Chinese-Learning Tools For The Heritage Speaker

Most Chinese-learning tools for English speakers assume that the learner has zero knowledge of the Mandarin language. For English speakers with a Mandarin-speaking upbringing, I believe that they are better off with pedagogical materials aimed at monolingual native speakers in China or the bilingual offspring of overseas Chinese-Mandarin speakers. When taught in infancy, a language's grammar becomes intuitively understood, and materials targeted at monolingual natives tend to be implicit in teaching grammar. So, this post will collect a list of tools that will mostly benefit the bilingual offspring of overseas Chinese speakers who speak Mandarin at home.

• HSK Vocabulary Terms : These HSK terms are ranked by frequency. Learn to recognize all the characters on all the lists. HSK 1 and HSK 2 are so simple that it may just take a day to learn each one. HSK 3 and HSK 4 are relatively simple as well, but there is a lot of content - more words - so expect a few days to recognize all the characters. HSK 5 and 6 will obviously take a much longer time, mainly because of the amount of words and characters. Recognizing all the characters will bring up your literacy to match your speaking/listening skills.

• 汉典/Han Dian : This is an online Chinese dictionary. Unlike Pleco, a popular Chinese-English/English-Chinese dictionary, this dictionary offers Chinese definitions.

• Get a physical copy of Xin Hua Zi Dian / 新华字典. It is a character dictionary aimed at a person who is literate in Chinese. For the semi-literate or illiterate, just searching the character by radical 部首 may help you become intimate with each character and focus on the semantic and phonetic components. Just take your time with looking up characters, reading as many characters and their definitions, because every time you take is invaluable. I can speak anecdotally that the Chinese entry and definition re-enforce the learning process.

• Get a physical copy of Xian Dai Han Yu Ci Dian / 现代汉语词典. This book is a word dictionary. Each entry is a word. It is also intended for a person who is literate in Chinese.

• Get a physical copy of 英汉汉英成语袖珍词典. find oneself is actually an idiomatic expression that means 量力而行.

• 新袖珍英汉词典 - a pocket dictionary of English words and English and Chinese definitions.

• 最新牛津现代高级英汉双解词典 - a dictionary of English words and English and Chinese definitions.

To be frank, these books were actually books used by mother and father who were studying English in America. So, it can be used both by people who are learning English and by people who are learning Mandarin. They likely purchased the books back when they were still in China.

These books are aimed at the overseas Chinese population, especially the kids of full or partial Chinese descent who are raised by Mandarin-speaking parents. Link: http://www.hwjyw.com/textbooks/downloads/zhongwen/ The teaching format feels very similar to literature textbooks written for primary school students in the Mainland. I have a copy of the Mainland books, thanks to two of my cousins who grew up there and gave me their old schoolbooks. The books intended for overseas Chinese students are different from the books intended for Mainland students in two significant ways: (1) the use of English in the earlier levels (overseas Chinese students tend to be bilingual) and (2) the reading passages tend to be something that overseas Chinese children can identify with (seriously, if you live in China, do you think you would think of that restaurant down the street as Chinese?). Anyway, the 12 books in the overseas Chinese set seem to be Grades 1-6 (primary school grade levels). There are also workbooks.

Any language learner learns well by linguistic immersion. For many second-language learners, they do not have a Chinese family. So, they have to study abroad in China to get that immersive environment, unless their country has a Chinatown, and they even work there. For first-language learners who still live with their parents who speak Mandarin as a native language, they just have to overcome the fear of speaking Mandarin and speak Mandarin to their parents. I think one big challenge for overseas Chinese people in the Anglophone world to speak Chinese is that the language is a constant reminder of their foreignness in a culture that already treats them as perpetual foreigners. All bilinguals experience some form of linguistic interference (it's not just grammatical interference or code-switching, but a cross-over of subconscious ideas), the English monolingual will start questioning the native fluency of the bilingual. It becomes embarrassing to be perceived as foreigners by speakers on both sides, using language that monolinguals find weird. Also, the lack of sufficient education in the language makes these overseas Chinese people incompetent in the language and dispassionate about learning it. I think the passion that many second-language learners have toward learning Chinese is beneficial to their learning, because without passion, you can't get very far. David Moser reports why he is attracted to the Chinese language:

Beautiful, complex, mysterious -- but ridiculous. I, like many students of Chinese, was first attracted to Chinese because of the writing system, which is surely one of the most fascinating scripts in the world. The more you learn about Chinese characters the more intriguing and addicting they become. The study of Chinese characters can become a lifelong obsession, and you soon find yourself engaged in the daily task of accumulating them, drop by drop from the vast sea of characters, in a vain attempt to hoard them in the leaky bucket of long-term memory.

I think a first-language learner who has the passion of a second-language learner has the best of both worlds. The learner can learn like a native speaker and have perfect, native-like pronunciation. The learner also learns the language out of interest rather than any sort of family heritage.

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