Voki – an effective tool for practicing listening and speaking

In the Internet era, to share teaching/learning resources has become a norm. There are so many free online resources there. The point is which ones are suitable for our students. In order to help learners of Chinese, we will regularly introduce good websites/resources/tools to them.

VOKI is an effective and excellent tool for improving listening and speaking skills of Chinese (it also works for many other languages). As long as you can type Chinese characters, which is an essential but easy skill for L2 learners to master, you can use VOKI to transfer the written texts into listening texts. Go to the website (See CHINESE TEACHING/LEARNING TOOLS AND RESOURCES in this page) and follow the instructions, then you can practice your listening and speaking anytime.

Why Chinese?

Since the Shape of National Curriculum: Languages was published and consultation was invited, many teachers, parents, organisations and media have expressed their opinions and suggestions. There were praises and criticism.

These are some of the criticism:

• “This is a serious oversight on the part of ACARA and an insult to the deaf community and teachers of Auslan and classical languages.”

• “For a language like Chinese, you need more than 2000 hours for a beginner to get to a reasonable level.”

•  “We are concerned about overcrowding the curriculum.”

•  “The availability of teachers is a major issue.”

• “Chinese wasn't around [in schools] 20 years ago but has since flourished - the problem is getting good-quality teachers for Chinese, though.”

•  “After three full years of Japanese at school, my son can count from one to 10 and say 'bye' - and that's absolutely it. He finds it all too hard. The way it's taught, the teacher, everything.”

•  “Another concern is that while a child may study a language for five or six years at primary school, there is often no guarantee that this language can be continued at their high school because of teacher shortages or lack of interested students.”

• “Teaching Australian children -- who rely on SMS and Twitter slang to survive -- a compulsory foreign language is a waste of time, money and resources.”

• “Why? Can't someone explain to the bureaucrats and educators that this is a massive waste of time and resources? English, as anyone who regularly travels will tell you, is the universal language of business, diplomacy and entertainment.”

•  “Teaching a foreign language to six-year-olds is a wonderful ambition to have, but producing a generation of students who can spell, construct a sentence and hold a conversation in well-spoken English would be an even bigger achievement.”

While some of the above opinions may need to be taken seriously, others are not really well thought out. In the mean time, I have overheard some non-Asian language teachers complaining: “Why Chinese? Why not …..?”. People might say these are just sour grapes, but I think it is because they cannot see things from different perspectives.

Most Western people get used to seeing the world from a Western perspective. After all, Europe and the USA have been the centre of the world for the last two hundred years. Only people of vision can see the subtle changes of world economic and political situations. From Australia’s position, we only need to listen to what these people say to be able to understand why:

• The Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, said: “The 2020 Summit called us to commence a more focused effort to recruit foreign language teachers from local communities and overseas to enhance Australia’s foreign language teaching skills; and to link thousands of young Australians to Asian communities through support for school twinning, exchange programs, mentoring, in country and community-based learning programs.”

• The Minister of Defence, Stephen Smith, said：“Australian’s understanding of Asian literacy and culture should be made almost second nature. …This is a most important thing we can do, not just from an international relations point of view but also from our young schoolchildren’s point of view.”

• The Opposition Leader, Tony Abbott, said： “In the inter-connected world of the 21st century, young Australians have to be equipped with the skills to communicate with people and to understand issues and markets across the globe – this is especially crucial with our major trading partners in the Asian region.”

• The Australian Industry Group chief executive, Heather Ridout, said： “Understanding Asia, knowing the languages, cultures and traditions and teaching our children about out near neighbours is essential for future prosperity.”

If these opinions from political and entrepreneurial fields are not convincing enough, I would like to add another three experts’ viewpoints.

1. Ross Gittins (Economics editor of SMH),  The giant that keeps Australia a lucky country  (article)

2. James Wolfensohn (Former president of the World Bank):  Big Shift coming (Video)

3. Martin Jacques (Writer and columnist): When China Rules the World, The End of the Western World and the Birth of a New Global Order (Book)