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Jakarta Post

Mandarin education in Jakarta: Wasted potential?

Mandarin education in Jakarta: Wasted potential? Mandarin education recommends that students study by reading given textbooks chapter by chapter. (Shutterstock/-)
Jason Riady (The Jakarta Post)
Jakarta   ●   Mon, April 18, 2016

Language is a bridge between cultures, or so the quote goes. Yet, as positive as that sounds, many students taking Mandarin courses in Jakarta are still working on building that bridge after five or 10 years of formal Mandarin education.
 
Although the end goal is in sight, the hindrances preventing students from acquiring native-like fluency remain.
 
At the most basic level, language acquisition constitutes cultivating the skills to comprehend, read, write, speak and listen to a particular language, and these skills pertain to any language out there. However, in the case of Mandarin, this process may not be so straightforward, as the nature of the language itself makes it quite tedious to learn.
 
This can be seen in terms of the written language, as there are 800 to 1,000 basic ideograms or characters that a person needs to remember in order to read newspapers and other written publications. Not only that, but each character retains its own individual meaning and stroke order.
 
Although it is often assumed that students cannot be bothered with learning so many characters, in reality several words are composed of the same basic characters, making it easier to figure out the meaning of unfamiliar ones.
 
So what exactly is the problem?
 
First of all, the major underlying issue is that many students forget the numerous characters after long periods of disuse.
 
Mandarin education recommends that students study by reading given textbooks chapter by chapter. Each chapter provides a word list comprised of vocabulary for everyday use such as “want”, “car” and “go” and terms used less frequently such as “candle”, “Great Wall of China”, “watermelon” and so on.
 
However, once a chapter is completed, only 30-50 percent of the words from previous chapters make it into new chapters, with the rest rarely encountered from then on. This lack of exposure to supposedly familiar characters often makes it difficult for students learning Mandarin to recall characters in speech, let alone writing.
 
The above problem is made worse by the fact that those learning Mandarin do not speak the language enough to gain or maintain a native-like fluency.
 
If one glances into a typical Mandarin classroom in Jakarta, it is always the teacher who is doing the talking. In fact, students usually speak up in Mandarin only when they have questions or want to use the restroom. It is apparent that students are not actively encouraged to speak in Mandarin in class, at least not enough to get a good grasp of it, and when speaking to other students, many resort to their more familiar shared language.
 
The key to mastering any language is to immerse oneself in an environment that will encourage speaking, writing and especially thinking spontaneously in the target language, which has proven successful for students learning English or Indonesian as a second language.
 
This begs the question: If students are required to speak only in Indonesian in Indonesian classes and English in English classes, why can’t the same be done for Mandarin?
 
These problems may at a glance seem like the education system is at fault, but students — and, as pointed out above, teachers — also share the responsibility.
 
First, many younger Mandarin students lack the willingness to keep the language alive and in common use, whether in the public or private sphere. Individuals of Chinese descent rarely bother to use it in everyday speech with family and friends, mainly for social reasons, and may use Indonesian instead as it is a more common and reliable form of communication in the country.
 
At other times though, this continued deterioration cannot be helped, as some students may not be in constant contact with those capable of conversing in Mandarin with them, although many alternatives do exist, such as finding a speaking partner online or consuming Chinese Mandarin media.
 
Second, the intention of students ought to be scrutinized. The majority of students taking Mandarin courses whether inside or outside of school learn it solely for the sake of passing school exams and earning good grades. Some students only appear for Mandarin lessons in the days before an exam, after which they disappear for weeks.
 
This of course destroys the practical point of learning a language, as students no longer use it to interact with others and forge close bonds, but rather to regurgitate information on exam papers and forget most of it afterwards.
 
If this situation continues, then the existence of Mandarin in Jakarta, or even Indonesia, can no longer be taken for granted.
 
In the end, for how long after receiving their final exam results will students of Mandarin in Indonesia maintain their use of the language before it heads into its final decline?

***

Jason is a grade 12 student at Binus School Simprug, Jakarta.

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