Why are there so few British people learning Chinese?

Hi there. Here's a question that a friend has asked me recently and I thought it was easy enough to tackle on my blog: are there British people learning Chinese (Mandarin) and if so, are there many? The answer is yes but very few. There are several reasons why Chinese has not proven to be a popular choice as a second or foreign language in the UK.

Why aren't Brits rushing to learn Chinese?

1. It is bloody difficult language.

Now I am stating the obvious here: Mandarin is an incredibly difficult language for those who speak English as a first language. It is a tonal language, there are many consonant sounds that don't exist in any European language and even if you can get past that, the writing system is one of the most complex and difficult in the world. The grammar system is quite different from English and so will take quite a bit of getting used to. So even if Chinese is available as a subject in school, many parents would choose an easier subject over Chinese because they would rather their children score an A in an easier subject than to spend many hours struggling with Chinese only to scrape a C. The sheer difficulty of the language does put people off, it's called picking your battles and going for the lowest hanging fruit.

2. You can get a lot further in French or Spanish

The Foreign Service Institute (FSI) in the US has chart which ranks foreign languages in terms of their difficulty to master for a native English speaker, which you can see if you click on this link. Those languages like French and Spanish more closely related to English will be easier to master and those least like English such as Chinese and Korean will be the hardest. According to this chart, it takes just approximately 600 hours to study for someone to become fluent in a category I language like French or Spanish but about 2200 hours to reach that same standard in a category V language like Chinese or Korean. I don't even think that's accurate - I think that still underestimates how difficult Chinese is and despite having grown up with a Chinese teacher father who refused to speak English to me and pretty much between home and gymnastics training (run by coaches from the 北京体育学院), I was raised in a Mandarin speaking environment and Chinese is still at best a third language for me today. Par contre, French quickly became my second language because it is a lot more similar to English, my first language. Hence British students have a choice: become fluent in French or Spanish after a few years of study - or struggle in Chinese for the same amount of time and barely get past the basics. One has to make a rational choice and go for the lowest hanging fruit.

Why not learn an easier language?

3. The sheer lack of decent teachers.

Now the previous two points are pretty obvious but let me go on to one that you won't often hear: it is very hard to get good foreign language teachers in the UK. You either need a native speaker who has mastered English to a high enough standard to be able to deliver instructions in English, or you need an English-speaker who has mastered the foreign language to a high enough standard to be a teacher. In the case of Chinese, well you're stuffed. The native speakers from China usually struggle with English - it's not like they don't speak English, but their standard of English usually leaves much to be desired. On the other hand, there are a small (and I mean very small) number of native-English speakers who have mastered Chinese to a very high standard and have chosen to be Chinese teachers - whilst they have no problems understanding their students and explaining things in a way that their English-speaking students can understand, they often struggle with pronunciation, tones and their Mandarin will usually have an accent. They will also struggle with some of the more subtle nuances in more complex expressions in colloquial Mandarin, being non-native speakers. This is far less of a problem say with French or Spanish teachers in the UK.

4. Out of date teaching methods by old teachers.

Despite really good improvements made to the teaching of other foreign languages, few Chinese teachers (Chinese or otherwise) have any good solutions when it comes to bludgeoning thousands of Chinese characters into the heads of young students. It often still boils down to a huge amount of rote learning to memorize the Chinese characters and what some teachers do is that they dodge the issue by mostly teaching conversational Mandarin - they write only in Hanyu Pinyin and put off the tricky issue of reading/writing. So at best, you have students who can speak some Mandarin but are effectively illiterate in Chinese. I had a look at some of the textbooks and they simply do not reflect some of the best innovations in language teaching today - now these are all apps (such as Memrise) which well and truly bring learning to life in an interactive way that a book can never ever do. Good teachers will incorporate such apps in their teaching. Yet few teachers (if any) are happy to turn to technology and still rely on these old fashioned textbooks. I do believe that it will only be a matter of time before these apps replace a lot of old fashioned teachers.

Rote learning = boring, dull and a crap experience

5. Is there any use for Chinese?
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Oh I have heard Chinese people wax lyrical about how powerful China's economy is today - but is the average job seeker in the UK today going to actually need to speak Mandarin in his/her next job? No, most probably not. The only people who will need to speak Mandarin in their jobs are those either dealing directly with the Chinese market or those dealing with Chinese customers - so for example, a hotel which has loads of tourist from China staying there would probably want to employ a few members of staff at the front desk who will be able to serve the clients in Mandarin. However, these are not particularly well paid jobs and hotels will simply hire Chinese people to fulfill such roles (they could for example, draw upon the large number for Mandarin-speaking foreign students seeking part time work). And if your company does deal with China, many of the people you deal with in China may well speak English and you'll find yourself in a situation whereby their English is better than your Mandarin. Your average Brit will never work for a company that deals with China because the main trading partners with the UK are Europe and America, but not China.

6. A sense of giving up - why bother? 

I know what you're thinking - being able to speak one of the world's most spoken languages is bound to be useful when it comes to the work place, right? Yes and no. Ultimately, British people will think about it this way: can I possibly compete with a British-Chinese person or someone from Singapore who would have been brought up in a Mandarin-speaking home environment? I have met European people who speak Mandarin totally fluently, but these are the ones who totally love the language and have spent a year or two living/working/studying in China. And it's not like there is a massive shortage of people who speak Mandarin - there are plenty of Chinese people around to do jobs that need Mandarin speakers. So for British people, there's usually a sense of resignation and they just think, sigh - why even bother? How am I ever going to compete with a native Chinese speaker for a job that requires a Mandarin speaker?

7. Even if you do study it, it's a useless qualification. 

Oh this is something that's going to make my Singaporean readers jealous. I have seen the equivalent GSCE (ie. 'O' levels in Singapore) and 'A' levels syllabus for Mandarin-Chinese in the UK and it is ridiculously easy - let's just say the exams for 'A' level Chinese in the UK is probably about the same standard as the PSLE in Singapore. Why? Because in Singapore, many of the kids who do choose to study Chinese already hit the ground running and have Mandarin speaking parents and relatives at home - whereas in the UK, the students show up for their first lesson in GSCE Chinese with virtually no knowledge whatsoever any Chinese words. Hence the exam syllabus has to be dumbed down to the point where the students have some hope of passing, otherwise no one will ever touch Chinese with a barge pole in the British school system if you're guaranteed to fail it. So I've met students who have done 'A' level Chinese in the UK who can barely get through the most basic conversational Mandarin. Put them in a real life situation where they need to use their Chinese skills and they soon realize, oh my goodness, I can barely talk to a real Chinese person in Mandarin. Unless they are willing to make studying Chinese the sole purpose of their lives, working towards a qualification like an 'A' level in Chinese here in the UK is meaningless and useless.

8. So who still learns it then? 

There are some British people who do study Chinese! Some choose it because they are Sinophiles - these are people who have taken great interest in Chinese culture and learning Mandarin enables them to access more Chinese culture or spend time in China. Others have found themselves in a situation whereby they have been put in positions at work whereby a knowledge of Mandarin would prove to be useful. A sub-category of that are those who have Chinese spouses/partners and would like to learn the language to appreciate their spouse's/partner's culture. Then there are also those who are polyglots and are naturally gifted at learning languages, so Chinese is just another language for them to add to their collection of languages. These people usually learn Chinese outside the UK school system - either taking expensive private lessons or simply by spending time in China. Needless to say, those who do master Chinese are usually rather good at learning foreign languages and would usually be fluent in at least two other languages.

So there you go - unless there is a huge spike in interest in Chinese culture over the next few years, I can't see the situation changing. In fact, I think that people will soon realize how useless the schools are at teaching Chinese - soon parents will start making wiser choices by avoiding Chinese altogether and picking easier subjects for their children at school. Learning Chinese is a fad that just never took off. Do let me know what you think, many thanks for reading.