A Test Nobody Wants
June 3rd, 2006 by MarkSometimes I can’t even fathom the world of self-delusion that CSL (Chinese as a Second Language) planners in Taiwan live in. Yesterday, I saw an article in the TaibeiTaipei Times titled, Teachers seek edge over China.
Great, I thought. A sense of competition will be great for us students. Maybe the schools here will even stop pushing zhuyin, get rid of all the local romanization schemes and teach pinyin, the way CSL schools everywhere else in the world do. Maybe, I thought, we’ll be able to take the HSK in Taiwan, or even, (gasp!), learn the simplified characters used in modern China. I guess that was really naive of me. The entire article was about some knock-off test that Shida made a couple of years ago.
The [Chinese Proficiency Test (CPT)] has been computerized this year, the first step toward competing in the global Mandarin learning market, said Chou Chung-tien (周中天), the director of the center.
…
Chou said that more than 500,000 people take the HSK every year, but now with the computerized CPT, Taiwan’s test can be taken worldwide too.
What he didn’t bother to mention, is that while half a million people take the HSK each year, it’s unlikely that half a million CSL learners have even heard of the CPT. HSK scores can get us into Chinese universities, and interviews at many, many companies that use it as a standard. What does the CPT do for us?
Also, the simplified Chinese characters taught by China’s language schools do not have historical roots and meanings, unlike the traditional characters taught in Taiwan.
Really? The characters in China don’t have historical roots and meanings? Gosh, and I’d figured that they had been selected based on simplifications already in use before the PRC even existed. So, if “simplified” characters don’t have any historical roots, then why would “traditional” characters? I mean, traditional characters have changed quite a bit since the era of Oracle Bone Script (甲骨文), right? If it isn’t okay for characters to change now, why was it okay for them to change in the thousands of years before they became what are currently known as traditional characters?
Does my little tirade mean that I don’t think learning traditional characters is important for those interested in Chinese culture, literature, or history? Absolutely not. Actually, the biggest reason I came to Taiwan was that people here still use traditional characters. However, I’m a bit of an oddity. I probably would have happily studied Chinese 30 years ago, when almost nobody was. The huge numbers of students who want to learn Chinese now, though, are different. They’re learning Chinese because China is a growing power, and they probably think it will be good for their careers. At least having the option of learning simplified characters would make Taiwan an attractive CSL location for more people.
As for romanization, I don’t have so much sympathy for the prevalent Taiwanese view. I can’t think of anybody who comes to study here for the zhuyin or non-standard romanization systems. What I really wish I could tell Mr. Chou Chung-tien (周中天) is that while Taiwanese people are free to use whatever whacked-out funky romanization system they please in their textbooks, their street signs, or even their names, 99.9% of CSL learners are going to want to learn pinyin, standard pinyin.
Considering the “colorful” romanization schemes, the large numbers of Taiwanese people who can and want to speak English, the greater cost of living here, and the different character script, I can’t honestly say I’d recommend Taiwan as a place to study to any of my friends. Computer-based test that nobody’s heard of or not, you just won’t learn the same Chinese here that a company back home would want you to be able to speak and read if they hired you for your Chinese ability. Unfortunately, due to political reasons, that sort of Chinese is hard to get in Taiwan, even in the classroom. The only people that I’d feel okay recommending Taiwanese schools to are those that have scholarships and those that are interested mostly in history or classical literature. Taiwan is a pretty good place to live, though. And for English teachers, it’s a completely different story. The pay is much higher here than it is on the mainland, and from what I understand, there are more interesting higher-end opportunities for teachers here, too.
Update: David blogged on the same article a couple of days ago.
Related Post: Chinese Character Simplification
Related Post: Taipei Times Insanity Continues
Related Post: Taipei Times: Studying in Taiwan
June 3rd, 2006 at 1:01 pm
Good points, especially re: the HSK. Realistically Taiwan is 23 million vs China’s 1.2 billion. They simply cannot compete here, so rather than simply coming up with parallel systems, they should go go for quality.
However, all that I have seen since I studied Chinese here in 1995,is more of the same useless outdated crap. China’s CSL has become steadily more and more professional, while Taiwan’s still seems to be run by Mandarin Centers that have hardly changed in years and are little more than glorified Chinese language bushibans. As far as quality of instruction and value for money goes, I can’t think of any compelling reason to study Chinese here rather than on the Mainland.
Recently the ’student’ visas were changed, so that the private Chinese bushibans,eg: CLD, TLI etc, effectively had to partner with a university in order for their students to get visas. I note that one of them promptly put their fees up to university language center level. Since their fees were only just worth paying in the first place, I doubt very much they are worth paying now. I’d be very interested to know if the quality of instruction has risen accordingly.
June 3rd, 2006 at 1:14 pm
Oh, for my comment on the population difference, a good parallel would be if say New Zealand decided that they would only recognize a (hypothetical) English in New Zealand Proficency Test. I doubt that such an ENZPT would make them more competitve.
June 3rd, 2006 at 3:41 pm
To be honest, I did come to Taiwan partly because of the zhuyin and traditional characters, since I originally learnt Chinese with them. They’re still pretty prevalent in Chinese schools in US West Coast, and I can read zhuyin faster than pinyin. Honestly, I don’t see romanization as that big an issue: Hepburn isn’t very common at all in Japan, but that doesn’t seem to bother Japanese learners, because romaji isn’t terribly important in learning Japanese—and romanization isn’t very important in learning Chinese. Dreaming of replacing the hanzi with pinyin is nice and all, but characters are the normative Chinese writing system, and nobody will get very far without learning them as well as possible.
Some of the simplifications were based on previous hand-written simplifications, but several weren’t. It’s annoying that the simplifications are many-to-one; if they were going to break compatibility, they may as well have gone with much more radical reforms. I’m still unconvinced that the actual, demonstrable benefits to simplification were worth the trouble.
June 3rd, 2006 at 5:59 pm
to be honest, as a native chinese from mainland,I absolutely can read and write simplified chinese, and as I have this ability, I can also read traditional chinese,input traditional characters by Pinyin. Even you’re in Taiwan or HK,you can just download this software either from internet or CD.
If someone who know only traditional chinese,they probably can’t read too much simpified characters.
Knowing Pinyin is much more convenient. This’s the point.
June 3rd, 2006 at 7:09 pm
Jingyang,
I think the comparison with New Zealand is a pretty good one.
Raghav,
Wow, you’re the first person I’ve met who specifically wanted to learn zhuyin, excluding those who have Taiwanese parents who convinced them to, of course. I’m also amazed that any schools on the west coast teach it. I’ve never heard of any universities or high schools in the states teaching zhuyin in place of pinyin before. Where did you study?
From my own experiences learning Chinese and Japanese, some phonetic system is vital. It’s too hard to learn the characters and the sounds at the same time. Even native speakers need them. Chinese children all learn pinyin (or zhuyin if they’re in Taiwan) before learning characters, and Japanese children all learn hiragana and katakana first. Do you know anybody who has successfully become literate with characters without learning some phonetic system first and using it as a learning tool?
I totally agree with you on the simplification issue. I like how things were before WWII, when the Taiwanese, the mainlanders, and even the Japanese all used the same characters. But, hey. If a billion Chinese people use 简体字 and I wanna communicate with them, then that’s what I’ll have to learn eventually, too.
June 4th, 2006 at 4:36 am
I actually first started learning Chinese at one of the private Chinese schools that are so common around the South Bay. But even in university (and I went to a large public one in Northern California) we were given the option of using zhuyin on our tests, though admittedly, they did teach us pinyin. Most universities on the West Coast also use traditional characters, too (with the notable exceptions of Stanford and UBC).
My point isn’t so much that phoneticizations are useless as that it’s not so important in the long run for someone interested in becoming totally proficient. Lots of people have learned Japanese with nonstandard romanizations like JSL, and at one point many Americans learnt Yale when it was almost totally unused outside of the country.
smokeyolive: Really? In my experience it’s been completely the opposite—people who’ve learnt traditional manage to read simplified without too much trouble, and people who originally learnt simplified have had a lot more trouble learning to read (and especially write) traditional. In fact, this is one of the reasons given by the Chinese programs in universities that teach traditional, though I suspect it has more to do with the high concentration of overseas Chinese.
June 4th, 2006 at 5:27 am
I think it’s because mainlanders are more open-minded. They actually make an attempt at reading traditional characters every now and then. Most Taiwanese people have a strong aversion to simplified characters, and many never learn how to read simplified character materials just due to the fact that they have no interest in them.
June 4th, 2006 at 9:38 am
to raghav :
traditional is much more professional. In fact almost all the chinese from mainland who know how to read and write chinese don’t have problems of reading traditional characters. I don’t know foreign situation though. And the thing is most of them don’t have to write traditional characters. But if you’re interested in calligraphy, knowing how to write traditional characters is a must.
June 6th, 2006 at 10:18 pm
Hahahahaha. Delusional describes it. Just one more delusional offshot of the whole “Taiwan as idealized version of traditional Chinese culture” delusion.
Michael
July 17th, 2006 at 2:31 pm
I wonder if anyone thinks that there is a chance that in the future the mainland will return to traditional characters. I have to say that as the mainland becomes richer and more gentrified, there will be a prestige factor associated with traditional characters and since computer software makes it easy to “write” characters, the central rationalization for simplified characters becomes less valid. Maybe that’s just my rationalization for learning traditional characters. I’d be interested in other people’s perspectives on this question. Thanks.
July 18th, 2006 at 2:47 am
That’s the most rediculous idea I’ve ever heard. A BILLION people are going to switch from their modern script to one that’s less efficient just because computers make the efficiency gap a bit smaller? Yeah, right. Maybe Americans will start using British spellings as they get “richer and more gentrified”, too.
August 27th, 2006 at 10:05 am
[...] UPDATE: Doubting to shuo also has some interesting comments regarding the Taipei Times article. [...]
September 20th, 2006 at 2:48 am
This, of course has f*** all to do with the best way to learn chinese, or even the march of progress. The Communist goverment implemented the simplification reforms as policy as well as pinyin. Until the Taiwan authorities can swallow that bitter pill, you will have to blog and comment about this topic. Hope you have strong fingers.
November 2nd, 2006 at 1:29 am
[...] I really don’t get it with the Taipei Times. It seems like clock-work. Every couple of months, it pumps out another story about how Taiwan can dominate the Chinese as a second language (CSL) market. They also keep bringing up the HSK-knockoff test that Shida made. If you aren’t familiar with this topic, see my earlier piece: A Test Nobody Wants The conference, entitled “Opportunities for Taiwan Amid the Global Craze for Learning Chinese,” brought together NTU professors and students in a discussion of how to capitalize on the sheer and growing number of Chinese language students worldwide. [...]
November 6th, 2006 at 1:07 am
Hello，Mark,
I just like to ask you if it’s OK that I link this article to my blog “The sky of Hanyu”?
I have already linked them together,
If you have any opinion please let me know, I will withdrow it from my blog.
Thanks.
November 6th, 2006 at 2:14 am
Sure thing, Natalie. Linking is what the web’s all about
November 27th, 2006 at 10:10 am
I don’t know if u’ve ever read chinese history or not.
But the reason that china in 1950s switched traditional chinese to simplified chinese was becuz Mao, the leader of communist party, wanted to decrease the illiteracy in china.
also ur question:
“if simplified characters don’t have any historical roots, then why would “traditional” characters? I mean, traditional characters have changed quite a bit since the era of Oracle Bone Script (甲骨文), right? ”
first, do u really know what is 甲骨文? it only contains about 4 thousands words..so it’s not a written character that chinese people used for thousands years til now, but traditional character is..
it’s true that traditional characters have changed from thousands years ago, but i can say that every change has a meaning rather than nonsense simplified every chinese words.
for example, 下麵 means cookin noodles, 下面means under or below. but in simplified chinese they both write in the same 下面…however, the root of 麵 is 麥 on the left side of 麵, which means wheat. so now u can see why simplified chinese has no meaning at all…
if u still have questions about why traditional characters have historical value..then u can go find 古書 or any kind of chinese history records..and compare those chinese words with modern traditional chinese words..u’ll see they are almost the same.
also do u see any書法家 use simplified chinese words on writing 書法? of course not…traditional chinese has been using for thousands years, and everyone knows that.
china simplified chinese is hoping to decrease the illiteracy..also at that time some crazy stupid “experts” said if don’t change the form of chinese characters, china will vanish…
if u don’t believe me u can go online search by urself..
i can tell u that one of the crazy experts name is魯迅,a famous historical figure in both china and taiwan, but few people know about his proposal on changin chinese characters.
he’s only well known in his chinese literacy…
see how ironic is that..he wrote chinese, spoke chinese, read chinese, but when communist party controlled the whole china..he began to criticize the chinese words…
January 17th, 2008 at 10:48 pm
The TOP doesn’t test writing or speaking. You wont be required to produce any the characters you have written until you hand fell off at NTNU or even have to open your mouth. In fact, it doesn’t even come close to testing actual usage of the language. It’s more like the English tests all my students have to take in high school. If you have never seen the tests my students take in high school, head on over the TOP website and try the mock tests.
There are a lot of good tests of the English language out there, like the GEPT or the TOEFL. When will Mandarin have a test that measures all four language skills? I guess there is no need.
August 21st, 2008 at 10:28 am
Like Raghav who posted in 2006, I, too, came to Taiwan to improve my understanding of Traditional characters and…….hope you are sitting down for this…..zhu yin fu hao.
I was trained in pin yin in the States. I find zhu yin infinitely more helpful on a practical basis. I had my teachers at ICLP, NTU, specifically work with me on the pronunciation of the zhu yin sounds.
Zhu yin was developed by Chinese for Chinese in the early years of the Republic of China. In my experience, it is much more accurate in reproducing the actual sounds of spoken Mandarin.
Also, there are thousands of books available, mainly for adolescents and children, that provide excellent and interesting practice in reading real Chinese written for native speakers.
I bought many while studying during the 2008 summer in Tai pei. Presently, I am working my way through a translation of Sherlock Holmes with zhu yin. It keeps me going because the story is interesting and, if I wish, I can consult the original English.
Of course, I don’t expect anyone to follow my example with zhu yin. However, I am delighted that it exists and have found it very helpful in learning the characters.
I also agree that it is easier to learn the Traditional first and then go to the Simplified. I have never been to the mainland. Where I lived in Tai pei County, just over the Tai pei city line in Zhong he, virtually no one spoke English. I rarely had anyone trying to practice English with me. I never lacked for people with whom I could speak Mandarin.
Incidentally, I highly recommend the ICLP program at National Taiwan University. It is for those who are willing to devote considerable time to improving their Mandarin. I only was there for the summer session, 2008, but the improvement in my Chinese has been remarkable.
The student to teacher ratio is 3-4 to 1 in group classes. Every day each student also has a 1 on 1 with a well-trained teacher.
I plan to return next summer for more.
August 26th, 2008 at 2:23 am
Zhuyin and Pinyin map 1-1 at the syllabic level. Anything that can be written with one system can be written in one and only one way in the other system. Therefore, it’s impossible for one to be “more accurate in reproducing the actual sounds of spoken Mandarin”.
Also, consider that Pinyin was developed primarily for is is used primarily by Chinese school children who are still learning characters. Well over 99.9% of all pinyin usage is by native Chinese people.
On another note, you aren’t the only one I’ve heard say good things about ICLP. Nearly everyone has had good things to say about it, aside from the price.