Mandarin learning anxiety Mandarin has become an important language because of China’s increasingly important role in international trade. Chinese is formally spoken by many people in Taiwan (23 million people), China (1.3 billion people),
The challenge to Learn Chinese Characters Chinese is one of the most commonly used languages in the world, spoken by almost one fifth of the world’s population. With the recent influx of immigrants from Chinese speaking regions, in the U.S.,
Disadvantages of current Chinese language learning methods? Study in China, it will cost 4 years’ time or more; or
Integrated Approach Adopting an integrated approach, 鄢文俊 Yan and 盧正體 Lu in 四川井研 Jingyan, Sichuan used meaningful texts in which a family of characters with certain shared features are used (i.e., 字族文 texts of a family of characters).
Listening for Learning the Characters Along similar lines, the approach of 谷錦屏 Gu in 天津 Tianjin is to let pre-school children listen to the recitation of texts everyday as a preparation for later actual learning (i.e., 聽讀識字(Listening for learning the characters)).
Using Pinyin to Enable Early Reading Alongside the extensive approach is the proposal of using pinyin to enable early development of reading and writing the characters (i.e., 注音識字,提前讀寫(using pinyin to enable early reading)).
Learning the Characters in Texts The essence of an extensive approach is that the reason to learn the characters is only to provide the conditions for reading and writing.