The Taipei City Government has released the results of a Mandarin proficiency exam administered to 31,145 sixth-grade students.
According to the results, more than 40 percent of those tested are unable to use so-called radicals (bùshǒu, 部首) to find Chinese characters in dictionaries. This, of course, comes as no great surprise to me. Ah, for the wisdom of the alphabetical arrangement of the ABC Chinese-English Comprehensive Dictionary!
Furthermore, the Taipei Times reports that the person in charge of the testing, Datong Elementary School Principal Chen Qin-yin, said that although most students received good grades, the essay test revealed weaknesses in writing ability, including a limited use of adjectives.
Reading that sort of thing sets off all sorts of alarms in my head. First, adjectives are the junk food of writing. Even worse, though, I suspect that Chen is talking not about any ol’ adjectives but rather stock phrases either in or reminiscent of Literary Sinitic (Classical Chinese). Larding a text with clichés is the sort of thing that passes for good writing here. And if, for example, students don’t throw in a zhi in the place of a de often enough their grades will suffer.
The language reforms springing from the May 4 movement have been tremendously important. But more than eighty years later the job still isn’t finished!
sources:
- Yòng bùshǒu chá zìdiǎn běi shì xiǎo liù shēng「xùn」 (用部首查字典 北市小六生「遜」), April 21, 2006
- Táiběi Shì guóxiǎo 6 niánjí xuésheng guó yǔwén xuélì jiǎncè jiéguǒ chūlú (臺北市國小6年級學生國語文學力檢測結果出爐), Taipei City Government, April 20, 2006
- Ma reiterates policy to prioritize Mandarin education, Taipei Times, April 21, 2006
- Read martial arts novels to improve Mandarin: Mayor Ma, China Post, April 21, 2006
Man, can you imagine if people actually did read wuxia novels to improve their Mandarin?
“Hey, Xiao Li, how are you?”
“I ache with the thirst for vengeance on the scurvy knave who did so insidiously murder my unparalleled master!”
LOL!
That might be only just, though, given how many foreigners back in the days of not so long ago had teachers who would use Literary Sinitic readings in classes that were supposedly in Modern Standard Mandarin, resulting in all sorts of archaisms in the students’ speech.
I can’t say how many times i’ve read florid Chinese essays that showcase the author’s acrobatic talents but fail to communicate his or her thinking. Or how about “mother tongue” classes that disproportionately emphasize memorizing Tang poetry in Hoklo Taiwanese or Hakka, with the expectation that students will duly regurgitate the syllables in a subsequent chengguo fabiaohui? (Notwithstanding the fact that Tang poetry is easier to memorize in Taiwanese as the poems actually rhyme, unlike in Mandarin.)
That’s the kind of superficiality we find in people who go through the education system and people are wondering why the island isn’t as competitive as it could in the global market.