Re: Why do the Chinese find it difficult to learn English?

Thanks to all those who contributed.  I have made some preliminary 
findings and await suggestions and thoughts.


WHY DO THE CHINESE FIND IT DIFFICULT TO LEARN ENGLISH

Many Chinese students of English say to me ¡°My English is poor¡± or 
¡°How can I improve my spoken English?¡±  Having taught English at 
all levels for five years here in China I find that students give 
all kinds of reasons for why this is so.  These range from exam-
based learning rather than communicative learning, no English 
environment, sub-standard Chinese teachers of English, fear of 
losing face by making mistakes, memorization of words rather than 
understanding of them, too much emphasis on grammar, too much 
emphasis on reading and writing rather than speaking and listening, 
poor motivation of English majors and the lack of native speakers of 
English to communicate with.  Now all, or some, of these factors may 
well hinder a person¡¯s ability to learn English but, I would like 
to suggest, that there are five fundamental reasons why the Chinese 
find it difficult to learn English.

1. Non-alphabetical language
People from one country that use an alphabet-based language find it 
easier to learn another alphabet-based language because, there are 
already similarities between the two in terms of roots, affixes and 
synonyms.  The further away the target language is from your own 
native language then the harder it is to get into the mindset of how 
English operates.

2. Learn by sight rather than by ear
All Chinese characters are pictures and appeal, therefore, to the 
eye.  In comparison, Westerners are people of the ear rather than of 
the eye.  Only a very small proportion of Chinese characters ¨C some 
200, perhaps, ¨C are simple representations of natural objects; all 
the others are composite signs.  Each sign is, broadly speaking, 
divisible into two components; a graphic component (representing a 
man, a woman, a tree, a fish, etc.) and a phonetic component, giving 
some indication as to how the character should be pronounced.  This 
phonetic element is provided by a sign whose pronunciation is well 
known, and whose own inherent meaning can be disregarded in so far 
as the sign is playing a purely phonetic role in the composite 
character.  To take an example: as soon as I see a particular 
Chinese character I can tell two things: first, from the graphic 
element (the root) I can see that the character denotes a plant of 
some kind, i.e. not a tree, a person or anything else; secondly, 
from the phonetic component I can make a guess as to the 
pronunciation.

The Chinese are ¡®people of the eye¡¯: to them, the characters are 
symbols, not ways of notating sounds, which is the usual function of 
writing.  From what we have said, it follows that Chinese words 
cannot be ¡®spelled¡¯.  If a Chinese sees that a word he has used in 
conversation has not been understood, he will write the character he 
means on one hand with the index finger of the other.  On the 
contrary, an English speaker would pronounce the word in question.

Over fifty years ago, Ferdinand Lessing spoke of the ¡®symbolic 
language¡¯ of the Chinese as a second form of language which 
penetrates all communication in Chinese;. which is, as it were, a 
second-tier communication level, of greater potency than ordinary 
language, richer in nuances and shades of meaning.  This symbolic 
language is not restricted to Chinese characters only but extends 
into Chinese art too.  All Chinese paintings are meant to be viewed 
as symbols, and their characteristic themes ¨C rocks, water, clouds, 
animals, trees, grass ¨C represent not only themselves, but also 
something beyond themselves: they mean something.  There is 
virtually nothing in the whole of nature, organic or inorganic, no 
artifact, which the Chinese artist does not see as imbued with 
symbolic meaning, in so far as it can be represented and interpreted 
in one sense or another.  Pictures, and script, resonate with each 
other in form and content so much that, often, they inter-penetrate 
each other completely.

3. Using the brain to learn, and speak, a language  
A recent study by British researchers in 2003 used brain scans which 
were performed on volunteers as they listened to their native 
languages.  When English speakers heard the sound of Mockney, Mersey 
or Geordie, their left temporal lobes lit up on screen. When 
Mandarin Chinese speakers heard their native tongue, there was a 
buzz of action in both the right and left temporal lobes.  This 
suggests that people who speak different sorts of languages use 
their brains to decode speech in different ways. 

The left temporal lobe is, normally, associated with piecing sounds 
together into words; the right with processing melody and 
intonation.  In Mandarin, a different intonation delivers a 
different meaning: the syllable ¡°ma¡±, for instance, can mean 
mother, scold, horse or hemp according to its musical sound. 

As well as understanding words, the brain uses the way in which 
words are spoken, such as intonation and melody, to turn spoken 
language into meaning. This system has to be robust and flexible 
enough to deal with variations in speech sounds such as regional 
accents. Mandarin speakers interpret intonation and melody in the 
right temporal lobe to give correct meaning to the spoken words. 

The research throws new light on how speech is understood and 
suggests that language itself might affect the way the brain 
develops in a young child.  It could explain why native speakers of 
English find it so extraordinarily hard to learn Mandarin.  But, it 
could also suggest, why Chinese find it so difficult to learn 
English.  If the Chinese use both sides of their brains to learn 
their language but, only one side to learn English, does this mean 
that their brains are not being active enough when it comes to 
learning English?  Does it mean that they are only half involved in 
the process of learning English compared to learning their mother 
tongue?

4. The Knowing ¨C Doing Gap
In their book The Knowing ¨C Doing Gap (published by Harvard 
Business School Press in 2000) authors, Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert 
I. Sutton, looked at various companies, and organizations, and asked 
why they don¡¯t do more of what they already know they should do?  
They suggest that, it is not about knowing what to do but, doing 
what they should do.

I would like to suggest that, Pfeffer and Sutton¡¯s study, on why 
there is such a gap, has parallels with learning a language and, 
especially, for Chinese learning English.  While not suggesting that 
everything they claim is relevant to learning English by Chinese 
students, I think that the following five propositions merit further 
consideration.

First, they say that knowing what to do is not enough.  The teaching 
of English in China has expanded greatly in the last twenty years.  
Every student now learns English from an early age.  Every bookshop 
carries a large selection of English textbooks, and novels, and many 
more are printed every year.  Every city, and town, has several 
private English schools where students can go to study and, English 
learning is, easily, available on the Internet.  Yet despite all 
this increase in the knowledge of English there is not a comparative 
increase in the level of Chinese students¡¯ English.  This gap 
between knowing and doing is known as the performance paradox.  

Second, they suggest that talk substitutes for action.  There is a 
tendency to treat reading and listening about English as equivalent 
to actually using English.  Learning new English knowledge and 
relearning old English knowledge in the classroom becomes a 
substitute for using the language outside the classroom.

Third, they say that memory is a substitute for thinking.  Students 
of English often do what has always been done without reflecting on 
whether their response is appropriate for that situation.  The story 
is told of a Chinese tourist who visited Britain and while crossing 
a busy road did not realize that the English drive on the left.  He 
was knocked down by a car and seriously injured.  An ambulance 
arrived and out jumped a paramedic.  He knelt down before the 
stricken man and asked him, ¡°How are you?¡±  The Chinese tourist 
answered, ¡°I¡¯m very well thank you.  How are you?¡±  Now this may 
well be an apocryphal story but there is an element of truth behind 
it.  I had a student at Tsinghua University who when I asked him 
about his family replied, ¡°I have one father, and one mother and 
one brother.¡±  Clever student in Chinese but not so clever in 
English as he failed to utilize his thinking processes.  He may have 
been right numerically but wrong linguistically.

Fourth, they imply that fear prevents acting on knowledge.  The fear 
of making mistakes or losing face paralyzes the Chinese student of 
English into inactivity.  Fear of failure results in a flight from 
using English.

Fifth, they suggest that measurement obstructs good judgement.  They 
say that measures and measurement processes are among the biggest 
barriers to turning knowledge into action.  In the case of students 
learning English I would like to suggest the opposite, that there is 
not sufficient or adequate measurement and that this failing results 
in the student not knowing his true level or progress in English.  
At Beijing Language and Culture University some of my English 
classes were Pass/Fail.  Not only did this mean that my students 
were not motivated to do well in class but it meant that they got 
the barest minimum feedback about their English.  Yet, we do no 
better in classes that require a score.  As English is taught as a 
subject rather than as a communicative tool we mark it as a subject 
and fail to communicate to the students their strengths, their 
weaknesses, their progress or lack of it, their fluency, vocabulary, 
use of sentence structure, etc.  At BLCU my students evaluate me as 
a teacher using a fourteen  point system including performance, 
preparation, knowledge, etc but I only evaluate my students using a 
one point system, namely their final score in the exam.  With my 
evaluation I can see the areas in which I am strong and the areas in 
which I need to improve but for the student this is impossible.  
Within the education system there is no provision for a more 
detailed measuring process that charts a student¡¯s progress in 
English.

5. The uncertainty of learning English
Chinese students of English think they need to learn English, they 
have to learn it, since everyone is saying it is important, and 
everyone seems to put in a lot of effort to learn it.  However, they 
actually do not know exactly how they need it or how they use it.  
Maybe, it will be used in a new job, a promotion, an imagined 
encounter with a foreigner at some hotel or, at a scenario where he, 
or she, would be valued if he or she speaks, or uses, English well.  
But, those scenarios never happened and most of the English learners 
actually turned out to have spent a lot of effort to learn something 
useless but, nevertheless, they think they will use it, at some 
time, in the future.
 
Possible solutions
The possible solutions that I suggest here, may seem obvious but 
they are not necessarily practical, possible or implemental. 

1. Non-alphabetical language
As the Chinese already have a ready-made alphabetical system in 
Pingyin then it would make sense to switch from Chinese characters

2. Learn by sight rather than by ear
If this is the case then the teaching of English should be made more 
visual using pictures, cartoons, PowerPoint, films etc.

3. Use only one side of their brain 
If the Chinese are not using the right temporal lobe in learning 
English and this non-use hinders their learning ability then perhaps 
the teaching of English should incorporate more left brain activity 
such as intonation and melody.

4. The Knowing ¨C Doing Gap
Here the solution is quite simple.  There should be more emphasis on 
action following knowledge.  How does a doctor become a surgeon?  
First, he hears or reads about an operation.  Second, he sees an 
operation.  Third, he does an operation.  This hear/read one, see 
one, do one does away with the Knowing ¨C Doing Gap.

5. The uncertainty of learning English
The answer is to put certainty back into learning English.  I would 
suggest that the teaching of English is divided into two stages.  
The first preparatory stage teaches the student what he needs to 
know while the second stage is actually when they need to learn, how 
they learn it and use it in the needed scenario immediately, and use 
the environment to practice and learn.  This stage involves the 
immersion teaching of English.
 
 copyright Nick Stirk 2006










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