HAOHSIANG LIAO: We always tell our students
to trust their ears, not their eyes.
That basically means that we want them to work more
with the audio files.
So interact with the audio files for DVDS.
Work with them.
Work with the sounds.
And I always ask my students, when you interact with people,
what are you dealing with?
You deal with sounds, not texts.
So that's what we mean by trust your ears, not your eyes
because students, when they're out
of time, the first thing they do for preparation
is to read the dialogue.
It's reading.
They read the dialogue and thought that they know.
However, they're not familiar with the sounds.
And in class, what we do a lot in class
is interactions by speaking and listening.
So they will feel totally disoriented
if they just focus on reading or talking about the text
or romanizations of a language.
So that's always the first challenge for our students,
how to give up yourself to your ears.
And we know that this also increases students' anxieties
from time to time.
But this is always a reminder we have to our students every day
that work more.
When you have time, work with the audio files, not just
reading the romanizations.
If your preparation lies mostly in reading,
that will not get you too far in your Chinese studies.