1 00:00:04,265 --> 00:00:06,140 HAOHSIANG LIAO: American people, they usually 2 00:00:06,140 --> 00:00:08,590 have the myth that Chinese is a very difficult language 3 00:00:08,590 --> 00:00:13,220 to master which is true if you want to learn the four 4 00:00:13,220 --> 00:00:14,600 skills altogether. 5 00:00:14,600 --> 00:00:18,050 We are talking about listening, speaking, reading, and writing. 6 00:00:18,050 --> 00:00:23,070 Chinese is difficult in the sense of Chinese characters. 7 00:00:23,070 --> 00:00:26,060 If you focus on just listening and speaking, 8 00:00:26,060 --> 00:00:27,830 the structure of Chinese language 9 00:00:27,830 --> 00:00:29,470 is the same as English. 10 00:00:29,470 --> 00:00:31,280 It's SVO language. 11 00:00:31,280 --> 00:00:32,770 So you say, I like you. 12 00:00:32,770 --> 00:00:36,500 As long as you know how do you say, I, like, and you 13 00:00:36,500 --> 00:00:40,290 individually, and you put together, it's, I like you. 14 00:00:40,290 --> 00:00:42,500 So it's not Japanese. 15 00:00:42,500 --> 00:00:45,260 Japanese is SOV. 16 00:00:45,260 --> 00:00:48,510 So you have to say, I you like in Japanese. 17 00:00:48,510 --> 00:00:50,570 So again, if you just want to focus 18 00:00:50,570 --> 00:00:52,380 on listening and speaking, Chinese 19 00:00:52,380 --> 00:00:55,280 is not so difficult to master. 20 00:00:55,280 --> 00:00:59,430 Most of the Chinese textbooks, they combine these four skills 21 00:00:59,430 --> 00:01:00,530 altogether. 22 00:01:00,530 --> 00:01:05,080 So a dialogue would be represented 23 00:01:05,080 --> 00:01:06,780 in Chinese characters. 24 00:01:06,780 --> 00:01:10,790 And reading Chinese characters is a big burden for beginners. 25 00:01:10,790 --> 00:01:15,110 And our curriculum here is our speaking and listening class, 26 00:01:15,110 --> 00:01:16,970 they have different units. 27 00:01:16,970 --> 00:01:18,970 And that is one of the reasons we 28 00:01:18,970 --> 00:01:21,900 would like to adopt these new materials at MIT. 29 00:01:21,900 --> 00:01:25,690 And the material is called Basic Spoken Chinese 30 00:01:25,690 --> 00:01:28,310 and Basic Written Chinese. 31 00:01:28,310 --> 00:01:30,510 So the idea is it separates the speaking 32 00:01:30,510 --> 00:01:32,460 and listening from the reading and writing. 33 00:01:32,460 --> 00:01:35,010 So for the first two weeks, our curriculum 34 00:01:35,010 --> 00:01:38,140 here is that we focus on the speaking and listening. 35 00:01:38,140 --> 00:01:41,300 So students, they get a solid foundation 36 00:01:41,300 --> 00:01:43,260 of what Chinese sounds like. 37 00:01:43,260 --> 00:01:47,810 After two weeks, then we slowly introduce the reading 38 00:01:47,810 --> 00:01:49,250 and the writing part. 39 00:01:49,250 --> 00:01:54,860 And our pace here is our speaking and listening classes, 40 00:01:54,860 --> 00:01:59,350 they're always one week ahead of the reading and writing. 41 00:01:59,350 --> 00:02:02,030 There are some good purposes for doing that. 42 00:02:02,030 --> 00:02:05,730 One of them is reading and writing will become review 43 00:02:05,730 --> 00:02:07,090 for the speaking and listening. 44 00:02:07,090 --> 00:02:11,414 So when students read, the materials 45 00:02:11,414 --> 00:02:13,830 is something you already know from speaking and listening. 46 00:02:13,830 --> 00:02:18,320 So their energy, their efforts, can be put entirely focused 47 00:02:18,320 --> 00:02:21,820 on decoding the characters. 48 00:02:21,820 --> 00:02:25,380 So they don't need to go through the process of, 49 00:02:25,380 --> 00:02:28,410 so what is meant by this word and by that word 50 00:02:28,410 --> 00:02:31,555 because they already learned this in the speaking 51 00:02:31,555 --> 00:02:33,660 and listening class.