Question masters stress importance of deep understanding
Chinese is a profound language that requires not just basic vocabulary skills but a deeper understanding of the culture behind it, experts said.
“Chinese is not like rippling water; it is a language like jagged hills with ups and downs, and like music with graceful rhythm,” Huang Jianqin, a teacher in the school of Chinese studies and exchange at Shanghai International Studies University, said after the 17th Chinese Bridge of Chinese Proficiency Competition for Foreign College Students.
Huang, a veteran in teaching Chinese as a foreign language, with more than 17 years of experience on the job, is a member of the group that drafts questions for the competition.
“Learning Chinese is more than superficial, though it is vital to learn the basic pronunciation,” Huang said. “Deeper understandings, such as thoughts or proverbs at home and abroad, are also important.”
This year, the questions were drafted to coincide with the identities of the questioners, called “masters”, according to the organizing committee of the competition.
Huang said he developed a set of comprehensive questions that require deep thinking.
The Chinese idiom of “tian xia yi jia” — which roughly translates as “we are the world” — means the process by which person-to-person exchanges leads to language understanding, Huang said, indicating that true communication is inseparable from a deep understanding of language.
An experienced teacher, Huang applies that understanding to teaching his students.
Huang has students all around the world and most of them have achieved career success based on their language skills in all walks of life; they’ve become translators for top leaders and diplomats, and serve as Chinese teachers in their own countries.
“If they have accurate understanding of Chinese, they won’t get into trouble in their work,” Huang said.
Another question master was Tim Clancy, a 32-year-old Australian who has been living China since 2011.
Clancy said he began to learn Chinese when he was a college freshman; encouraged by his Chinese classmates, he tried to take three to four months to read a pure Chinese comic book, looking up words in a dictionary by himself.
In 2007, Clancy first came to Hangzhou, Zhejiang province as an exchange student and met his wife Chen Shuang, a local Hangzhou woman, by asking for directions.
To date, Clancy has been living with his family in Hangzhou for more than seven years.
Chinese is difficult, requiring about five years of daily training from basic learning to a thorough understanding of a Chinese newspaper, Clancy said.
He added that it is more efficient for a Chinese learner to acquire Chinese skills through taking part in cultural exchanges in local communities, thereby being influenced by the environment.
In 2016, Clancy was elected as an international volunteer of the G20 Summit in Hangzhou, to popularize English knowledge for local people.
Currently, Clancy is studying clinical medicine as his fourth degree at Zhejiang University, with financial aid from the Ministry of Education.
Chinese culture is extensive and profound and it takes time to experience, he added.