Alphabet Headaches Presentation 4 - · PDF fileMandarin. The script works best in Mandarin. In other Chinese languages, the gist may be all that the reader gains. ... ALPHABET HEADACHES

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1.  I am now back in Australia after 12 years teaching in Hong Kong at 3 different schools.

(This presentation is mainly about the HK student, or Cantonese-background students from southern China.)

Pauline Bunce ACTA 2012

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2. The “headaches” expression came from a Chinese colleague who’d just returned from a holiday in the UK. He said that he’d hired a car, but that navigating with maps and signs gave him “alphabet headaches”. I told him that I had felt “Chinese headaches” when I first arrived in HK – I felt besieged by signs. I was frustrated by not understanding what was being ‘shouted’ at me. Gradually, I learned to see them as street decoration and became fascinated by their overwhelming domination of streetscapes.

2 Pauline Bunce ACTA 2012

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3. SOME FASCINATING STATISTICS HERE. For the first time in Australian history, the UK was NOT the major source of immigrants in 2011. It was China. After centuries of ‘staying at home’, Chinese people and Chinese students are now out-and-about all over the globe. Their characteristics as learners have not been widely studied – yet - and there are many, many stereotypes about their perceived abilities. ELT pedagogy has largely been built by the UK and US experiences – and most textbooks / resources make no mention of the Chinese learner. They were simply not “on the radar” in the latter half of the 20th century when most ELT pedagogy was developed – with European and Hispanic students in mind. Even in Australia, a little more used to “Asian-background” students perhaps, there has been very little research into the Chinese students’ learning needs. Socialisation, learning styles, academic writing, group dynamics – some studies done – but the specifics of reading? – not much at all.


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4. Clear, slightly dated graph of Chinese migration to Australia. Mainly S. E. Australia, and the trend is clear. Clustering tendency in certain suburbs.


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5. Possibly too much information here, but the Chinese and Indian data stand out. To the China data, we should also add HK, Taiwan, Singapore and Malaysia.


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6. I would face a clipboard of circulars every morning at my Chinese schools in Hong Kong. I had to sign that I had “read” them.


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7. Any ideas? Clearly something was going to happen at 8.30 am.


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8. The annual staff photograph. Clearly, protocol, status and pecking order are really, really important. (Not organised by height, not concerned about the background clutter.)


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9. HK, Taiwan and many overseas communities use traditional characters – with many more strokes, sometimes more than 20. Stroke order is important. Mainland – simplified the script during the Mao era – to facilitate the spread of literacy. (Not always “simplified”, often reinvented.) Needless to say – visitors moving to and fro between China and overseas communities have difficulties reading the other’s script. HK & southern China – Cantonese – the popular media has invented many new and ‘clever’ characters which bedazzle many mainland visitors. These have even found their way into official publications. Don Snow’s “Cantonese as Written Language - The Growth of a Written Chinese Vernacular” (2008, HKU Press) – fascinating account. A myth that “all can read whatever another writes” – particularly problematic between north-south in China – can be done, but with great difficulty, and in Mandarin. The script works best in Mandarin. In other Chinese languages, the gist may be all that the reader gains. ALPHABETS come in many forms – but all utilise the principle of capturing SOUND rather than DIRECT MEANING.


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10. Some characteristics of Chinese scripts – I am NOT a reader/writer of any Chinese language. Charades-like construction.


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11. Learning such a script involves an entirely different mindset and approach. Memory, memory, memory. Repetition, repetition, repetition. Effort, effort, effort. Chinese philosophy: “Read the book 100 times and you will understand it”. “The ants are always busy.” Importance of motor skills and stroke order – kinesthetic learning.


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12. Some observations from my research students. Some good adolescent advice.


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13. A totally different way to read – one in which we can say words that we do not even know, and then guess at their meaning. The complete opposite to Chinese reading! 20 vowel sounds + 24 consonant sounds. •  Makes nonsense of the axiom that “You only learn to read once” or that

“Reading skills in one language will be beneficial to learning another”. •  In fact, Chinese reading skills can be counter-productive in learning to read

in English. Far too many Chinese students use their visual memories ONLY. The memorisation of English words begins in Kindergarten, alongside the memorisation of Chinese characters. (Counter-productive!) BEWARE: Students can present an ILLUSION of reading.


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14. Students can score well on English comprehension-based tests and read books like Harry Potter WITHOUT KNOWING HOW TO READ AN UNKNOWN WORD. HK students are taught to skip and guess in Chinese, as Cantonese does not “map” very well onto the Mandarin-based Chinese script. They are taught that some Chinese characters are just there for “decoration”, and to read sentences over and over to get their meaning. Any comments to the effect that English words are “ugly” or “dull” etc. should alert you to a visual reader. Malapropisms too. They are GUESSING. It doesn’t help that L1 ENGLISH reading approaches have too often stressed skipping and guessing (whole-language approaches). HK students are subjected to “seen dictation” (Chinese-style dictation) in which they memorise a passage and then write it out from memory – oddly, while the teacher appears to be “dictating” it in segments. Students often finish writing long ahead of the teacher’s reading. These are marked with negative scores for errors. Many HK school reports still have a place for Dictation marks. This is a practice that I worked hard to change. It is no longer recommended by the Education Bureau, but it still persists in many classrooms.


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15. There are some really serious consequences for NOT being able to decode. Non-decoders cannot deal with NEW WORDS, so cannot grow their own vocab. by reading. They may work out the meaning of the new word from context, but they cannot say it, and cannot add it to their SPOKEN repertoire. Larger “silent vocab” than spoken vocab situation – very common. Parallels with Chinese – separate learning of written words and their spoken equivalents. Greatly affects PRONUNCIATION, as they rely on FADING MEMORY rather than on the ACTIVE RECONSTRUCTION of the sounds from the written words. Students may crave “Vocabulary lessons” – there are many, many “vocabulary tutors” in the private sector. Drill, drill, drill. No decoding/encoding skills taught.


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16. Some observations: I wrote the word “cot” on B’Bd and no one could say it. Some students were shocked that I could half-read Pinyin. The word “victim” couldn’t be sounded out by a very competent Form Six girl. What did I know about learning to read and “sounding out”? I am a secondary-trained teacher. My schools – Band Five – lowest scoring - was it just them? No. Friends in higher banded schools reported the same problems. My research spanned the full range of schools – the lowest of all and the absolute highest of all (taught in a summer school situation). I cannot stress how ABLE the summer school group was – top, top schools and prize-winners in annual examinations - photos in the paper for top exam results, reading “Harry Potter”, performing plays and LOVING English. Paying to undertake a summer school “Word Wizards” course.


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17. TEST ONE = SPELLING [I gave the CONFERENCE audience a spelling test, then progressively revealed the results.] ********* These poor results - were from the extremely capable cohort. The BAND ONE students!!! Weg - She carefully attached the weg to the strap. - weg Grime - The old house had a lot of grime on the floor. - grime Thress - My sister loves to eat cold thress on toast. - thress Strickle - The bus driver had to go around the strickle in the road. - strickle Monograph - She wrote a monograph about her experiment. - monograph Pentadrome - Tonight’s race at the pentadrome will be very exciting. - pentadrome


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18. Some of their spellings – small print but fascinating.


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19. This one should have been easy – as it is a “modular word”, with recognisable parts.


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20. TEST TWO – READING ALOUD [I revealed these to the Conference audience, one-by-one.] FIVE words + one real sentence (from Botany).


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21. The message? BEWARE OF AN ILLUSION OF READING! The Summer School programme approached words as though they were “people/individuals”, each with a personal history/ancestors. I wanted students to respect words. I started with aspects of MEANING, as in Chinese. Every lesson – we dug deeper and deeper into words. Lots of word games and puzzles – to match the maturity level of the students. They had no ideas of etymology or roots (despite parallels in Chinese). They’d never seen a Thesaurus, nor subject-specific dictionaries! I stressed that English words are NOT “random”! They had no idea of the parts of words. In 3 weeks of intensive teaching, we got down to phonemes – but these were still a challenge. SYLLABLE-level is the level of Chinese, and it was hard for them to isolate individual phonemes within syllables. * The course gave them a respect for English words. It aimed to make them curious, to make them “word detectives”, word collectors, word observers – and to enjoy the company of words.


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22. Some more of my students’ observations. This time about their “Word Wizards” learning. How have they got as far as they have without this knowledge??? Amazing memories.


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23. Over the last 15-20 years there has been a lot of brain research into the reading process – BOTH in English and Chinese. The Chinese brain research has been carried out in HKU – but not publicised nor applied to the schools. BRAIN PATHWAYS – SOUND ACTIVATED FIRST by alphabetic readers - MEANING THEN SOUND for Chinese readers. Even HKU’s English Department has not made use of this knowledge …. Still under the influence of “whole language” approaches. Fascinating book = “Proust and the Squid” – Reference at end of this presentation.


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24. SOME BIG QUESTIONS FOR OUR ELT PRACTICE – High school and tertiary teachers are NOT trained to teach the reading process – we assume kids can read. We need to learn more! Publishers are pushers. CHINESE READING IS WILDLY DIFFERENT!


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25. Some good reads here. Thank you.


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Documents

Alphabet Headaches Presentation 4 - · PDF fileMandarin. The script works best in Mandarin. In other Chinese languages, the gist may be all that the reader gains. ... ALPHABET HEADACHES