my pronunciation. (I’m not getting cocky by the way; I know at least a couple of foreigners who are better than me in pronunciation and I know plenty who are better than me in every other regard).

But still, do you believe that tonal teaching and practise should be integrated into the main syllabus, or rather taught at the beginning as a compulsory preliminary? (During those first 2 weeks at TLI, we were positively discouraged to jump ahead in the book and start learning vocab., or even to search for meaning in the phonemes we were practising).

4

When I was teaching Chinese I concentrated on pronunciation from the beginning, but I made sure the students had a couple of meaningful sentences to take home with them even the first time I taught them.

Did you ever learn this little rhyme?

Shengdiao, shengdiao, feichang zhongyao
Duo duo lianxi jiu neng xue hao.

5

To me, language should be entirely pragmatically focused. I’ve never been much interested in pedagogy. I can’t imagine anyone wanting to sit in a classroom in Taiwan studying tones for more than a few days when they are in a position to take advantage of the world’s biggest classroom right outside the door. I say use the classroom to give a bit of structure to your language study, i.e. teacher-directed assistance in understanding difficult grammatical or vocabulary problems.

I say don’t worry about embedding the wrong tones because you aren’t in a classroom somewhere repeating after a teacher. Godawful waste of time. If you’ve got a little bit of the mimic’s talent, you can imitate the people around you well enough. If you find that you are mispronouncing the tones (second-third and third-second combos are common problems), pay attention to the way the natives are speaking, and you’ll find that correcting the problem is easy enough. I think much of it has to do with attitude. If you’re open to the idea that you’re not an all-knowing Mandarin wiz, you’ll be willing to accept the idea that you’re ocassionally (or often) mispronouncing words.

Here’s what I suggest: Grab a notebook and a pen, put it in your pocket, and start writing down the things you hear outside your home. My first two years here, I’d study from the DeFrancis series or some other book in the morning, write down what I’d learned for review at a later time, then go outside and learn another 30 or 40 words or phrases throughout the day. When I found myself waiting or sitting on a bus, I’d pull out my book and review the latest stuff. I filled six notebooks my first year, fewer after that because I had a good enough vocabulary to understand most anything I heard.

I have also found that Taiwanese people are consistent in their willingness to stop, repeat the word or phrase several times, and wait for you to jot it down in either pinyin or bopomofo. Hell, most people would check my work for me if I was writing in bopomofo.

I say if you really want to learn, don’t worry too much about pedagogy. Find a method that works, but get out there and do it. Time’s a wastin’.

Hope this helps.

6

I think everyone’s opinions about this is shaped by how he/she learned (or failed to learn) Chinese pronunciation. Take my views with a grain of salt, because they are mostly influenced by my own experience.

I started learning Guoyu about six years ago. I first had some instruction from a couple of not so enthusiastic mainlanders back in the States. They did not heavily drill the whole pinyin system before skipping into dialogues. I don’t think this was because they had made a conscious pedagogical choice not to do so; they were probably just lazy or clueless. The course was only a year long, and we didn’t finish the materials. Then I moved to Taiwan and studied at TLI. By that time I at least had good “passive” familiarity with all the pinyin sounds. My teachers probably used about four hours of class time to go back over everything. That was probably just about right. One of my teachers wanted to waste more time doing it, but the other one seemed to recognize that spending so much time on drilling abstract sounds doesn’t do much good. Some teachers I’ve known have the attitude that you should be able to pronounce every syllable perfectly before you actually get into any practical language. I think that is extreme.

After finishing basic pinyin practice, we went into the TLI dialogue book. This is where I got really bored. It was the typical listen and repeat routine. They would correct every mistake I made. This was the point where they started to push for perfect pronunciation. At first it was rather annoying, but I got used to it. I am pretty certain that my pronunciation improved at a much faster rate than other beginning students. I can think of plenty of reasons for this. Unlike most other students, both of my teachers were waishengren. I’m not saying that waishengren are better, but both of these teachers had pretty much the same pronunciation, so I didn’t get confused when going from teacher to teacher. I also think I was more patient than most students and I would listen to tapes so that I could develop a good ear for everything before I tried to pronounce it. That’s what worked for me.

I now work in a Chinese company. Most people would describe my accent as “perfect,” but with no regional flavour. I may sound arrogant, but I rarely make pronunciation mistakes. When I talk to strangers on the phone, they usually don’t know that I’m a foreigner if the conversation is short. The only way they notice that I’m a foreigner is if we talk long enough for me to slip up on grammar (which for me is not a long time). I know a couple of other foreigners who have studied as long or longer than I have, but they still struggle with pronunciation, which I consider to be an elementary problem. They both say that they wish their teachers had spent more time on pronunciation at the very beginning. However, I know plenty of people who were turned off on Chinese quite early because their teachers demanded absolute perfection in pronunciation from the very beginning.

For a long time I thought that I had been taught pronunciation in a really strict way. I now realize that my teachers weren’t as strict as many others. Generally, I think that everyone should start out by learning/drilling the basics of pronunciation, but at the same time they should have the chance to learn a few practical phrases. Also, how do we define “learning” pinyin/zhuyinfuhao? I think that if you are just learing abstract sounds, then perfect pronunciation should not be a goal. From my own learning experience, if the teacher is going to demand perfect pronunciation at any stage, he/she should at least wait until the student has progressed into the dialogue listening/repeating stage when the student will be learning it in some sort of useable context. Yes, pronunciation is a fundamental part of language and I think it should be studied formally, but I don’t think it is realistic to expect a student to get it absolutely perfect before moving on to something practical. The teacher and student should always give attention to proper pronunciation, but should also recognize that “learning” pinyin/zhuyinfuhao is a long term process of first being introduced and then reinforcing in different contexts.

7

One of my friends in Beijing (a scholarship student from Romania) on a four-year degree early on gave up all effort to learn correct tones, much to the dismay and horror of his teachers. When I spoke with him, it was naturally the context (which is how spoken Chinese works anyways) the allowed me to understand. Other than that, his Chinese was truly, truly god-awful to listen to. This is an extreme example, but basically, you didnt want to listen to his Chinese.

I believe one of your questions concerns integrated vs. de-bundled learning approach. I felt that when I learnt French, it was also done the same way ie pronunciation was taught first and separately where we learnt the alphabet and the accents before anything else. I think this is even more important going to Chinese since it is not a Roman alphabet based system. Getting the pronunciation down, as frustrating as it can be, can be very rewarding later on especially if you interact with lots of Chinese in person in conversational contexts. This tends to open up a lot more doors for you together with an understanding of the culture (I have seen it for eg while watching Tomas interact). Some people who put this off just never seem to bother polishing it up later.
Then again, if you are like my professor, where reading is all you care about, and conversation is going to be with other academics, and as a professor you don’t need image boost, then perfect pronunciation isn’t as urgent.
i forget my point. haha.

oh yeah, my advice. Listen to the news anchorwoman especially the CCTV ones. They tend to be chosen because they have excellent biaodrun accents and some of them are easy on the eyes too.

8

I studied Chinese for two years in the States before coming to Taiwan. The professor made a big, big deal out of pronunciation–especially the tones. In fact we spent the first month drilling sounds without any idea what they meant. I think I must have benefited since I’m told that I speak with a fairly standard accent now.

(An aside: I’ve noticed that most people who study Mandarin BEFORE coming to Taiwan tend to have better pronunciation than people who started studying in Taiwan. A bit counter-intuitive, but I think it may be true.)

The bad news was that I became very fixated on accurately reproducing the tones to the extent that it interfered a lot with my learning about other aspects of Mandarin. It was only a few years later in Taiwan that I learned to hit the tones by concentrating on the rhythms of phrases and whole sentences.

Here’s what I think is important now:

  1. A solid introduction to pronunciation from a teacher with a standard Taiwan accent. (Not a mainland fossil, and not someone with a strong Taiwanese accent). This could be for just a few hours. You can always review later as other posters have suggested.

  2. You must memorize the tone of EVERY word even if you cannot always produce the tones accurately. I mean that you know that da4 is fourth tone even if you don’t always produce the tone correctly. Also, be careful to learn neutral tones in combinations.

  3. Learn Pinyin (or Bopomofo) well enough so that you can take accurate dictation using Pinyin. I don’t see how you can pronounce words accurately if you can’t distinguish them when you hear them.

  4. Make an effort to spend a lot of time repeating words and phrases after native speakers. Your best teacher here is TV. Watch soap opears and ads and repeat as much as you can.

These are observations based on what worked for me. I’m sure other methods will work well for people with different learning styles.

9

Me too. And my pronunciation is pretty bad - the tones at anyrate.

I just don’t have any musical talent, and was finding the tones impossible, so I more or less gave up learning them int he hope that they’d come later. Actually I still think it was the right decision, because otherwise I would have got too discouraged about learning and given up altogether. I would have learnt very little if I’d only used the owrds I was sure about, and used up all my study time memorising tones.

So my tones are still bad, but they’re catching up. I can’t always tell you what tones are in a word, but iknow what it sounds liek and can generally reproduce that sound. Most people can understand most of what I say in Chinese. Now that my Chinese is at the level where I’m learning very little new vocabulary (not studying) I can focus on trying to pronounce the words that I already know better.

I wouldn’t recommend this path to others, but I really think it was the best option for me at the time. Also, my goal was not academic excellence, but communciation.

Brian

10

Good points, Feiren. I agree with most of them, but I see it differently for a few.

I think this is increasingly true since teachers in the states are giving their students more and more speaking practice with the use of communicative teaching techniques. However, I have met a lot of foreigners in Taiwan/China who still didn’t get enough speaking/listening practice back home to really establish good pronunciation. On the other hand, as you say, there are a lot of people who begin studying after arriving in Taiwan and they don’t establish good pronunciation fundamentals. I think that is usually due to two reasons. Since he/she is already in a Chinese speaking place, there is more opportunity for a student to “learn naturally” on the street. Of course, what we hear on the street in Taiwan isn’t always standard. Also, there is a higher chance that a student will end up with a teacher whose pronunciation or teaching ability are not ideal. In the states, I think Chinese teachers are more likely to 1.) have a “standard” accent and 2.) be at least marginally qualified to teach. The same can’t be said for all the teachers at TLI, etc.

A standard Taiwan accent? Not a mainland fossil? I’m not sure I understand what you mean. Do you define a “standard Taiwan accent” as the accent of a person who has a decent level of education and is probably under fourty years old? That’s what I consider standard. A mainland fossil? Do you mean mainlanders who came over before 49, or do you also include their children born in Taiwan? After living on the mainland, I’ve realized that the accent of and educated mainlander and an educated Taiwanese are quite similar. Or course the proportion of mainlanders who have a decent level of education is much lower, so there will be fewer of them who speak standard Putonghua. I don’t consider Beijinghua to be standard Putonghua.

[quote]2. You must memorize the tone of EVERY word even if you cannot always produce the tones accurately. I mean that you know that da4 is fourth tone even if you don’t always produce the tone correctly. Also, be careful to learn neutral tones in combinations.

  1. Learn Pinyin (or Bopomofo) well enough so that you can take accurate dictation using Pinyin. I don’t see how you can pronounce words accurately if you can’t distinguish them when you hear them. [/quote]
    I totally agree with this. Even now, if I actually think about it, I can visualize the pinyin and tone of every word I say, and pretty much every word I hear (the exception is when I’m listening to someone with a harsh accent). I’ve met some foreigners who think that learning pronunciation through pinyin/zhuyinfuhao is somehow not natural. They think that learning by ear on the street is a more effective way. Most of the people I’ve known who tried this couldn’t speak very well. In my opinion, the human mind needs to classify things in order to retain them. Pinyin/zhuyinfuhao helps us classify the sounds we hear and thus helps us remember and reproduce those sounds. Even native Putonghua speakers in China use pinyin. Why shouldn’t a foreigner?
11

I had a telephone conversation with the bank yesterday and they thought I was from Hong Kong. I was surprised that they thought I was Asian. My tones are terrible and so is my grammar but I speak fast and most of the time don’t have people picking up on my mistakes. It’s when I just need to say one or two words that I get into trouble.

12

I need a dominatrix type pronunciation teacher to clean up my sloppy pronunciation.

I can be understood and maybe almost 5 years in Taiwan is getting a little too late to clean things up but I’d like to try.

Any tone teachers out there with whips? :wink:

13

[quote] A standard Taiwan accent? Not a mainland fossil? I’m not sure I understand what you mean. Do you define a “standard Taiwan accent” as the accent of a person who has a decent level of education and is probably under fourty years old?That’s what I consider standard.
[/quote]

Yes, that’s exactly what I mean.

Yes. If they have a strong regional accent. James Soong and and Ma Yingjiu are examples of mainlanders who ‘came over’ but have standard

Generally not included. If they are under 40, they almost invariably speak standard Taiwanese mandarin anyway. I would venture to say that it’s impossible to tell any difference between the accents of educated Taiwanese and mainlanders if they are under 35.
[/quote]

[quote]
After living on the mainland, I’ve realized that the accent of and educated mainlander and an educated Taiwanese are quite similar. [/quote]

Yup. That’s right. Some differences in syntax (less obvious) and lexicon (obvious) though. In the case of syntax, I’m thinking of stock phrases like ‘Wo gen ni jiang’ and the pervasive use of ‘hui4’ in Taiwan.

14

Um, I’m not sure I would take that as a compliment. Maybe you didn’t. People from Hong Kong are notorious for mangling Mandarin and talking fast. Of course some people from Hong Kong speak perfect Mandarin. It’s just that most find it so easy to pick up that they don’t work at getting the pronunciation down.

15

I cannot deliberately reproduce a tone correctly. I am totally tone-deaf, and cannot hear the difference between the tones no matter how hard I try. So I long ago gave up trying. It made learning the language incredibly difficult, but I was well motivated and kept persisting regardless. Now, after a couple of decades of hard but pleasurable studying, I’ve acquired a decent degree of fluency, and am even told that, when I am chatting quite naturally, I do tend to get most of the tones correct. However, if I slow down too much or say words in isolation, I am still quite likely to mangle them horribly.

The best thing that ever happened to my pronunciation was finding CBC’s news and current affairs station on the radio. I listen to it whenever and wherever I can. I love going for long walks in the mountains with the radio plugged into my ears, often repeating it aloud if there’s no one around, and it’s really enormously helpful. The news readers’ pronunciation is beautifully standard and pure, absolutely delightful to listen to. My biggest grouse is that, since the DPP came to power, they’ve been polluting their programs with more and more Taiwanese – it annoys me tremendously when that happens. But that’s a subject for another discussion in another thread.

16

There are two sources of foreign accent: interference from the native language and interference from the native language. :laughing: Actually I’m serious: one is interference from sounds and the other from writing.

Most students of Chinese have both, but the second is by far more common. Why would anyone say “shway” instead of “xue2”? Because they are forced to read before the language is solidly in the brain. They see Pinyin and, lacking the word that corresponds with the Pinyin, they are forced to fill in using the orthography of the native language – which in most cases isn’t very “xue” friendly! (i.e., few languages would have this kind of spelling as a standard word, so creativity is unleashed.)

A lack of tones is mostly interference from the sounds of the native language. Since most Western languages do not have phonemic tone (that is, tone that on a single syllable or word determines meaning or distinguishes one word from another), students tend to ignore it. This is further reinforced by the use of “tone marks” which encouarge students to think of tone as an add-on, something to be sloppily marked in, scribbled out or forgotten entirely. (This is why I use and promote tonal spelling, although I use the TOP system which is based on Pinyin to ensure consistency with the most commonly-used system, and to keep an irate Cranky from my doorstep!)

You can help students to develop tones by NOT having them read and write too soon (especially in Pinyin or Romanization). Theoretically using bopomofo instead of the Roman alphabet should help with this problem, but the limitations with those who teach using bpmf usually lie in their inability to clearly explain pronunciation in English – therefore more strange accents are created, like almost all Spanish-speakers I know saying “p” instead of “b” (well, the nearest equivalent – let’s not get into arguments about the true nature of this consonantal series, OK?) in Chinese. The sounds exist in Spanish - it’s got to be something about how they are universally explained to Spanish speakers, it would seem.

As for those who, like me, found themselves knowing a good amount of Chinese but not having the tonal accuracy they want – I firmly recommend tonal spelling (also very computer-friendly), flash cards, colors to distinguish tones, whatever works. “Aural flashcards” using an MD player can help too. Remember that there are 2 kinds of tone errors possible: one is knowledge errors (the “Omigod, that’s FOURTH tone?? Imagine my surprise!” kind of thing) and the other is performance errors (“Yeah, yeah, I know it’s supposed to be a third tone, it just didn’t come out that way this time.”) The two types of errors need to be handled differently, obviously, and the first category is easier to cure than the second, although both are time-consuming.

I truly wish I’d been taught Mandarin using the methods we have now instead of audio-lingualism. My grammar is great, but I would have had far better pronunciation if it has been done differently.

17

Thanks everybody for your interesting and insightful replies. There is certainly a lot to think about and I will need to come back and re-read the posts in order to digest them properly. Nevertheless, a few preliminary comments;

It seems that there are a wide variety of learning styles mentioned here. It seems clear that one teaching style cannot be ideal for everybody; however that does not invalidate the search for generally more helpful methods.

Firstly, Tomas’s reply was interesting in that it challenged some of the assumptions of my original question. In his attempt to supercede pedagogy and go for a natural learning approach, he echoes some of the modern theorists of language learning/acquisition. I feel that he may have slightly misunderstood the purpose of my original post, though. I’m sure this is my fault because I didn’t make this purpose explicit. To clarify; my attempt to understand and optimise the Mandarin learning process did not have any immediate practical application (although who knows what may come of it in the future?) It was born, however, from almost daily consideration of English pedagogy and a wondering how to fit modern language learning theories to Mandarin.

Now to pedagogy itself. I feel that Tomas may have underestimated the extent to which he himself has been reliant on others’ pedagogical theories and methods. What is John DeFrancis if not a towering Mandarin pedagogue? Tomas’s very knowledge of the existence of the four (five) tones is dependent on previous pedagogical research.

Onto the natural classroom. In general, I concur with mainstream pedagogical theory which states that there are two complimentary and interdependent ‘stages’ of language learning; a more formal one in which language is analysed, systemized and practised in a controlled setting; and a freer one in which communication is paramount and fluency (in speaking) or comprehension of general gist (in listening) is aimed for. It seems that the vast majority of learners need a combination of both these approaches for effective, efficient language learning. The balance of the two, and their specific content, will vary widely according to the learner’s (and the teacher’s) style, but they must both be in there.

The practical implications of this for learning Mandarin in Taiwan are that time should be spent both in the classroom or in other formal study, and out in the world, speaking and listening to real, daily functional language. Tomas correctly states that most people are very happy to help with all aspects of one’s language learning, yet the fact is that concerning pronunciation it may take them a while to remember which tone a particular syllable is. Sometimes, in particular phrase-level contexts, syllables are pronounced in ways which are not in the books. If one was to take this specific pronunciation as the universal rule, it could harm comprehensibility when using the same syllable in other contexts. This is where the formal memorization of tones comes in. I think that at least some of Tomas’s undoubted prowess in Mandarin came from the systemic self-discipline of using the DeFrancis books and his own diligent note-taking.

This post is already rather large so I’ll post now and come back later.

18

[quote=“Feiren”]I studied Chinese for two years in the States before coming to Taiwan. The professor made a big, big deal out of pronunciation–especially the tones. In fact we spent the first month drilling sounds without any idea what they meant. I think I must have benefited since I’m told that I speak with a fairly standard accent now.

(An aside: I’ve noticed that most people who study Mandarin BEFORE coming to Taiwan tend to have better pronunciation than people who started studying in Taiwan. A bit counter-intuitive, but I think it may be true.)

The bad news was that I became very fixated on accurately reproducing the tones to the extent that it interfered a lot with my learning about other aspects of Mandarin. It was only a few years later in Taiwan that I learned to hit the tones by concentrating on the rhythms of phrases and whole sentences.[/quote]
Both your experience and your learning style seem similar to mine. When learning from my first teacher, I had some regular exposure to Mandarin through friends and also a Chinese doctor who did plenty of yacking away on the telephone while I lay on her couch with needles ticking out of my back like a pincushion. But on the study side, I had the same very restricted input that you describe; the same focus on phonemes at the exclusion of all else, including meaning.

This was at times very frustrating, especially as my friend was quite strict when she was teaching me. It also goes against a fair bit of modern second- or foreign-language learning theory. But I wonder whether, if we take tones to be of primary importance, this might in fact be the best way to teach adults? Most of the above-mentioned theory is based on the aim for ‘language acquisition’; that is learning in a natural way in the same way that children learn their native languages. While this has undoubtedly had enormous benefits for modern SL/FL language teaching methods, I wonder whether it has gone a little too far. We are not children and our brains no longer operate in the same ways that they did when we were children.

You report that it took you a while to ‘loosen up’ and pronounce things in a more natural way. Yet you had that formal grounding and you had memorized the tones. I think it may be easier this way than its opposite which is described by some other posters; learning a lot of vocabulary and grammar, achieving fluency then subsequently feeling the need to ‘tack on’ better pronunciation.

This seems sound advice to me. For the majority of people who struggle with tones in the beginning, I think that memorizing tones with syllables will still stand them in good stead in the future.

This also seems a good idea and one that would work for most people. It would aid fluency greatly while not detracting from that formal tonal study.

19

[quote=“ironlady”]Most students of Chinese have both, but the second is by far more common. Why would anyone say “shway” instead of “xue2”? Because they are forced to read before the language is solidly in the brain. They see Pinyin and, lacking the word that corresponds with the Pinyin, they are forced to fill in using the orthography of the native language – which in most cases isn’t very “xue” friendly! (i.e., few languages would have this kind of spelling as a standard word, so creativity is unleashed.)

A lack of tones is mostly interference from the sounds of the native language. Since most Western languages do not have phonemic tone (that is, tone that on a single syllable or word determines meaning or distinguishes one word from another), students tend to ignore it. This is further reinforced by the use of “tone marks” which encouarge students to think of tone as an add-on, something to be sloppily marked in, scribbled out or forgotten entirely. (This is why I use and promote tonal spelling, although I use the TOP system which is based on Pinyin to ensure consistency with the most commonly-used system, and to keep an irate Cranky from my doorstep!)

You can help students to develop tones by NOT having them read and write too soon (especially in Pinyin or Romanization). Theoretically using bopomofo instead of the Roman alphabet should help with this problem, but the limitations with those who teach using bpmf usually lie in their inability to clearly explain pronunciation in English – therefore more strange accents are created, like almost all Spanish-speakers I know saying “p” instead of “b” (well, the nearest equivalent – let’s not get into arguments about the true nature of this consonantal series, OK?) in Chinese. The sounds exist in Spanish - it’s got to be something about how they are universally explained to Spanish speakers, it would seem.[/quote]
I found and still find Pinyin to be an invaluable learning tool from the very beginning. The visual representation of sounds, with tone markings was essential from the time of learning phonemes to now when I’m trying to expand my vocabulary, still without resort to those pesky characters :wink: (Aside for those who might be worried by this comment; for my own learning I have made the decision to exclude learning of characters for the time being - this has no bearing whatsoever on what I think anyone else should do.)

I sense in your post (correct me if I’m wrong) that you have that idea that pinyin Romanization interferes with aquisition of pronunciation, because students tend to look for equivalents in their native languages, presuming that their native languages are Romanised. On this I am totally in agreement with Cranky Laowai; that it is no different (for a native English-speaker) from learning French or Spanish - one still has to learn that one’s familiar old Roman letters now carry new values. If one keeps this firmly in mind I feel that there will be no difficulty in this regard - that’s my experience at least.

The same goes for tones with pinyin; it is a matter of self-discipline (and the disciplinary methods of the teacher; a stern look from my first teacher was enough to quake my boots, gentle and kind though she really is). I think that use of a tonal phonemic writing system can only help, and that if a student is really unable with or determined to ignore tones, he/she will do so anyway.

It seems that you have had a lot of bad experiences with friends, students - perhaps even yourself? - concentrating on reading and writing too early. As far as Chinese characters are concerned, I would agree with your points on this. While I don’t have experience myself of studying characters in any way (other than getting lost and trying to compare the map to the road sign), I have talked to a few people who say the same as you, and I believe that your peers, the modern theorists of Chinese pedagogy (at least the Western ones) would agree with you.

20

A number of comments have been made about the accents of the native speakers from whom one learns. It could get terribly complicated, but from my point of view a useful cuttoff point for ceasing to consider this of primary importance is a phonemic one. So when the speaker’s ‘zh’ and ‘j’ really do sound identical then I would say that could be a problem for future comprehensibility. Considerations of accent beyond this point seem more of a luxury; something non-essential.

That is interesting. I think that when (if) I eventually decide to try to formally learn some Taiwanese, I will have to do what you did and basically gloss over the tones and hope that it sounds fairly natural after some time. I understand that the tonal system of Taiwanese is very complex indeed, with far more context-specific tone changes than Mandarin. (What’s the technical word for that again? I’ve forgotten.)

(And to think I once criticised Fred Smith for posting three posts in a row!)