Hanyu Pinyin
I hate hanyu pinyin.
Don't get me wrong. It is not that I am no good at it. I won school competition when I was in Primary school. I have no problem with hanyu pinyin. But I have to say I totally disagree with the current approach to teaching Chinese by introducing hanyu pinyin first. Ask any Japanese teacher/student and they will tell you to forget about learning romaji because it is useless and will end up as a crutch and affect actual learning of the Japanese hiragana. Likewise, I find hanyu pinyin not doing any good at all, except maybe to help the non-Chinese speaking parents read the words. It does nothing to actually improve the child's learning of the language.
I was told that in China, the school also introduced hanyu pinyin right from the beginning. But it is a totally different social context. There in China, the children grow up looking at Chinese characters all day long. Their eyes are trained to be drawn to the Chinese characters to decipher the language. Romanised translation is secondary to them and help them with the difficult words that they are not familiar with.
Here in Singapore, our children grow up learning alphabets first. They are trained to look out for anything in alphabets. Place Chinese characters and hanyu pinyin side by side, they will automatically be drawn to hanyu pinyin instead of the chinese characters. It's the conditioning from young. Dominic will read the hanyu pinyin even though he may be able to read the words because that's how he was trained to read - go for the alphabets!
It may appear that they are reading the chinese characters but they are not. They are actually reading the hanyu pinyin. What is worse is that they read it like English. They glance and 'guess'. Hence, I have Dominic reading words in the wrong intonation because by reading the hanyu pinyin the English way, he does nor really stop to work out the correct intonation.
Theoretically, the kids are supposed to let go of their reliance on hanyu pinyin eventually. In reality, this will not happen because they actually never learn to read the characters on their own. Once the hanyu pinyin is dropped, they can't read the characters.
The proper way to learn Chinese Characters, in my opinion, is to do it the Glenn Doman way, ie. recognition. It may be hard but hey, I don't think the kids think hanyu pinyin is a piece of cake too. By repetitive exposure and lots of practice, they will remember the characters. Kids have amazing memory.
写生字 may seem very tedious and dry but when it comes to Chinese, I feel that it is the best way to learn. It is just the nature of the language and there is no short cut to it. Unlike English or Japanese, the written language is not made up of limited number of 'alphabets' or characters based on sound. So there really is no short cut to building up a person's vocabulary except learning each and every individual words. Hanyu Pinyin will not help. It will only slow down and hinder. It is good as an tool for finding out how to pronounce unfamiliar words, but it cannot take the place of the characters.
Feeling frustrated with how hanyu pinyin is messing up Dominic's Chinese, I have decided to take the hard route of making him learn the words without hanyu pinyin. I hate it that almost every book in the bookshop comes with hanyu pinyin. But fortunately, I found some in the library that do not come with hanyu pinyin. Right now, I am also making him 写生字. I am quite confident that this will work out better than messing around with hanyu pinyin.
As for hanyu pinyin, we will just learn them for exam's sake.
Don't get me wrong. It is not that I am no good at it. I won school competition when I was in Primary school. I have no problem with hanyu pinyin. But I have to say I totally disagree with the current approach to teaching Chinese by introducing hanyu pinyin first. Ask any Japanese teacher/student and they will tell you to forget about learning romaji because it is useless and will end up as a crutch and affect actual learning of the Japanese hiragana. Likewise, I find hanyu pinyin not doing any good at all, except maybe to help the non-Chinese speaking parents read the words. It does nothing to actually improve the child's learning of the language.
I was told that in China, the school also introduced hanyu pinyin right from the beginning. But it is a totally different social context. There in China, the children grow up looking at Chinese characters all day long. Their eyes are trained to be drawn to the Chinese characters to decipher the language. Romanised translation is secondary to them and help them with the difficult words that they are not familiar with.
Here in Singapore, our children grow up learning alphabets first. They are trained to look out for anything in alphabets. Place Chinese characters and hanyu pinyin side by side, they will automatically be drawn to hanyu pinyin instead of the chinese characters. It's the conditioning from young. Dominic will read the hanyu pinyin even though he may be able to read the words because that's how he was trained to read - go for the alphabets!
It may appear that they are reading the chinese characters but they are not. They are actually reading the hanyu pinyin. What is worse is that they read it like English. They glance and 'guess'. Hence, I have Dominic reading words in the wrong intonation because by reading the hanyu pinyin the English way, he does nor really stop to work out the correct intonation.
Theoretically, the kids are supposed to let go of their reliance on hanyu pinyin eventually. In reality, this will not happen because they actually never learn to read the characters on their own. Once the hanyu pinyin is dropped, they can't read the characters.
The proper way to learn Chinese Characters, in my opinion, is to do it the Glenn Doman way, ie. recognition. It may be hard but hey, I don't think the kids think hanyu pinyin is a piece of cake too. By repetitive exposure and lots of practice, they will remember the characters. Kids have amazing memory.
写生字 may seem very tedious and dry but when it comes to Chinese, I feel that it is the best way to learn. It is just the nature of the language and there is no short cut to it. Unlike English or Japanese, the written language is not made up of limited number of 'alphabets' or characters based on sound. So there really is no short cut to building up a person's vocabulary except learning each and every individual words. Hanyu Pinyin will not help. It will only slow down and hinder. It is good as an tool for finding out how to pronounce unfamiliar words, but it cannot take the place of the characters.
Feeling frustrated with how hanyu pinyin is messing up Dominic's Chinese, I have decided to take the hard route of making him learn the words without hanyu pinyin. I hate it that almost every book in the bookshop comes with hanyu pinyin. But fortunately, I found some in the library that do not come with hanyu pinyin. Right now, I am also making him 写生字. I am quite confident that this will work out better than messing around with hanyu pinyin.
As for hanyu pinyin, we will just learn them for exam's sake.