Why Chinese People REFUSE to Learn English in 2024 (It's OVER) 【Podcast E06】
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Chinese kids don't learn English anymore? It was shocking to Jun Laoshi and me, as the Chinese generation who dedicated years even decades to learning English and foreign languages. What is happening? What are the reasons and truths behind it? Today in our new video podcast series, Jun Laoshi and I share some observations and thoughts.
Like always, you are more than welcome to leave a COMMENT with the questions about Chinese pronunciation that you have, or your story about Mandarin and language learning!
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To answer your question at the end, I think learning a foreign language helps people in a lot of ways. For one, I think it's just good for your brain. Some people do puzzles or sudoku to stay mentally sharp, but I feel like learning a language has a deeper effect.
On top of that, you get exposed to new ideas and perspectives. You learn about different cultures and hear from people you never would have met. And also, just learning how to express ideas in a different language involves a shift in perspective.
Lastly, learning a language is a fun, useful, and impressive hobby. It helps you connect with other learners and interesting people in the world, broadening your horizon and introducing new opportunities.
Recently, I have been using graded readers to improve my Japanese. I don't look anything up the first time I read through and I try to read aloud as often as possible. They are at the level that I understand 70-90%, which is such a motivation to keep going.
But one day, I am reading one of them. It's a simplified story about an elephant in a zoo. In the story, it becomes WWII. I understood nearly everything and just as I was about to turn the page, the idea of the tragedy went through my head and I bawled like a baby through the rest of the story as that thought was reality. Based on a true story, Tokyo was concerned the bomb raids would destroy the zoo and release the dangerous animals so the zookeeper were ordered to poison the food. The elephants saw through this and fought back. And so, they were starved to death instead.
It is the reading level of a child but I think because it is a language that I am not fluent in and because of the elation of being able to read it, the understanding hits deeper than when reading in English (my native.) In the native language, you get good enough to skim and 80% of the time can get away with inferring through this method. Reading in a language you aren't fluent in forces you to slow down and read everything. You are rewarded in many ways by challenging yourself this way, for better or worse.
I learned Japanese, moved to Japan, I am just as miserable, have no friends here, nothing has changed. No new opportunities arose, I quit my job finally, and never working another day in my life
@@methylmercury What are you looking for? I learnt Mandarin so that I could understand Chinese songs and am grateful that it opened up another world and has given me a lot of pleasure
@@ChSasifras I feel like I know exactly what you mean. I had a similar experience reading a graded reader that dealt into deeper topics including death. The fact that I was reading it in a different language had a different impact on me.
That is cool you're delving so deep into your learning!
@@methylmercury I'm sorry you had that experience. I can't even imagine what that would be like or how frustrating that must feel. I'm happy it sounds like you feel on a better path now.
Really appreciate these podcast-style conversations. Please keep them coming!
Thanks, helpful for practice, specially with 3 types of subtitles. Appreciate the effort.
thank you Enrique! Glad you found it helpful!
Looking forward to this one. Also I would love to see you two discuss the hsk system (current/upcoming) to hear your thoughts. Keep making great Chinese learning content!
Glad you are liking our podcast! And thanks for the suggestion👍 We definitely have something to say about HSK😆 Made a video of the HSK 3.0 7-9 test a while back: th-cam.com/video/fKCy5gVseQo/w-d-xo.html
Learning languages is a better hobby than playing video games, for example. It helps you make international friends. And English is truly powerful, career-wise. The best opportunities and higher paying jobs require English
Do you want to be my "BESTO FRIENDO"?
As someone who games and learns languages, you can do both. I also know of people who have made friends online through playing video games and they practice languages together. So I would say it's still useful to do hobbies in the language(s) you study.
@jssmedialangs hard agree, games opened me up to so many horizons. But you want to be a well rounded person. If you learn languages but you have nothing to talk about, what's the point?
There have also been studies that show that knowing about physics, for instance, let's you learn the vocabulary and eases difficulty of reading about that topic in the language. So if you study the culture it helps you learn the language overall.
Fun fact my game teach me english better than my teacher
I really love these new podcasts. The two of you are so interesting and have thoughtful insights on the topics.
I'm always on the hunt for new Chinese content channels, and I really liked this topic!
If I were to offer some suggestion, I feel the Chinese text should be bigger and more prominent, since as a foreigner it's easy to build a bad habit of looking for letters first and hanzi second.
I use some extensions that help with TH-cam's CC subs so it'd be great if those were enabled too.
These are always such epic podcast!! So good in fact I like to listen to them each a few times.
Great work!
It definitely helps to learn as many languages as you can, it does a lot for the brain and mind. One more that many seem to neglect, after English and Mandarin, is Spanish. Although I have no intention to learn (as I'm just picking Mandarin up now), I believe it can open up many new opportunities if you're already good at the previous two languages.
Excellent discussion thank you for your insights ❤
And Why french still refuse to learn english properly ? . Thank you Rita and Jun for your smashing podcast. you and Jun make a lovely bunch. thank you again fro time and effort, this is very much appreciated. Keep up the good work.
Excellent discussion. Thank you for your insights
Q1: 个人觉得不管你学多少的材料,通过什么等级的考试, 还是比不上出国使用那个语言
Q2: 觉得学好一门外语带来的机会没有之前那么多吧, 除非你是那种会说几个不同的语言的人才 即便如此竞争还是很激烈
Thanks for the good talk
去中國不一定會幫助你提高中文水平
老师们，非常感谢！你们两位一起做这样的播客我觉得太牛了！ I also second the other suggestion on commenting about HSK.
Thanks for sharing your perspectives of learning a foreign language. As an American learning Mandarin, it’s cool to hear how the Chinese learn English. Seem we all share the same frustrations haha. Amazing to think we learned our native language as babies and became fluent by 3,4,or 5. Yet we didn’t master it until in our teens or twenties, so we need to be patient with ourselves and remember to enjoy the journey.
My Answers to Q1. Similar to the problems you experienced in your English studies, I have found having no one to practice conversing daily to be the greatest impediment to gaining fluency. Imagine if when we were babies or children we received no daily input of your native language? How can we expect to gain fluency? Immersing oneself into the culture seems the easiest way to learn. Our childhood is proof. Problem now as an adult learners speaking to fluent speakers, many people seem too impatient with you and it does discourage your progress. Q2. Most definitely learning a foreign language is necessary. Success of humankind depends on cooperation and cooperation depends on effective communication. Fluency unlocks cultural and empathy skills that hitherto never existed in our mind.
A very thoughtful discussion, thank you for sharing. I have other languages that are a priority right now, but I'll keep listening to your podcast since the topics are so interesting, so maybe I will study Chinese sometime soon!
It's actually not easy to learn any language and now that there are really good translators like Immersive Translate, DeepL, OpenAI and the likes the enthusiasm to learn because you have no option is fading. But then again, learning a language has a lot of great benefits. From sharpening your brain to easy communication and even sharp perception, obviously the pros outweigh the cons so i think it's good to try. In fact I'm also struggling to learn Mandarin lol
But sometimes it worsen your mother tongue. I see many Vietnamese people good at English but worse at Vietnamese than Google translate.
If your goal is just to read some text online, then yes, computer translation is probably good enough. But if you want to have actual conversations with real people in real time on a regular basis, it's not ideal. It's quite unnatural to have conversations that way.
@@artugert Even just for reading computer translation may not be a good option for some languages, when i tried google translate for some mangas it was gibberish and I couldnt follow the story at all
I feel the opposite. Now there are so many tools to learn a language. You can practice speaking and get your pronunciation graded by AI on your own time instead of paying a teacher.
Before, the wall to learn a language seemed so high it felt impossible. Especially as someone who works and can't go to school or an immersion program. Now it can actually be really fun and gamified to learn.
@@musical.theory google translate is getting worse lol. GPT-4o gives better translation. I am surprised that GPT-4o can translate Classical Chinese (should not confuse with modern Chinese or Mandarin) quite accurately, while even Baidu translate sucks.
But indeed, they still make some mistakes, so it will be a disaster to totally rely on it. Also, GPT-4o cannot recognize my voice in a noisy environment (many vehicles for example)
I am 62 years old Chinese and I don’t know much mandarin.
However, all the Chinese from 1-50 years old in Malaysia knows mandarin quite well.
I always wanted to learn but I forget easily as I uses English journals often.
I am very handicapped as I can’t understand Chinese stocks well.
说到吴老师的问题呢，我的办法其实可能会听起来比较奇怪，不过真的很有效：我自言自语，就是和我个人有各种的“对话”。 比如说我骑着自行车时经常会描述我的周围或者说到我当天遇到的事儿。 或者说我会假装我在某个地方（饭馆，机场，什么的）然后试一试表达我的需求/问题。 对我来说这真的有很大的帮助了。 真的提高了我的口语水平，而且还给我一定的自信来试一试“真正地”和中国人交流了
Iyou don't have friends
great host! nive energy :)
Excellent video! Both of you are very knowledgeable and very fluent. Your insights are deep and you have covered about all the topics that I could come up with myself (and, with my age, overall and specific education and experience, knowledge of and interest in languages, I dare claim a few of my own points in this direction). Why learn another language? It makes you a more knowledgeable person and it expands and sharpens your intelligence. You are correct about pointing to the beneficial effects of the Internet and the unprecedented expansion of exposure to foreign languages. Alas, many of those resources are IMHO of rather poor quality and with no real potential to bring any benefits. I think we should be focusing more on the quality of language teachers and the teaching material. And - a message to those in "rural mountainous villages": yes, you can acquire a solid knowledge - and understanding - of a foreign language through your motivation, discipline, and work, without ever attending a "prestigious" language academy (low quality, high money). I have done it, unsupervised, without ever taking an English language class, many decades before the Internet and TH-cam. (BTW I like your mention of "neural connections"; in my intro neuroscience lectures I have spent quit a bit of time and effort dabbling into the phenomenon of natural languages. Methinks, with this onslaught of AI - nothing "intelligent" about it - this point becomes even more relevant.)
The magazine´s name was speak up.
I believe that while this kind of thinking is very wrong, the result will actually benefit us, the people who are set on becoming fluent in mandarin.
What kind of thinking are you referring to?
@@artugert What they bring up in the beginning of the conversation, that some people believe that there's no point in learning english.
@@zolamadda5980 Oh, I see. Right, if Chinese people all learned English, it would make it more difficult for us to learn Chinese.
@@artugert It's more that if most Chinese people spoke english well, It would be less valuable for us to know mandarin.
@@artugertdon't learn Mandarin, I'm Chinese and I like speaking English more
I watch a lot of Chinese TH-cam videos like this and I talk to Chat GPT 4.o which is just like talking with a Chinese person. Obviously I don't write Chinese. Living in Myanmar I often talk with Chinese when i'm in the elevator and freak them out that I understand. I lived 7 years in mainland. I'm 57 so thats why I don't write - not a uni student.
第一次看頻道。回答最後的兩個問題：自學中文方面要看你們把什麼算是中文了，普通話我初中以後也沒繼續維持、繼續學了，現在才再 pick up 起來。都是看油管做 shadowing 吧？都很難有機會到北京沉浸式學習。如果客家話閩南話都算中文的，那就是看視頻希望他們有放字幕吧😂
學外語那題反而有點兒難回答。我學語言都是因為有興趣。有沒有用這問題拋諸腦後了😂
I’m learning more Chinese words as I watch this. You do have Beijing accent, but tolerable. I hope to improve my ability to communicate in mandarin as a US born Chinese.
I visited Beijing last week, and my tour guide said that young teachers can't find a job because too many schools are closing down due to not having enough enrollment. So your perspective adds interesting information to my overall picture. Sadly I am still a beginning Mandarin learner, so I had zero confidence in saying anything. From the conversations that I could hold it became clear that people appreciated me more when they found out I was German and not American. Still, I didn't meet anyone who spoke German except for other German tourists.
are you only talking about language schools?
@@lindnerm 567
@@davidw9372-j2g His statement was general. So with the information in your video, it makes me think that there are less students, and of those less have an interest in English. Which may be a problem when it comes to research ... but then again, we have to start attach (monetary) value to all ways of living, and for many of those ways it may not be necessary to learn English. Personally of course, I hope to be conversational in Chinese, I value language learning a lot.
It does make perfect sense.
Im learning chinese on my own right now, and my chinese gf is not happy about it . She thinks I'm gonna go find a younger chinese girl after I learn chinese. The real reason is that she wants me to go on vacation in china, and I don't want to be unable to communicate when im there
I think in general it is good to learn new languages for a variety of reasons: exposure to different cultures, literature/media. It challenges the brain quite a bit regardless of the age.
Being a native English speaker I would say that Chinese have an embarrassment of riches to choose from. I am not strictly talking about tutoring but the sheer BREADTH of material. If you aren't a fan of US media as much maybe you will like things from New Zealand, Canada, Australia, UK or even Europe(oh and Nigeria as well as South Africa). While there are a LOT of people I can learn Chinese from for tutors the media material is largely a choice between Taiwan and the Mainland. Even though there is a LARGE Mandarin speaking population in Malaysia how much content is individualized to them, to their flavor?
If Chinese people were learning Spanish there is a bunch of choice there as well given all the countries with their drastically different environments that speak it. All this being said a lot of shows are shot in Argentina(though not as many as I think should) because of the wide variety of environments.
'Oh and evidence to point out how influencial in impact of possible prosperity learning from multiple cultures can be look at Dune the author wrote it about deeply studying Jewish and Islamic and maybe Christian culture around the Middle East.
Rita I am curious how many other Chinese people you meet who are eager to learn smaller languages like Quechua, Catalan or Basque for example?
It’s because the Chinese government is discouraging Chinese people from learning English. A lot of English language schools closed down.
Great vid but that music in the background during the discussion is distracting.
I’m from Mongolia
I want transcript of your podcast
from Japan me too ：（
大家好
欢迎 selamat datang
来 datang
到 tiba
我们 Kita
第 tidak
六 6 enam
期 mengharapkan
的 dari
中文 China
播客 Siniar/podcast
我们 women - kita
这回 zhe-hui - Kali ini/this time
想 xiang - memikirkan/disscus
聊 liao - ngobrol
的 de - dari
就是 jiushi - yaitu
关于 guanyu - tentang/about
中国 Zhongguo - Chinese
的 de - dari/from
孩子 haizi - anak
现在 xianzai - sekarang
到 dao - tiba
底 di - akhir
还 hai - kembali
学 xue - belajar
英文 Yingwen - Inggris
这 zhe - ini/this
件 jian - bagian/part
事 shi - benda
其实 Qíshí - Actually /sebenarnya
也是 Yêshí - Juga
我 wô - saya
跟 gēn - dan
吴 wu - wu
老师 laoshi - guru
这 zhe - this
趟 tang - journey
回国 huiguo - go home
現在能夠透過移民到西方發達國家改變人生的道路是越來越難。所以自然對於學習英文的熱衷，也慢慢淡了下來。
Chinese children are learning Russian now!
Not really
A lot still use mandarin and only mandarin
Lmao Russian is not important like English
Plz review swordsman 3 the east is red plz rita❤
Plz do swordsman 3 the east is red ❤
And I’m speaks chinese
China is not a former British colony (like the US, India, Australia, Canada, etc). There is no need to put yourself in such an inferior position.
"why do Chinese people refuse to learn English？" 我遇到的中國人不是這樣想的，反而大部分的中國人已經認為英文是世界的語言。
二十年前学英文重要，现在不同了。 现在中文比英文更重要。
@@joy1ess 廢話,連中國人自己不會講標準的普通話
@@joy1essyou know that's bs. English is far more important than mandarin and I'm Chinese so I'm not being biased
Thats only a mainland chinese thing, most chinese diaspora speak much better english than chinese
The children of most Chinese diaspora don't even speak mandarin (if indeed their parents ever did - Southern Chinese languages/dialects being more common). You are correct - for mainland Chinese why would they want to learn foreign languages especially since it appears China is going to become increasingly insular again in the future.
@@frankyyaggabot6222 是美国变得越来越孤立了，中国和大多数国家的贸易额都在增长，也是很多国家的最大贸易伙伴。世界并不只有美国和欧洲。
@@cchen6522 Some big debts in China that are having to be addressed no - China is starting to contract and look increasingly for it's home markets for growth. Also a lot of foreign businesses are retreating from China while Chinese businesses themselves are looking for lower wage environments in South East Asia.
@@cchen6522 China is facing a real-estate crunch that is going to be compounded by demographic collapse. The days of rapid growth in China fuelling everything else are coming to an end - they had a model next door in Japan to exemplify this phenomena and yet it looks like they are going to fall into the same trap.
Yes the USA and Europe are in decline and other countries in the South Americas, Africa, Middle East, South East Asia, Australia, etc. have spectacular opportunities for growth in the coming century.
As always geopolitical tensions that spill over into conflict will auger all that and in that regard countries like the USA still control the future though bafflingly seem incapable to articulate that as they have devolved into navel gazing (quite literally). China has shown a worrying trend towards rapid militarisation and imperial ambition (which actually started in the late 1940s). Despite it's 'friendly' approach towards developing countries China has shown zero inclination to actually share technologies with them (why breed competition) maintaining a strict Chinese developed and operated policy overseas. This contrasts with the Western approach and why when all the Chinese freebies to authoritarian leaders dry up the Western model will win out.
趋势，走过的弯路，点餐，引以为傲的是，课外书，纯编/原生的教材，报班，疗愈，影视，情感体验，应试的（exam oriented），自然习得了，以至于，重点高中，家世，天差地别，时代，利索，恨不得，就不用说了，疫情。试听课。语言暴露程度。态度的转变。每隔一段时间。久负盛名·。转行。减负。这回。比重。期末考试。承担风险。具体到。灵通。眼界。明智。城乡。社会阶层。拼资源。外来物。硬磨。叛逆。弱化。说不成，言之有物。素质。野鸡大学。水硕。深造。。。。。。。。。。。。。。
你们要懂一个道理，外语（英文）不适合大众。只有在一些很小的人口很少的国家才能达到外语水平高。在大国会说外语的人还是不多。有兴趣的人，没有老师没有教材他也能学会，反过来没有兴趣的人打死也学不进去。要实现大众都会外语（英文）这个事情，只能是在梦里。还有一个问题，英文不是和所有人，有的人知识和学法语，西班牙语，阿拉伯语等等。我是西方人，我会5们语言，因为语言是我的一个爱好。但是对大部分人都不是。
封鎖獨裁國家的居民真的不需要學習現代的世界共同語。世界沒缺你們什麼，你也永遠不能變成自由世界的一個部份。
所谓的自由世界也是一个封闭的独裁国家，但它的居民没有机会认识到这一点。
It’s not hard to learn mandarin but writing is a pain in the ass. 说实话，中文不难学，难的是学写，因为很容易写错。😂
学生在2024年不需要手写汉字了，能认准打对汉字就可以。
@@RitaChinese 可是我在学校还是要用笔学写的，可是如果在网上就不需要手写，用讲的就行了。
我会写字，但说话太难了
I Learn mandarin then if they don’t learn English
They should learn English instead
听说学习外语减少你得老年痴呆症的可能性😅
Learning a foreign language is cool, but it shoudn't be stemmed from the mental state of submitting to foreign powers. Be proud of your own country and culture!
It's unclear what you're referring to. Who is not proud of their own culture? Who is learning a language "from the mental state of submitting to foreign powers"?
@artugert people from Hong Kong, India and the Philippines
@@dukkie69 The people I’ve known from all three of those places have all been very proud of their respective cultures!
Because of South Park. 🤣 🇺🇸
This is great for learning Chinese, but your Beijing accent is very strong and you speak too fast so I can’t read the subtitles in both Chinese and English quickly enough. I miss many words. It takes repetition to understand.
We have no time to learn English cuz we need to spend all time memorizing the quotations of Holy Xi
Google translate says "cuz"? It's less formal than I realized.
@@JB52520 ?
Speaking nonsense
@@JB52520 ？Why should I comment something formally?
In this century Englishmen should learn Chinese, not the other way around
Nah English is the lingua franca not Chinese. I'm Chinese and our language isn't fit to be the lingua franca
It's cool, don't learn English then. It's not a flex, don't make ya cool
呵呵 普通話更沒有用，還沒發現嗎？在國外中國人都說方言説普通話幾乎沒用 哈哈哈
You only have to read and write basic English like the Americans. That’s enough. It only takes you 2-3 years of study. No need to study anymore than that.