Learn how to read Chinese in a more efficient way: Agnes Zheng at TEDxLingnanUniversity
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 5 ต.ค. 2024
- Founder of Mandarin Starter & Graduate Student studying Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language at the Polytechnic University of Hong Kong. Her team is trying to develop better and more efficient way to assist mandarin learners master Chinese writing systems in a short period of time.
In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x = independently organized TED event. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized.* (*Subject to certain rules and regulations)
I don't quite understand what the presenter is trying to present. She may have something to share but she needs to be more prepared.
It's rough to present in a foreign language, even one you're fluent in. I have to empathize with the speaker, there.
That said, this talk doesn't really offer anything new. Most first year foreign students of Chinese already know that characters often have phonetic clues and that exceptions are not uncommon. Also, the talk about character frequency is misleading. It's true that a small number of characters make up more than half of a typical text. But at that number of characters, virtually no sentences encountered in the wild will be understandable! For me personally, 3k characters was not enough to follow a normal newspaper in Taiwan. It takes more like 4,500 or so to really follow nearly everything going on.
If I were designing a course for the younger version of myself to learn Chinese, I would focus more on the quantity of input than the speed of teaching new characters. I'd use graded readers with restricted vocabulary so that after the first 400 characters, it would be possible to read entire 40-50 page stories. and I would definitely use texts annotated with either pinyin or preferably zhuyin so that the pronunciation of words was clear. This actually reminds me of another issue not mentioned in this talk. Characters don't always just have a single pronunciation. Many, many characters have multiple pronunciations depending on which word they appear in. Just as with any other language, it's necessary to learn in chunks of entire words. In fact I've met some poor misguided souls who have invested hundreds of hours using SRS such as Anki, memorized thousands of characters and still can't read because they just memorized characters one by one in isolation!
Of all the things for a new student of Chinese to be spending the bulk of their time on, studying characters in isolation is near the bottom of the list.
+ToshuoVids yes, sound advice. I think she should have gone more into chunking, as she didn't stray much beyond basic knowledge of identifying phonetic radicals. I used to try to read kids' books, but they are too limited.. graded readers are a good idea, and a couple of apps have been developed since I started learning basics (Had a break, but getting back to it soon).
我是中国人，中国是一个文化强国。What about the character frequency is a huge huuuuuuge misconception, our Nobel literature prize winner Mo Yan (2012) said you just need to know 600 most often used characters to read his novel without an interruption. That's amazing, but the real fact behind the 600 characters is very subtle. Even if 2 words combination plus 4 words combination is an astronomical number (600*599+600*599*598*597 sort of permutation and combination, save the meaningless ones, it's still an astronomical number ), then you get another problem--the meaning of words or combinations shifts in situations. Say you have conquered the combinations and dialogue application in various environments, you still most probable to have many other problems with your Mandarin Chinese, such as culture saturation scarcity (一名资深“齐天大圣”还没有结婚有且只有两种原因，一是：谁也看不上；二是：谁也看不上。If you've studied Chinese for 10 years, you maybe still DO NOT understand this joke.), practice, visual scripts saturation, tutoring, etc.
Well said. I have been struggling to learn mandarin for the past 5 years, most of it punishing myself to learn individual characters. Only of late i realized written practice of characters takes me nowhere
Regretably they show the talker more then her powerpoint presentation, so it is difficult to make sense of some things without her visualisations. A two-frame window (divided in presenter and presentation) might do the trick next time
"What is consistency effect?", "How to classify?" ~ Unfortunately learning a foreign language like a science is almost destined to fail, just like rote learning. For people wanting to learn Chinese it is more important that you don't worry so much about writing over and over or learning characters and radicals on an individual basis. As an adult learner, exposure to enough vocabulary through actual usage will join the dots. And always couple reading with audio until you are good enough to read Chinese in your head (correct pronunciation). Otherwise what are you learning for...
1. Native speakers of English language learn ABCs. Most complicated character in English language is M & W, 4 strokes each.
2. Chinese characters - Hanzi - are systematic, like it or not. About 36 different strokes, each with its own name, are possible to be used constructing hanzi. So-called Radicals make up all Hanzi characters. Some hanzi are single character, with the RADICAL being part of the character, placed "somewhere" as part of the overall character; some hanzi are actually 2 or more characters, with the overall RADICAL being placed "somewhere" as part of the overall character. 慨, generous, is a complex character. The RADICAL is 忄, the simplified version of 心, which translates as 'heart,' and is pronounced as "sheen." The hanzi is composed grossly of 3 components including the RADICAL, but each of the other components, the central and the rightmost, by themselves also has a RADICAL. Because they are constructed together to form the word kǎi (generous), only the character for 'heart' is considered the RADICAL. Logical in the Western sense? Absolutely not! And note that I didn't tell you how to pronounce kǎi, nor will you learn it without hearing it. That little thingy above the 'a' in the word is important, sometimes.
3. Some part of any hanzi is said to be the phonetic part, meaning that it is supposed to be the sound-bearing part. That sound can only be known by hearing it, not by seeing it on paper. That is major problem #1. While the other part(s) is considered the semantic part, that part that carries the meaning of the character. That is major problem #2. Final major problem? Stroke order and geometry. Putting strokes down on paper any old way just ain't going to get it!
Summary:
Pronunciation and meaning of hanzi will not be learned from a book. You have to hear them! You have to see them as you hear them. If over the age of 7 or 8 years, you're going to have to see/hear them lots and lots of times, and then there's the problem of training your vocal cords, lips and tongue! Whoever says this can all be done in a matter of 3-6 months is a liar out to get your money! Also, and this is important, there is a move away from teaching writing of hanzi, in the East but especially in the West, because of the influence of computers, smart phones and hanzi software -- Chinese Word Processing software.
I think her video needed some more examples of her method. I give her lots of credit for doing what she is attempting to teach, just needs to refine her speech to drive her point home. I think she is very cute and easy to watch, which for me, staying focused on her and what she is trying to say, makes me think and analyze what she is saying.
She was very unprepared. But not incompetent. She spoke in ways that were too technical.
I understood her and the point she was trying to make. Although it was difficult to follow at times, the truth is she is presenting a great idea but not the methodology...i wish she at least linked to something tangible. I get that learning common phonetic radicals will help me guess other total characters that I haven't memorized, but do you have a system to follow? I think this talk was a common sense presentation in a very complicated way....overall not a good video.
I cannot follow the vid vis a vis premise of the title. Can someone explain to me how this should help me to learn Chinese efficiently?
She's trying to organize some rules that are supposed to help Chinese learners to "predict" the pronunciation of an unknown characters with a known radical as part of the character. However those are only "predictions", not the exactly correct pronunciation.
she's Chinese, Thảo Trương. you can know it when she says with some Chinese acent and also her family name is Zheng.
I think she is VNese, her eye wasn't good when she talked. You know Chinese also has family name like VNese
"Secrets of Words (by Wang)" Amazon is the key.
I am practicing my English in a Chinese learning speech.
If you focus on the these words sound the same element (like homonyms, homophones, or synonyms), verb, and nouns help give a functional vocabulary... Teaching at a linguistic level you could also focus on the etymology of the words, where they came from in old Mandarin, and how they look now... Nerds like me like that stuff, but you gotta give examples of it within the context of the language as well.... You kinda didn't do that... I feel like you just need to decide where to focus and start putting forth words and the patterns you see in them... but not just give us the statistics.
Thank you for this presentation. I look forward to your future work.
I understand you anyway, what you do is great to let us have idea about mandarin alphabet, xie xie ne.
Yes she was a bit haphazard but the basic point of her speech was that if you learn a few phonetic components such as 方 (fang), you can guess how lots of words are pronounced. For example, basically any character with this 方 next to it eg. 妨, will be pronounced fang or something similar. As with most languages there is bound to be some irregularity.
Even though she is only somewhat correct in theory, in practice this is not useful because even slight pronunciation will cause misunderstanding (especially in Chinese where it is not even alphabetically based). Even myself as a native Cantonese speaker who is somewhat fluent in Mandarin, I know I cannot reliably guess the Mandarin pronunciation even if I know the exact word in Cantonese. In short, Chinese pronunciation is only loosely based on rules; it is more about rote memory.
@@awc7279 thank you so much!
There are over 70,000 “Chinese characters”. A character is not a morpheme, but it can be.
listening Chinese speaking English should be easy, but I feel headache when I listen this for no more than 2 minutes,sorry
Too much camera on speaker - even when she is facing away! Wow this is a basic fault. She confuses character, component, radical. Often difficult to know what point she is making. Given the failure to use visual aids she could really put people off!
I find this hard to understand. :o
she needs to shape things as simple as to a 6year old kid.
I like her Cantonese accent.
This Lady is so disorganised. I nearly fell asleep.
she wasted a 13 min of my time.
Well said.
Terrible camera work! He's spending too much time on the presenter. Her beauty is no excuse!
another terrible ted talk. why does it have twice as many thumbs up as down? ugh. not worth watching.
She is self-correcting and hesitant a little too much and she is pluralizing everything she says (she adds S to every word she is saying, even the pronouns haha). She should be more organized and practice her speech first, secondly she should practice her English pronunciation; it is really hard to understand and follow her.
She never said she was perfect at it. Most people aren't even perfect in their own language.
+quelorepario maybe focus on her message, not her English.. I understood her anyway
Only non English native speakers like you tend to criticize others’ English accent and stuff, which is very interesting and ridiculous.
quelorepario
Really Great!
Terrible speech. I had trouble understanding her English (it is not my mother tongue), but mainly her speech is incoherent, she just says things that are not linked by any thought process. If anything, I now am sure that Mandarin IS a difficult language. I think it has to do with the way you think, not just the grammar or script. She thinks (apparently) in bulks, not in a linear thought scheme, a bit like the way you write in Chinese, a sign=a concept.
Oscar Huber yes i agree this is shit
I could understand the words she said but not her ideas...
+Oscar Huber Well, you're definitely not wrong about the fact that she spoke in bulks of ideas. I believe it's because the way Mandarin is structured. In addition, I doubt she had enough interaction with people who spoke fluent enough English to pick up the proper smooth transition her speech much needed. Though, I have to disagree with the fact that you said her English was terrible. Her pronunciation was mostly on point for someone who studied in a foreign country. It would also be nice of you to stand in her shoes for a minute; I'm sure she was nervous and very apprehensive of her audience.
when you are well prepared there is no "nervous". repeat 10 times - three days of repetition and you will gat a confidence. The content of the speech is also very poor
have you guys ever tried to learn chinese? because to me her presentation brought a profound sense of hope and made me realise there is some method to actually crack that jungle-like, meaning-rich and difficult script!
she is not inviting the masses to some new fun game! if that matter is of no concern to you, then you have nothing to see here!
Who are you?
She is Vietnamese, isn't she?
yes. i think so ^^^
Phuong Phạm Minh Why she didnt talk about methods to learn VNese.? She is VNese not Chinese, i dont know what's happened?
I dont know about her, but I think she was born in China ^^
No, her's accent like from VN :)
China's accent not like that.
+Thảo Trương She speaks Cantonese by her accent. Probably from Hong Kong, or Singapore.
Silly emphasis on the speaker. We NEED to see the board ALL THE TIME.
Go learn how to teach
It is always easy to learn a language, but it is hard to understand the culture.
Yet another terrible ted talk :/
I didn't learn much except that she's obviously much nicer than Donald Trump, ha-ha, and his "wavy fingers" (GHU)= God help us.
This is all wrong - ya gotta start out with the dirty words and the cuss words first!
Terrible speech!!! Waste my time! 這水平也可以上TEDx Talk？主辦方態度能不能嚴謹一點？
She's cute ! :)
+Okto Putsch Yep, so adorable =)
Okto Putsch
Irrelevant. Teacher=one who teaches.
A waste of my time.
annoying and waste of time!
I didn't like it! Sorry!
terrible presentation
Chinese not VNese
She is Vietnamese, a member of Foreign trade university
这讲的真不怎么样