I’ll be using previously developed topical lessons next semester for some classes. You can find them at http://cailab.net/topics (try student/npue when prompted). The following story would fit well in the education module.
As a side note, I don’t quite understand why using traditional versus simplified characters is such an issue. A larger question might be, why aren’t these programs using modern technology that allows users of digital Chinese texts to automatically convert between traditional and simplified characters using such software as the free Firefox addon, New Tong Wen Tang?
I’m afraid this is actually a political issue rather than a linguistic one. There’s no reason that teachers and students can’t quickly and easily move between simplified and traditional characters, making which set to use in instruction a non-issue.
Official urges cross- strait cooperation on Mandarin teaching
Taiwan has good teaching materials, while China has an abundance of funds and teachers
Central News Agency
2009-11-22 12:00 AMJen Hong, deputy minister of the Cabinet’s Overseas Compatriot Affairs Commission (OCAC), said Friday in Los Angeles that Taiwan and China each have their own advantages in terms of teaching Mandarin and should therefore combine their strengths to make Chinese learning easier for foreigners.
“Instead of being caught in the dilemma (of whether to use traditional or simplified Chinese), we should try to make the best use of the teaching systems on both sides of the Taiwan Strait,” Jen said at the annual convention of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) in San Diego.
He noted that China has put a great effort into setting up Confucius Institutes in foreign countries to promote simplified Chinese language learning, a trend that some teachers of traditional Chinese find worrying.
He said, however, that Taiwan, which is planning to set up “Taiwan Institutes” in Los Angeles and Boston to promote traditional Chinese language learning, should not disparage China’s efforts, because it is a good thing that both sides of the Taiwan Strait are trying to promote the Chinese language among non-Chinese speakers.
Taiwan has qualified teachers, good teaching materials, and teaching methods that are very well accepted by the public, while China has an abundance of funds and teachers, according to Jen.
He contended that because Chinese-language teachers are in high demand, Taiwan and China should work together to promote the Chinese language throughout the world.
“Traditional Chinese cannot be replaced by simplified Chinese, as the traditional form was used to document history and therefore has historic value,” Jen said.
Instead of “abolishing” the use of traditional Chinese, China chose to use simplified Chinese, which is similar in many ways to tradition Chinese, he added.
In the current wave of so-called “China fever, ” the Chinese language has become the third most popular second foreign language, after Spanish and French, in American high schools.
However, according to Deputy Chairman of National Council Associations of Chinese Language Schools Steve Chang, simplified Chinese is gradually becoming the standard in Chinese language learning, and many schools in the U.S. have switched to teaching the simplified form at the request of parents from mainland China.
While both simplified and traditional Chinese characters are part of the Chinese language, traditional Chinese characters are at the root of Chinese culture and it would be difficult for one to understand the beauty of the Chinese language if one cannot read traditional Chinese characters, which has many pictographs and phonetic-loan characters.
