Why do we need to teach Mandarin to Australian young children - Heather Ridout

The former Chief Executive Officer, Australian Industry Group, Heather Ridout, who has just been appointed to the Board of the Reserve Bank of Australia last week, is an influential and significant figure in Australian political and economic landscape. Her ideas and opinions have always been taken seriously by Australian politicians. Apart from being an expert in her own portfolios, Ridout has also been an advocate for Asian language education in Australia for a long time. From her perspective, she thinks that the future of Australia is closely related to the future of Asia, especially China. She has said that “Understanding Asia, knowing the languages, cultures and traditions and teaching our children about out near neighbours is essential for future prosperity.” In 2008, she was interviewed by Ali Moore, presenter of ABC TV’s Lateline Business. In that interview, she expressed her point of view about learning Mandarin in Australia. You can link to the interview and hear her ideas.

An excellent resource for teaching Chinese characters

There are many interesting and effective online teaching resources. They are produced by people who are passionate and creative. However, their generosity and sharing spirit are most appreciated by us.

Do you find it is hard to teach Chinese characters and hard to motivate students? We recommend you to try this animated classroom. Even though you may teach simplified characters, you can still use them to explain the origin of these characters.

Please link to: Classroom of Choumeizai : Han Zi (漢字)

Learn Chinese characters effectively

People tend to say Chinese is difficult to learn. As a native Chinese language teacher and a Spanish/ESL learner, I would like to say all languages have their 'easy' and 'difficult' parts. For example, while English pronunciation is hard for Chinese speakers to master, Spanish pronunciation is much easier for them. However, the grammar in Spanish is much harder than in English for Chinese speakers like me.

From my own teaching experience, I find that for non-Chinese Mandarin learners, the pronunciation and grammar are not difficult to manage. Most of them think Chinese characters are too hard to master.

Here, I would like to suggest an effective way to learn Chinese characters. The principle is very simple: Start from ‘small’ ones (less strokes) and learn by differentiating similar characters.

Start from ‘small’ characters

For example, once you have mastered 妈(mā) (mother)，好(hǎo)(good)，你(nǐ)(you)， then try to find out 女(nǚ)(female)，马(mǎ) (horse)，子(zǐ)(son)and 小(xiǎo)(small). What I mean is that once you have mastered THREE characters （妈，好，你），you have actually learned SEVEN characters（妈，好，你，女，马，子，小）.

Learn by differentiating similar characters

Since Chinese characters are often formed by ‘smaller’ characters, being able to differentiate characters is very important. The ‘theory’ here is very simple. If you can identify the difference between two twin brothers, you should be able to know who is who. Have a look of the following examples.

1. 母(mǔ) (mother)→每(měi) (every)→海(hǎi) (sea)

2. 头(tóu) (head)→买(mǎi) (to buy)→卖(mài) (to sell)→读(dú) (to read/study)

3. 止(zhǐ) (to stop)→此(cǐ) (this)→些(xiē) (some)

4. 田(tián)(rice field)→果(guǒ)(fruit)→课(kè) (lesson)

5. 口(kǒu)(mouth)→各(gè) (each)→客(kè)(guest)

If you manage the last character of each row, you actually have learnt three characters (You ‘buy’ one and get two ‘free’).


There are many other ways to learn Chinese characters effectively. I will keep blogging in the future.

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)