Chinese Language

When I first came to French League to learn French, My Colombia’s classmate asked me: “Chinese is Japanese, right?” I was upset when I heard this. I told him that how come Chinese is Japanese? Chinese characters were used in Japanese writing, and Japanese borrowed Chinese characters. My French was poor at that time so I cannot explain it clearly. Later I learned that many foreigners took for granted that Chinese is Japanese or Chinese is from Japanese.
My teacher was very experienced, he let me and a Japanese student say “hello” and write it down on the blackboard. The teacher is deeply versed in Chinese culture. He taught us the Chinese history, phonology, pronunciation and origin of Chinese characters. After hearing that the foreign students said: “Chinese is too difficult, every character looks like a map, and the four tones are difficult too.”
If you stay in France for a long time, you will find that the French say playfully “Are you talking about Chinese?” when they don’t know what you said. I saw the discussion of how the foreigners evaluate Chinese, I quite agree with it. The following is what they discuss: When a person did not understand what you said, his performance is:
Greek: “μου φαινεται κινεζικο.”(It sounds just like Chinese.)
Russian: “Это для меня китайская грамота.” (It’s like a Chinese bibliography for me.)
Polish: “To jest dla mnie chinszczyzna!” (What you speak is Chinese, right?)
Hebrew: “Nishma c’moh sinit!” (It sounds like Chinese!)
Romanian: “Parca e Chineza!” (It looks like Chinese!)
Serbian – Croatian: “To je za mene kineski.” (To me, it is Chinese.)
Bulgarian: “Tova za mene sa ieroglifi.” (I think it look like pictograph.)
French: “C’est du chinois pour moi.” (To me, it is Chinese.)
When foreigners read Chinese, it just like hieroglyphic to them, maybe only God can understand.
Maybe some foreigners will regard learning Chinese as reading pictograph. I thing you can overcome any obstacles with your persistence. There are many benefits of learning Chinese. Now China’s status in the international community and its impact in the international affairs have been further enhanced, and many countries are conducting their business in China. If master Chinese it brings more opportunities to your career. You will feel easy to learn Chinese at www.learnchinese1on1.com .

From 1978 to 2008, the number ot foreign students coming to China have increased 180 times, reaching 220 thousand people. What China gives foreign students, is not just a kind of charming culture hard to resist, but also the convenient living, in addition closely contacting withChina, a fast-growing economy, create more opportunities for their careers.                                                                        

   The development of trade between Chna  and Africa, also expand employment space for Africastudents studying in China. Mustafa, a Sudanese who now learns Chinese in Beijing Language Universtity, is still unfamiliar with Chinese, but he has already set being a translator as his fucture goal. He said:”Our country has a lot of businesses with China. Now in Sudan, there are more and more Chinese people, and they have some businesses there. So they need someone to translate our language into Chinese. It is important to them and I am trying to become a translator.”Learn Chinese

Chinanow has become the third largest economy in the world, and the huge market of 1.3 million people attracts foreign investors. For investors, the success of resolving the barriels brought about by language, ways of thinking as well as historical and cultural diffrences determines the success of their businesses to a large extent. Foreign students inChinahave also understood the point gradually. Their abroad learning experiences determine their fucture careers may be engaging in cross-cultural communication. So they no longer satisfy with knowing China through  second-hand stories about China, but choose to stay with Chinese students more often to drink, eat barbecue and implement the projects together with expecting to be a old China hand.

Chase Madrid, an American boy studying in Xiamen University, is one of them. His major is Business Chinese. Through English and Chinese bilingual learning of the international trade , international finance and other professional courses, he will easily become a successful person who can deal with cross-cultural business. “I am interested in doing business in China in the fucture and it’s a wise choice to do business between Chinaand the United States. My father used to be a worker of a large multinational construction corporation, and when I was a kid, he always told me that he made a lot of projects in China and China was with great prtential. China would become the world’s largest market. It makes me very interested and think my father is right. You know China is one of the world’s largest economies. I think there would be a lot of jobs in China in the fucture.”

Currently, for foreign students in China, there are several ways to develop their careers. Foreign-owned enterprises and Chinese-foreign joint ventures will the first choices. Some of them will be placed in their Embassies or representative offices in China. Others will choose to be consultants in media ,or foreign teachers in the school.

Mr. Zhang, a researcher in Population and Labor Economics Institute of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, think that China continues to integrate into the world. The experience of studying in China will provide the foreign students with a broad employment space. He said:”A lot of advanced international industries transfer to China, which should need some workers from their own coountries to manage and communicate. A person accepting education in China also could easily to find the jobs in other countries through output of Chinese enterprises, or output of the capital to the international market. It is a inevitable result bought to us by a global community.”

China‘s multinational corporations demand the graduates with a global awareness, and the trend is increasing. What kind of international students are favored by the companies? Mr. Tao, in charge of HR in a large foreign trade enterprise in Ningbo gives their answer. He said:” For himself, he should be passion for Chinese culture, at least he should understand the ways of Chinese contact. If they studied inChinafor three or four years, he basically understand these things.”

The international students who want to work inChinaare valued not only the “gold “ oppportunities brought about by the Chinese economic growth. When the charms of Chinese culture attract them to come this ancient place, Chinaalso provides them a stage to displaying their talent.

Chinese famous film-director, Zhang Yimou, does not think about that his movie Red Sorghum which has won the Berlin Film Festival Golden Bear, not only opened the door for his world-renowned director career, but also changed the fate of a young person living in Berlin in western Africa, named Duoluo Tai.

Duoluo Tai has a Chinese name, Zhang Fei with hopeful meaning to be the Zhang Yimou in Africa, 1988, when he was still a biology teacher , after he saw the movie  Red Sorghum, his life trajectory has undergone tremendous changes. He said:”Film is my hobby, but I did not think I would choose it as my profession until I saw Zhang Yimou’s film. It changed my philosophy of life, my life and my work . Everything has changed.”

In 2000, Duoluo Tai came toChinato learn film profession. After seven years of study, he finally gained the opportunity to work with his idol: he worked in Zhang Yimou’s movie crew as a trainee. He said:”The theory is completely different from the real. All we learned in school are about the theories, although we also shot movies, the shooting size is not so great.  At the same time, we rarely had the opportunities to learn from the famous director. So the chance he gave me has affected me now.”

Indeed, Chinese films are still the new force in the international cinema. Duoluo Tai at home also mostly saw the French movies, but he can find out the model which Africacan learn from in Zhang Yimou’s movie, even see much in common between Chinese and African cultures : strong family values, passion and the way to treat people with kindness, and so on. All these promote Duoluo Tai to have the idea that opening the film company in China and shoot the documentary films. He said:” I mainly want to use the films to let both Chinese people and Africans know each other. Why do people sayChina has developed? I just want to answer them how the Chinese do this : everyone does what he should do, and everyone works hard, only through that way the nation can be developed. It is my thoughts, so I use the artistic mode to express.”

Like Duoluo Tai , overseas students in China are chasing their own dreams in this country. For them , this magnificent arena will give them the broader international perspective and a future with broader development.

Currently, about 2,500 universities in more than one hundred countries around the world offer Chinese courses. Besides the Chinese,  there are almost 40 million people learning Chinese outside China. In America, 600 schools offer Chinese classes for their students. Chinese is also hot inEurope. British Ministry of Education has developed a secondary syllabus of Chinese language. Compared with the United States and Europe, the Chinese education in Asian countries has similarly shown a robust development trend: in Japan, there are 200 million Japanese learning Chinese ; in Korea, there are 100 million people also learning Chinese, and almost 142 universities can offer Chinese courses. 1,000 secondary schools in Indonesia now officially open Chinese courses; in Thailand, Chinese is more popular than Japanese now.

Nowadays, because of Chinese rapid economic development, many people who are sensitive with economy, will foresee the enormous opportunities in China. Although English is the only official language, nowadays , if you master Chinese, you will grasp more opportunities in business and other fields. Learn Chinese

Fala Li, a 26 years old student in Indonesia, he was unconfident when he began to look for work last year, because many of his friends had failed to find the ideal job. However, when he uploaded his resume on several job sites, only one day, he suddenly got three jobs. His advantage was that he accepted a degree from the Chinese Foreign Economic and Trade University.

Ignoring  the voices out of the window and all kinds of attractive leisure activities, Guan Jun, Gong Teng and Shi Ye, who were office staff in a small trading company, were curling up in a small room  barely admiting  a table for four. Opening their Chinese textbooks, they practiced talking about their favorite food and hobbies in Chinese . Gong Teng, 39 years old, told: “We agree that Chinese is a very useful language nowadays.”
This is not a joke that the incentive reason prompting the staff to give up relaxing on weekends to learn the Chinese language is affecting more and more people around the world. In the past, when people decided to learn another language to improve themselves, people whose mother tongue is not English will normally choose to study English. Although English is still likely to be truly international language, but now around the world there are millions of foreigners choosing to learn another foreign language which is rapidly rising  —— Chinese. For those who want to grasp the opportunities from Chinese economic construction, mastering Chinese language is necessary the same as mastering currencies.

In order to adapt to globalization trends, the Chinese Government has also vigorously promote the Chinese language to the world, hoping that one day Chinese can be also the same popular as English .

Nowadays, while many Chinese people assiduous study English, more and more foreigners begin to pay attention to Chinese. In some countries, there are strong rises in the Chinese learning. According to reports, Chinese education in those places appears emergencies, just likeFrance, Koreaand other countries, because of lacking of Chinese teachers for non-native students. So, to meet the  increasing worldwide demands for Chinese teachers, the Chinese Ministry of Education have issued the calls for volunteer Chinese teachers. The same situations in China, many Chinese training institutions have the competition for Chinese teachers. It is not only the number of foreign students are rising, but also a growing number of foreign employees in foreign investment enterprises have joined in the army of Chinese learning. Facing the strong market demands, for Chinese teachers for non-native students,  what qualities should they have?Learn Chinese

Still not enough time for the Teachers Adding the Winter and Summer Vacations

WithChina’s growing influence in the world, it is a natural phenomenon that Chinese learning is more and more popular. Currently, there are more than 100 countries set up Chinese courses and some even in junior high schools. For some large Japanese and Korean companies, Chinese Proficiency Certificate is treated as an important bargaining chip for interviewees. According to the relevant statistics, currently there are almost 100 million people in the study of Chinese language, even more people come toChinafor Chinese learning. According to Pan Xianjun, the vice president of Da Lian Foreign Language Institute, there are totally 20 Chinese teachers in charge of Chinese education for the foreign students, but still can not meet the demand. Not only these teachers were without summer or winter vacations, but also other teachers and graduate students with the Chinese for Foreign Learners or Chinese major were transferred temporarily from other faculties support the Chinese teaching.

The incomes of Chinese teachers are so considerable. Most of the foreign investment companies inDalianrequire his foreign workers to know some simple Chinese. So this situation promotes a lot of training institutions to add the Chinese teaching project. According to the insiders’ saying , at present, a full-time teacher’s salary is between 4000 to 6000 yuan, the experienced even higher; part-time teachers are paid by hours. If students especially come here for celebrated teachers, the class fees would be more higher. Undergraduates or graduate students are paid with a class fee of almost 100 yuan per hour.

Out of China, there is a shortage of Chinese teachers, but it is no easy for one Chinese teacher to go outside to go on the Chinese teaching career. A Chinese teacher who want to go on his Chinese teaching career outside of China, should accept the training of teaching Chinese for non-native students first, then obtain the qualification for Chinese teaching for non-native students; in addition, he should have to be in line with the requests for rigid standards such as educational background, language and identity; finally, it should be that he can tolerate hard working and handle a long time working and life in a different and unfamiliar cultural environment with a enough psychological preparation, and quickly adapt to the different cultural environment in whether working or living.

It’s not just Easy to Teach Chinese

It is a kind of special job, even when you accept the qualification for it, is not easy to become a standard Chinese teacher for non-native students. Mr. Pang, a Chinese teacher, told to the reporter that being a good Chinese teacher should possess six capacities as following:

a. Foreign language capacity: although it’ s required to teach in Chinese and body language, when students can’t understand what you say, you should use English or other foreign language which is the student’s mother tongue. So teachers should be able to use foreign language proficiently.

b. Adapting to the monotonous working: it may be a boring career. When you just begin your work, you may feel fresh, but after a certain long time, you may of course feel so boring for the same course content. Although the income would be satisfactory, it needs you to teach class by class, so to a certain extent for some people, it is not like the imagination that it’s a job which could bring you so large fortune.

c. Diligent in learning: Chinese teachers have to meet students around the world, and the students will propose a variety of questions, so it requires that teachers’ knowledge is not necessarily profound, but it must be broad. As a young Chinese teacher, arm yourself quickly; for those veteran teachers, update constantly your concepts, learn new things on your own initiative and find the common language with students. Remembering that one student asked a young teacher about the differences between “刚才” and “刚”(both words mean “ just” in English ), but the teacher can’t answer the question. That night she checked a lot of grammatical materials, but had not found the answer until he consulted a veteran Chinese teacher. That teacher answered that “ 刚” is an adverb in Chinese , and “ 刚才” can be an adjective or adverb. Many Chinese teachers who have mastered English, still are learning Japanese or other foreign languages   just wanting to make their teaching much better, because learning a foreign language is a process knowing that nation’s culture.

d. Being optimistic and communicative: being optimistic could give a sense of the positive and promote students to make progress; being communicative is an essential quality of teachers.

e. Teaching methods: as a teacher, it is necessary to have not only a complete knowledge system, but also the scientific teaching methods. Moreover, the teachers should upgrade themselves coaching ability through constantly practicing and learning.

f.  Ability to resist pressure: Chinese teachers commonly bear enormous pressure. The students come from all over world with various cultural backgrounds, different experiences and personalities, so they would ask the teacher all kinds of questions. For some students with plentiful knowledge, they are eager to knowChinaand Chinese thinking ways, so require to learn essentially, deeply and in detail. Therefore the teachers would certainly endure a great pressure. Only learn more, then being able to communicate with students.

It is boring to learn Chinese phonetic alphabets if you are learning in the wrong way. Then you do not become interesting in learning. But Chinese phonetic alphabet is an indispensable tool for you to learn Chinese. If you don’t grasp it well, it will bring a lot of difficulties to your study. You will have a long-term interest in learning the alphabets if the teaching methods are properly. Here are some methods of learning Chinese phonetic alphabet for your reference.
1. Method of illustration
Chinese textbooks have a number of pictures, such as Su Jiaoban experimental teaching materials for primary school language. The first lesson of the first book is about alphabet. There are illustrations about “a” “o” “e” three vowels appears on the textbook. In these illustrations, “阿”（“阿姨”means “aunt”）pronounces with “a” sound. Cocks WoWo cry of “喔” pronounce with an “o” sound. A goose swimming on the fond, then the diagram gives a prompt of “e” because goose’s wings like “e”-shaped. Through the illustrations, you will be able to visually grasp the “a” “o” “e”. So in the study, you should make full use of text illustrations to master the Chinese phonetic alphabet.
2. Method of Imitating the Sound of Animals
Some Chinese phonetic alphabets’ pronunciation like animals’ sounds. For example, when studying complex vowels “ei”, you can see a illustration like that a small boy is feeding a lamb, and the lamb was bleating and came to eat. “ei” is pronounced with the sound the lamb bleated. A rooster’s crow is the pronunciation of “o”. Students play the interesting show on class, and then they will quickly remember the “ei” “o” vowel pronunciation.

3. Method of Playing Games
You can put together the interesting games with Chinese phonetic alphabets learning. Such as “Fishing” game: a alphabet card is fastened with a clip, and make a few fishing rods. Hooks with a small magnet stone are put in the bottom-line system. Scattering the cards as fish on the desk, and invite some students to fish. When the teacher reports a syllable, then students should catch syllable the teacher reported. Thus to see who could catch the syllable quickly and correctly. Another examples as “Find Friends”, “riddles” and other games are loved by children.
4. Method of Singing Songs
Combine with the songs and learning. For example: listening to the radio ‘bbb’, climb slopes ‘ppp’, two doorways ‘mmm’, a walking stick ‘fff’. Left semicircle ‘ddd’, fish leaps ‘ttt’, a doorway ‘nnn’, a stick ‘lll’, small dove ‘ggg’, two-door ‘m’, single door ‘n’, walking sticks ‘f’, umbrella ‘t’… So the teacher will prepare a number of teaching alphabet songs, I hope you would carefully read these songs. When the songs memorized, the Chinese phonetic alphabets would be grasped.
There are many excellent Chinese teachers on learn Chinese 1on1. With the teachers’ guidance and as long as you grasp the right study methods, I think you will find that learning Chinese phonetic alphabets is a piece of cake.

It is difficult for Chinese people to learn English. Also it is difficult for Americans to learn Chinese. Usually when I talk with Americans who learn Chinese, I have heard some mistakes they had made in learning Chinese. The following is the difficulty that foreigners may have in learning Chinese.
The common issue of pronunciation is that the change of tone of each syllable is not obvious, especially the rising tone and the falling tone. I had put forward this issue to the Chinese discussion group online, which made the peer dissatisfied.
Chinese characters for people who use alphabetic writing are difficult. Polyphone problem in Mandarin causes some trouble. For example, in the Annual meeting of 2000 Asia Society, when a teacher read the thesis of the ancient design of the frontispiece, he read “frontispiece” with the medium tone all the time. It’s correct to read “frontispiece” with fallen tone.
It’s easy to make mistakes when learning vocabulary. Learners will easy to mix up Homonyms. Such as a learner who learn Chinese on learn Chinese 1on1 do not know which word if “fu”(which means blessings and usually posted on the door during the lunar new year). Even the Chinese teachers would mix up “fu”(sounds the very high tone and means blessings) and “fu”(sounds the fallen tone and means rich, abundant). There is another teacher mix up “fayin”(means “pronunciation”) and “fayan”(means “speak”).
Foreign learner’s vocabulary is relatively small. On one occasion, large snow fall from the roof, I jokingly said: “collapse”. A teacher asked me, “What’s mean of ‘collapse’?” Sometimes it does not work to learn new words by using analogy. A friend teaching Chinese told me that many learners misunderstood “cups”, “plates” and “bowls”; they usually thought that “bowls” were the correct term of “cups” and “plates”. It’s difficult to understand the meaning and usage of the differences of words. A friend told me that someone “plant”(He means that a man paralyzed). We usually understand “plant”, but we generally do not regard “plant” as a verb.
Another example is that a student made the sentence: “我想去法国访问我哥哥”（that means “I want to go to France to visit my brother.”） It’s obvious that he did not understand the usage of “fangwen”(means “visit”). Some one was transferred to a place, a Chinese teacher, said: “他就在某地luocao了吧”, （the correct statement is “luohu”, which means settled down there）.
One teacher said to me: If students do not study hard, he will “tipigu”（means kick the butt）. “tipigu” is not the correct Chinese. It’s obvious that he want to translate the English saying “kick the butt”. Once an American teacher wanted to know the current development in China, then he asked: “现在‘guonei’（means domestic）发展怎样了?” He should say “zhongguo”(means China) instead of “guonei”.
As for the grammar, we should pay attention to the word order especially in the position of the monosyllabic adverbs. The main problem of grammar is the position, mainly monosyllabic adverb position. One teacher said, “If you have any prejudice of the teacher, please raise your hands.” What he means is “If you have any problem, please raise your hands.” Some particular sentence will cause problems. For example, a student said his girlfriend is elder than him, I asked: “How many years is she older than you?” He said, “24-year-old”. He thought I was asking his girlfriend’s age.