32.1013, Review: Chinese, Mandarin; Applied Linguistics: Goh (2020)

[The LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-32-1013. Thu Mar 18 2021. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 32.1013, Review: Chinese, Mandarin; Applied Linguistics: Goh (2020)

Moderator: Malgorzata E. Cavar (linguist at linguistlist.org)
Student Moderator: Jeremy Coburn, Lauren Perkins
Managing Editor: Becca Morris
Team: Helen Aristar-Dry, Everett Green, Sarah Robinson, Nils Hjortnaes, Joshua Sims, Billy Dickson
Jobs: jobs at linguistlist.org | Conferences: callconf at linguistlist.org | Pubs: pubs at linguistlist.org

Homepage: http://linguistlist.org

Please support the LL editors and operation with a donation at:
           https://funddrive.linguistlist.org/donate/

Editor for this issue: Billy Dickson <billyd at linguistlist.org>
================================================================


Date: Thu, 18 Mar 2021 21:44:19
From: Zhi Huang [jeffzhihuang at gmail.com]
Subject: Teaching Chinese as an International Language

 
Discuss this message:
http://linguistlist.org/pubs/reviews/get-review.cfm?subid=36622597


Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/31/31-1644.html

AUTHOR: Yeng-Seng  Goh
TITLE: Teaching Chinese as an International Language
SUBTITLE: A Singapore Perspective
PUBLISHER: Cambridge University Press
YEAR: 2020

REVIEWER: Zhi Huang, Macquarie University

SUMMARY

“Teaching Chinese as an International Language: A Singapore Perspective” by
Yeng-Seng Goh, a bilingual and bicultural scholar, offers an in-depth English
language analysis of global Chinese, exploring the spread of Chinese beyond
China and its emergence as a global language. In this book, by approaching the
topic from a Singapore perspective, the author uses his language ecosystem,
with its unique bilingual language policy, as a case study for Chinese
language learning.

The author uses his experience in both the East and the West, his academic
background in Chinese linguistics and his extensive research in the field to
talk about the rise of global Chinese and to share the experiences of teaching
Chinese to learners hailing from English-speaking homes. For the international
community, Singapore’s experience in recent decades teaching Chinese to a
diverse student body makes it a fascinating laboratory for the testing of
pedagogical techniques. As the rest of the world struggles with the problems
of providing good and effective Chinese instruction for students at all ages,
eager to learn a language that serves their career interests, Singapore
provides an excellent case study.

In Chapter 1, “The Spread of Mandarin as a Global Language”, the three
concentric circles of Mandarin users are proposed, which makes the case for
global Chinese and provides a broad backdrop for subsequent chapters.

In Chapter 2, ‘Mandarin Chinese as Spoken in Mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong
and Singapore: A Comparison’, a synchronic perspective is first adopted to
examine the varieties of Mandarin spoken in mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong
and Singapore, followed by a diachronic approach in analysing changes in
Singapore’s Mandarin Chinese across the ages.

In Chapter 3, ‘Hard Truths about Chinese Language Policy and Planning in
Singapore’, the author turns to the topic of language planning in Singapore,
outlining the historical changes in Singapore’s Chinese language policy from
its early days as a British trading post to more recent times, which have seen
four rounds of major Chinese language pedagogical reforms.

In Chapter 4, ‘A Sociolinguistic Profile of Chinese Language Student-Teachers
in Singapore’, the author designed a sociolinguistic survey and administered
it to students who had majored in Chinese language and literature in
university. The survey covered students from three nations, Singapore,
Malaysia and China, representing different degrees of exposure to Chinese. It
is suggested that the training of the Chinese language teachers should take
into consideration the sort of differences in language ability that are
exhibited in this survey.

In Chapter 5, ‘Who Are We? The China Complex of Chinese in Singapore’, the
author takes as its focus an incident early in the twenty-first century
involving a diplomatic clash that led to tensions between Singapore, China and
Taiwan. Interestingly, it revealed two different types of ‘China complex’: one
involving Singapore’s English-educated communities (represented by the major
English language newspaper the Straits Times); the other, its Chinese-educated
communities (represented by the major Chinese language newspaper Lianhe Zaobao
‘United Daily’).

In Chapter 6, ‘The Use of English in the Teaching of Chinese: Making the Most
of the Learner’s Linguistic Resources’, the author describes his proposed
response to the emergent group of English-speaking learners in Singapore
schools through the pilot project on the bilingual approach to the teaching of
Chinese. Appended to this chapter is an interview that covers his experience
as Mr Kuan-Yew Lee’s Mandarin tutor, as well as his views on learning Chinese
as an adult. On the recommendation of Mr Lee, the author served as advisor to
his project from 2001 to 2003.

In Chapter 7, ‘The Teaching of Chinese by Non-Native Teachers: Experience and
Implications’, the author uses his own experience to describe the most
significant difference between ethnic Chinese teachers and their non-native
counterparts as the way they treated spoken and written Chinese. Non-native
teachers treated oral and written language quite differently in the design of
their courses and pedagogy. They utilised Hanyu Pinyin to represent the spoken
language, reserving Chinese characters for the written language. Ethnic
Chinese teachers, on the other hand, tended to use Chinese characters to
represent both spoken and written Chinese. It also prompts readers to ponder
the question: Could it be that in the case of Chinese, the approach that made
a sharp pedagogical distinction between spoken and written language adopted by
non-native teachers might, in fact, be more attuned to the needs of non-native
learners, such as those from English-speaking families in Singapore?

In Chapter 8, ‘ICT in L2 Learning and Teaching: Design and Development of
Bilingual Digital Instructional Materials’, inspired by the understanding of
the synergy that could be developed between the academic world and the
commercial world, the author describes the bilingual version of the
iFlashBook, a teaching resource designed to meet the special learning needs of
students from predominantly English-speaking families. It is a fine example of
how commercial industries can play a part in supporting the teaching and
learning of Chinese.

In Chapter 9, ‘Internet Plus and TCIL: A Progressive Chinese Pronunciation
Programme’, the ‘Parraoke’ app is described in detail to illustrate a new
model of Chinese language learning and teaching in the ‘Internet Plus’ era.
This app aims to fully exploit the possibilities present in the Internet
learning environment that has become the norm for education in the
twenty-first century. Learning is becoming more learner-centred and
customised, capitalising on concepts such as the ‘flipped classroom’ and on
information and communication technology advancements in cloud technology and
big data.

In Chapter 10, ‘From Bilingual to Monolingual: A New Business Chinese Test for
the Progressive Testing of Receptive Skills’, the author delves into the realm
of language testing based on his experience of collaboration with the
Singapore Workforce Development Agency (WDA) in 2008 to develop the ‘Oral
Chinese Proficiency Assessment for Working Professionals’. His professional
input was sought by WDA later when they partnered with Peking University to
develop a Business Chinese Test. Realising that their proposed model did not
suit the profile of adult test-takers in Singapore, the author suggested that
a progressive testing model should be adopted at the elementary stage of the
test, while whether a similar progressive testing model can be adapted for the
testing of a broader target group of Chinese learners remains to be explored.

In Chapter 11, ‘The Four Language Skills and the Compilation of Chinese
Learner’s Dictionaries: An Integrative Approach’, the author details the
characteristics of dictionaries for Chinese language learners. A close look at
the Oxford Beginner’s Chinese Dictionary, which serves ‘the specific needs of
English-speaking learners of Chinese’, revealed that it did, indeed, adopt an
innovative approach that separated receptive and productive skills. The author
then used it as a model and considered the possibility of designing separate
dictionaries pitched at novice, intermediate and advanced learners, reflecting
the level of their four language skills.

In Chapter 12, ‘The Bilingual Hybrid Teacher Model for Teaching Chinese as an
International Language’, the author asserts that, in ALC’s academic subject
module, ‘Chinese-English Contrastive Linguistics and Translation’, students,
as it turns out, tend to belong to two groups: CL-1/EL-2 students from
mainland China and Taiwan, and EL-1/CL-2 students from Singapore.
Interestingly, the language proficiencies of these two groups are
complementary. If paired, they would form a ‘dream team’ of bilingual teachers
in the hybrid teacher model that is proposed in this chapter. The author
subsequently discovered that his idea was similar to the ‘base-native teachers
vs. target-native teachers’ concept expounded by American scholars Jorden and
Walton back in 1987.

In Chapter 13, ‘The Master of Arts in Teaching Chinese as an International
Language’, the author outlines the proposal of starting a Master of Arts in
Teaching Chinese as an International Language at Nanyang Technological
University. This is based on his discovery of the huge demand for teachers
able to teach Chinese to predominantly English-speaking international students
as advisors to Chinese teaching reform in several international schools in
Singapore and Jakarta, Indonesia. The proposal was accepted finally, and the
first batch of students commenced classes in January 2015.

In Chapter 14, ‘The Making of the Translation Service Industry in Singapore’,
the author builds on the foundation of his prior involvement and suggests a
road map for positioning Singapore as a major hub for the T&I service
industry. This ties in with China President Xi Jinping’s ‘One Belt, One Road’
strategy and Premier Li Keqiang’s ‘Internet Plus’ economic model, and aims to
draw on local untapped talents in Chinese to English translation.

EVALUATION

This books offers clear insights into the pedagogy of teaching Chinese as an
international language, and covers a range of important topics, such as the
sociolinguistic profile of Chinese language student-teachers, the use of
English in the teaching of Chinese, the teaching of Chinese by non-native
teachers, information and communications technology in L2 learning and
teaching, the progressive Chinese pronunciation programme and the progressive
testing of receptive skills. It presents a new, integrative approach to the
compilation of Chinese learner’s dictionaries, an innovative bilingual hybrid
model for training teachers, and a solid theoretical framework for Masters of
Arts programmes in teaching Chinese as an international language and a unique
perspective on the establishment of translation as a service industry.

This book is ideal for both academics in the fields of language learning and
bilingualism, and teachers who provide instructions in Chinese – or even
English – around the world. It also contains a number of chapters which will
be of interest to policy makers in government agencies in countries where
English and Chinese are taught in the school system. It will also be of
interest to graduate students and researchers concerned with language planning
and related fields of applied linguistics. Also, general readers – even if
they lack proficiency in Chinese – will find much of historical and
sociological interest in the range of topics covered within all the 14
chapters in this book.

REFERENCES

Jorden, Eleanor H. and Walton, A. Ronald. 1987. Truly foreign languages:
instructional challenges. Annals of the American Academy of Political and
Social Science, 490, 110-24.

Lee, Kuan-Yew. 2005. Keeping My Mandarin Alive: Lee Kuan Yew’s Language
Learning Experience. Singapore: World Scientific.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Dr. Zhi Huang is an Australian NAATI Certified Translator between Chinese and
English languages. Having completed PhD in Linguistics, Master of Advanced
Translation at Macquarie University and Master of Education in TESOL at the
University of Sydney, he now works as Academic Manager at Sydney Institute of
Interpreting and Translating. He has 20 years of teaching experience in
English language, translation knowledge and skills, and IELTS preparation at
various institutions including Macquarie University, New Education Sydney
Training School, Nanjing University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, and
Nanjing Branch of New Oriental School in China. His research interests involve
English language teaching, teacher quality, translation theory and pedagogy.
He has published articles at English Language Teaching, T&I Review, Journal of
Language Teaching and Learning, International Journal of Translation and
Interpreting, and Transletters.





------------------------------------------------------------------------------

***************************    LINGUIST List Support    ***************************
 The 2020 Fund Drive is under way! Please visit https://funddrive.linguistlist.org
  to find out how to donate and check how your university, country or discipline
     ranks in the fund drive challenges. Or go directly to the donation site:
                   https://crowdfunding.iu.edu/the-linguist-list

                        Let's make this a short fund drive!
                Please feel free to share the link to our campaign:
                    https://funddrive.linguistlist.org/donate/
 


----------------------------------------------------------
LINGUIST List: Vol-32-1013	
----------------------------------------------------------