OMG Chinese textbooks for British students

I had an interesting day today - I ran into my friend Ruby who teaches Chinese to primary and secondary school children in London. Ruby is white and English but has been studying Chinese for 7 years (3 of them in China) and has a stunningly good command of the Chinese language. I had the chance to have a read at some of the textbooks she used for her classes and I was shocked. The standard is so extremely low - the primary school textbook is mostly in English and used mostly hanyupinyin. There were very few Chinese characters in it as they were deemed 'too difficult' for the students. You would never use such textbooks in Singapore, they're too easy.

The secondary school textbook still used English as the primary language of instruction and whilst the content was a little bit more challenging, it still fell way short of what would be expected of a ten year old student in Singapore. My dad was making my 10 year old nephew memorize loads of 成语s  when I was last in Singapore (whether or not my nephew knew how to use them was another matter - but my dad was making him memorize them). Indeed, the GSCE (the modern British equivalent of the 'O' levels exams done in Singapore) Chinese syllabus is shockingly easy and I was like, "oh come on, the kids are learning too little, how can they expect to walk away from this course and claim that they can speak Chinese?" I remember my text books back in Singapore - we didn't get any instruction in English. Hell no, we were expected to hit the ground running as native speakers of the language. The Chinese teacher sure as hell wasn't going to use any English to explain anything to us in the classroom - speaking English in the class was forbidden.

Ruby teaches Chinese in England.

I got impatient and I flipped to the last page of the primary school textbook at looked at the most advanced lesson and I reckon I had turned up to my first day at primary school already knowing everything taught in that textbook because I grew up speaking Mandarin at home with my father. My father had already started teaching me Mandarin from the moment I could talk. I simply had to - that was the only language he would speak with me and I had to speak Mandarin from the time I could talk just to communicate with my father. So I suppose it was unfair for me to compare my textbooks and what was expected of me to British students, who would have had no prior contact with Mandarin prior to their first Chinese lesson - after all, I had quite a head start in learning Chinese as a child!

Ruby explained the situation, "Yes I know it is extremely basic, but what can they do? If you make it any more difficult, it will scare the children away as they will not want to do a subject which they may fail at an important exam like the GSCE. They have tweaked the standard a few times already - make it too easy and it is a joke. Make it too hard and you put people off. It has to be just right and whilst it may seem very easy to you, most British students actually find it quite challenging. They have to work very hard at it to even complete the GSCE syllabus. Don't forget you are starting from scratch with these students, so your expectations have got to be realistic in terms of what they can achieve."

Can British students achieve a decent standard in Chinese?

"Compared to GSCE French or German, the Chinese syllabus does seem a lot easier. The students studying French or German are constructing far more complex sentences, writing stories and essays in French and German whilst the students doing Chinese are still struggling to learn more characters. Their ability to write anything using Chinese characters is very limited and they usually still do exercises using mostly hanyupinyin. The French teacher can get away with speaking hardly any English in the classroom, but if I refused to speak English, the class would be completely lost. Some of my students show some affinity for Chinese and they actually get quite far in Mandarin and no doubt will go on studying Chinese, others are probably better off studying another European language..."

"Let me state the obvious: it is far easier for a British student who speaks English as a first language to learn a European language than Chinese because English is a European language. Chinese is possibly the hardest language you can try to teach a student who has a European first language - and that is why we have no choice but to dumb down the syllabus to this extent. The syllabus reflects the capacity of the student to learn Chinese in what is a limited amount of time per week - you can't expect the students to spend most of their time studying Chinese and neglect the other subjects. So we have to realistically consider what can be achieved with just a few hours a week."

Ruby's explanation gave me some food for thought. Firstly, I am one of those who found French easier than Chinese - and I am supposedly a native speaker of Chinese who grew up with a Chinese father who was not only a Chinese teacher, but refused to speak to me in any other language! My first language is English because of the education system in Singapore so it is no wonder that I was able to get so far so quickly in French when I put my mind to it. So this is a thought I want to put to you: so many Chinese-Singaporeans are made to study Chinese as a subject at school because it is supposedly their 'mother tongue'. Some do well in it, others suck at it and there's everything in between. But what if the MOE were to offer students the chance to choose their second language rather than automatically matching the student with the supposed 'mother tongue' of their parents?

If you were a parent of a child in Singapore, would you rather your child struggle with Chinese and get a C or a D after trying so hard at it, or would you prefer your child get an A for French or Spanish with far less effort? Let's put aside this whole thing about "oh you're Chinese so you should know your language." That just clouds your judgement. If you knew your child had to spend a disproportionate amount of time struggling with Chinese at the detriment of other subjects like maths and science, would you still insist on your child studying Chinese?. In my opinion, it is better to be effectively bilingual in two European languages than to struggle with Chinese for ten or twelve years and get absolutely no where in it. In the UK, the Chinese syllabus is dumbed down to reflect just how difficult learning Chinese actually is - whereas in Singapore, well, don't expect such favours from the MOE. The fact is if you speak English as a first language, you're far more likely to get much further in French or Spanish than you ever will in Chinese.

You won't believe how easy basic Spanish is compared to Chinese!

I suppose I was lucky to have been brought up in a family where I was forced to learn, use and speak Chinese, otherwise I suspect I may have achieved very little in that subject had I been left to my own devices. But what about Singaporean families where the parents barely speak Mandarin themselves - should their children be forced to follow a syllabus that is meant for people like me who actually did come from Mandarin-speaking households and grew up speaking Mandarin at home? Yes it is important to be bilingual or trilingual, yes it is great to learn loads of foreign languages: but should Mandarin be one of those languages? Sure it could be, but we should always offer people a choice in the matter and give them the option to say, "no, my child is going to do French and/or Spanish instead."

As usual, feel free to let me know what you think, please leave a comment below. Thank you for reading.