Foreigners Learn Chinese

Jul 27
08:10

2011

Jane Wang

Jane Wang

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James has been working and living in Guangzhou for five years. After a long period perseverance, James’ Chinese listening and speaking ability are able to deal with simple daily conversation.

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        U.S. State Department Foreign Service Institute ranks Chinese as “one of the four most difficult language to master” (the other three,Foreigners Learn Chinese Articles including Arabic, Japanese and Korean). For the difficulty of learning Chinese, a teacher called James who came from England and taught in Guangzhou noticed this.

        James has been working and living in Guangzhou for five years. After a long period perseverance, James’ Chinese listening and speaking ability are able to deal with simple daily conversation. James estimated that he could remember about 500 to 600 characters, which is helpful for him to read street signs or read books and newspapers.

        In order to learn Chinese, James used almost all of the resources and methods around. He joined the Chinese language classes in SouthChinaNormalUniversity. From Monday to Friday, four hours a day, James did not cut a class. In the spare time, James bought Chinese learning materials from bookstore to teach himself, and he often learns Chinese by reading ttp://www.learnchinese1on1.com. Through the contact with Chinese students, colleagues and friends, James tried to communicate with them in Chinese. Through his personal experience James realized that the effect of interaction with others is better than holding a book to learn by rote.

        James's mother tongue is English. It’s a very difficult challenge for him to learn Chinese which have a huge difference for him is a. According to statistics, English-speaking foreigners need average 2,200 hours to reach the level of proficiency in Chinese language. This means that learning Chinese takes 3 times the time to gain the same level of proficiency in French or Spanish.  And, like most foreigners, Chinese tone is the most headache thing for James. He said that the uncertainty of tone usually made him thinks he did not say something wrong, but his Chinese friends did not understand what he said, which made him very depressed.

��But for James, learning Chinese is a natural need — because he lives and works in China. In addition, James believes that speaking Chinese not only make his life easier, but also an advantage. So even the Chinese is hard to learn, James isn’t giving up.

��Some experts point out that learning Chinese is not simply an academic issue. With China's economic development, it’s very important to reduce business friction and misunderstanding by mastering Chinese.