Chinese Characters

Learners of Chinese often remark that Chinese is difficult to learn，especially for speakers of European languages.They single out the Chinese writing system called Chinese characters as the most difficult part to the Chinese language to learn.Characters also represent a major challenge for students who come from an ethnic Chinese background with exposure to a Chinese dialect at home and who study Chinese as a community language.Chinese characters inevitably require more substantial and sustained learning for students with no prior learning or exposure to the Chinese language，spoken or written.Parents of these students often report that their children complain about how difficulty it is for them to learn Chinese，and it is always a struggle for parents to encourage and persuade them to persevere with Chinese learning.

Demonstrating the complexity of issues of background and unproblematised assumptions about ethnicity，nationality and language was a debate featured in letters and opinion pieces in Singapore’s main newspaper，The Straits Times，during December 2003.The debate was prompted by a letter published on 1 December from mother of a student who had been transferred to a school in the United States because of the requirement for bilingualism，parodied as a“Chinese language exile”by staff writer Kelvin Tong.Tong wrote that among“the usual laments”about education is the regular claim that“Mandarin is difficult to learn”while several letters counter-pose the argument that“All roads are fast leading to China”.With deep and globally significant changes taking place in the distribution of economic power and human capital across the Asia Pacific region，the debates underscore the relevance of the ecology of Australian Chinese language discussed above.Although research shows that it does indeed take speakers of European languages significantly longer time to achieve set levels of proficiency in MSC than cognate languages，and that the bulk of this extra time is accounted for by needing to learn characters，China’s rise and its increasing prominence ensure that the demand for Chinese is booming，unless significant impacts brought by major events in international politics and international relations interrupt this boom(the impacts of COVID-19 and events following it remain to be seen).

The difference in learning times and levels of proficiency expected to achieve in standard university courses across different languages has not adequately been addressed in curriculum policy.However，at the level of secondary education，different categories of languages and specifies different expected outcomes are acknowledged.For instance，dividing languages according to their orthographic systems，roman alphabetic，non-roman alphabetic and character-based(VCAA，2004)，the Victorian Essential Learning Standards(VELS)explicitly acknowledges the greater time investment required for Chinese，Japanese and Korean as compared to French，German，Italian and Spanish in the first category，and Arabic，Greek or Russian in the second category.At each assessment level，the two dimensions of the languages，(i)communicating in the language and(ii)intercultural knowledge and language awareness，are graded with differential expectations according to the classification of the particular language.

Chinese programs in schools in Australia have always seen the tasks of learning to speak the language and learning at least to read Chinese characters as intimately linked.Typically，students need to learn several hundred characters by the end of their high school study of Chinese as a second language.Under the VELS，for instance，the requirement is 415 basic characters and 32 special terms or proper nouns(VCAA，2004:14-17).

Unlike English，which generates an infinite number of words and constructs with mere 26 letters，a person needs to have a vocabulary of thousands of Chinese characters in order to read successfully.While people brought up in an environment in which they have exposure to Chinese characters all the time can see components which constitute individual characters and come to consider learning them as not necessarily onerous，and despite the debates reported above in Singapore，users of languages based on alphabets tend to see characters as essentially unrelated，each requiring separate and individual acquisition.The psychological effect can be substantial and learners usually view learning as a huge endeavour.At both school and university levels，one such effect has been to discourage second language learners(Hannas，1997:125)and to generate a view that for comparable levels of investment learners achieve lower levels of reward compared with languages that are cognates of English，or which at least share its orthographic conventions.This is despite many devices and aids，both printed and digital，that demonstrate or display inter-character connections and roots and seek to make more intuitive the design inspiration for individual characters.

There has been a thinking in response to this continuing challenge among some teachers and curriculum designers.They ask whether spoken Chinese based learning only can be taught，and even whether character learning can be done away with at some levels of schooling altogether.Other options include the use of a form of Romanisation(pinyin)of Chinese，either in a transitional period or for an extended period.On the other hand，people question what the effects of focusing only on verbal Chinese communication without acquiring literacy skills will have on the rates of acquisition and ultimate levels of proficiency and the nature of this proficiency that is attainable.

Some argue that second language learning should initially be focused only on what is likely to produce the greatest degree of success for the largest number of learners.The basis of this reasoning is that practical communication skills，rather than book knowledge，should be focused on for young learners who need to develop basic communication skills，i.e.listening and speaking，at the initial stages of their Chinese learning.

This view is a longstanding one among many Chinese linguistics scholars even for background learners.When advising Chinese background parents in the United States to encourage their children to retain and improve their Chinese，a distinguished scholar in Chinese linguistics(Chao，1976)cautioned that learning to speak Chinese was fundamental，and prior to，and indeed more important than，devoting extensive time to the study and correct formation of Chinese characters.For Chao this would render Chinese“...as a living experience”(Chao，1976:236).For some teachers and curriculum designers，a delay in formal study of Chinese characters until spoken communication is established is preferable for learners recovering or maintaining their previous skills in MSC，for dialect speakers acquiring standard forms and most importantly for beginning，non-background students.

Once characters are removed from the learning task，the relatively straightforward nature of spoken Chinese grammar，with no tense marking，aspect or case marking，i.e.lacking“inf lectional morphology”(Norman，1988:159)，and the shared word order with English(SVO)transform Chinese from being a particularly difficult language to a non-difficult language.Therefore，in a short period students can generally gain a personal sense of achievement，which in turn motivates further learning.However，the idea of students learning to speak Chinese with the aid of pinyin has so far proved too radical to be formally taken up in the curriculum.