False Eastern promise
The following is a staggeringly bad one- off article written by the economist about learning Mandarin.
The craze for teaching Chinese may be a misguided fad
“CHINA will be the dominant power in the 21st century and the employment opportunities that speaking Mandarin will give are immense.” Thus Anthony Seldon, headmaster of Wellington College, at a conference in 2006 entitled “Why every school should offer Mandarin”. Nearly two years later, the spectacular growth of the language in British schools shows no sign of slowing.
More than 400 secondary schools now teach it, according to the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust, which is lobbying to bring Mandarin into the national curriculum. And Britain is not alone in its enthusiasm for the language: some 30m foreigners are studying Mandarin today, and Chinese authorities expect the number to rise to 100m by 2010.
In a few decades China may indeed overtake America as the world's top economic power. Will Britons who make the effort to learn its language be rewarded with better careers? Barring some kind of sea change in global language learning, the answer will almost always be no.
With its tones and horribly complicated writing system, Mandarin is much harder to learn than most European languages. The Foreign Office, for example, gives its officers four times as long to get from beginner to operational level in Mandarin as it does in Italian, French or Spanish—and only those with the greatest aptitude for languages are selected for it. The vast majority of Westerners who travel to China to study Mandarin give up, go home and forget what they have learned. Undergraduates at British universities find it hard to adjust to a workload heavier than that for other subjects, and many drop out.
For those determined to become fluent in Chinese, a good level to aim for is a score of six in the national standard “Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi” exam. This is the qualification foreigners need to enroll alongside local undergraduates at a Chinese university. A graduate in Chinese from a British university should reach that grade (though many do not). So should someone with good linguistic ability who studies Mandarin in China full-time for three years.
But is learning moderately good Chinese worth the opportunity cost? After all, in three or four years a British graduate could get most of the way to qualifying as a lawyer, for example. According to the Association of Graduate Recruiters, those who hire British graduates attach little importance to language skills in general. So to justify the extra effort needed, the demand for fluency in Mandarin would have to be way above demand for, say, French.
Yet anecdotal evidence suggests that there is little call for Britons with Mandarin. One reason is that many Chinese already speak reasonable English. In China's bigger cities children often start learning English in reception year. It is compulsory for all from the start of secondary school to the second year of university. To study for a doctorate, even in fine art or the poetry of the Tang dynasty, students need to show fluent literacy in English. An academic career is closed to those who cannot do so.
Outside the classroom, too, there is widespread conviction that a child's prospects will be limited if he does not learn English. Senior managers with no capacity in the language are becoming a rarity. China's elite professionals are often bilingual because most of them went to university in America, Britain or Australia.
For this reason, Britons at home never need to use Mandarin in their dealings with Chinese firms. Haier, a white-goods maker, for example, reports that every Chinese employee posted to its 15 overseas industrial parks, 22 trading companies, 30 plants and eight R&D centres outside China speaks good English.
Within China companies can hire an expatriate who speaks Chinese. Or, more often, they take their pick from an abundant supply of local graduates in English who are happy to work for 2,000 yuan (£130) a month. “I took an 80% pay cut to come here because I wanted to learn the language,” says Ken Schulz, a software engineer from Silicon Valley who studied Chinese full-time for four years at Beijing's University of Language and now works in the capital at WorkSoft, an outsourcing firm. “I'm the only foreigner in an office of 1,200 people, and I hardly get any opportunity to use my Chinese.”
At Search Bank, a Beijing employment agency, Hai Yuen points out that, whereas the value of compensation packages for expat executives has been shrinking over the past ten years, the number of Chinese-speaking foreigners she handles has been rising. Better language skills, she reckons, are a product less of market demand than of a general enthusiasm for China. Reason enough, perhaps, to learn the language.
From The Economist print edition
Of course it’s possible that this is a fad, but what precisely is that saying? There’s a lot of things that may or may not happen out there, that may or may not be fads, no end of things we could speculate wildly upon without providing data. Why this particular issue? The premise is so vague, speculative, unsubstantiated, and out of the blue, that you have to wonder where the author suddenly got the idea from. It’s bizarre.
Then it gets worse. He states that there is worldwide growth in the study of the Chinese. That’s probably correct. Then he says that ‘Barring some kind of sea change in global language learning’ all these speakers of Mandarin will not be rewarded with better careers. Let me think about that for a second. He first says that there is a masive change in worldwide learning, then he says that these people will not find jobs unless there is a change in worldwide language learning. I’m not even going to try to uncork that one.
And anyone that knows anything about China should know that you don’t accept government statistics on face value anyway. Two years ago, the government claimed that there were 30 million people worldwide studying Mandarin, which is ludicrous. (The total number of people in Japan and Korea combined studying Mandarin is probably around 2-3 million. These are the countries with the highest density of Mandarin learners by far.
Then we’re told that the Chinese writing system is ‘horribly complicated’, which strikes me as entirely subjective, judgmental, and inappropriate for an article of this nature, as if to invoke ignorance as preferential to ’complicated’ things.
The author has now hit bottom, but he keeps digging: “The vast majority of Westerners who travel to China to study Mandarin give up, go home and forget what they have learned.” How does he know that? How do you measure that? How much do they forget? Does it happen instantly? What does it even mean? And while you’re still reeling at that one, he suggests that people would be better of studying law instead, because law is easier.
Now look, I admit that I have a vested interest in promoting the study of Mandarin, but this is probably the worst article I’ve ever read in the Economist. The writer seems to have put this together so quickly and superficially you have to wonder if he did it purely to fill a column space on a bad morning. As I said, I read and love the Economist, but this is appalling. Tell me this was written by an intern with a bad hangover, please!
The craze for teaching Chinese may be a misguided fad
“CHINA will be the dominant power in the 21st century and the employment opportunities that speaking Mandarin will give are immense.” Thus Anthony Seldon, headmaster of Wellington College, at a conference in 2006 entitled “Why every school should offer Mandarin”. Nearly two years later, the spectacular growth of the language in British schools shows no sign of slowing.
More than 400 secondary schools now teach it, according to the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust, which is lobbying to bring Mandarin into the national curriculum. And Britain is not alone in its enthusiasm for the language: some 30m foreigners are studying Mandarin today, and Chinese authorities expect the number to rise to 100m by 2010.
In a few decades China may indeed overtake America as the world's top economic power. Will Britons who make the effort to learn its language be rewarded with better careers? Barring some kind of sea change in global language learning, the answer will almost always be no.
With its tones and horribly complicated writing system, Mandarin is much harder to learn than most European languages. The Foreign Office, for example, gives its officers four times as long to get from beginner to operational level in Mandarin as it does in Italian, French or Spanish—and only those with the greatest aptitude for languages are selected for it. The vast majority of Westerners who travel to China to study Mandarin give up, go home and forget what they have learned. Undergraduates at British universities find it hard to adjust to a workload heavier than that for other subjects, and many drop out.
For those determined to become fluent in Chinese, a good level to aim for is a score of six in the national standard “Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi” exam. This is the qualification foreigners need to enroll alongside local undergraduates at a Chinese university. A graduate in Chinese from a British university should reach that grade (though many do not). So should someone with good linguistic ability who studies Mandarin in China full-time for three years.
But is learning moderately good Chinese worth the opportunity cost? After all, in three or four years a British graduate could get most of the way to qualifying as a lawyer, for example. According to the Association of Graduate Recruiters, those who hire British graduates attach little importance to language skills in general. So to justify the extra effort needed, the demand for fluency in Mandarin would have to be way above demand for, say, French.
Yet anecdotal evidence suggests that there is little call for Britons with Mandarin. One reason is that many Chinese already speak reasonable English. In China's bigger cities children often start learning English in reception year. It is compulsory for all from the start of secondary school to the second year of university. To study for a doctorate, even in fine art or the poetry of the Tang dynasty, students need to show fluent literacy in English. An academic career is closed to those who cannot do so.
Outside the classroom, too, there is widespread conviction that a child's prospects will be limited if he does not learn English. Senior managers with no capacity in the language are becoming a rarity. China's elite professionals are often bilingual because most of them went to university in America, Britain or Australia.
For this reason, Britons at home never need to use Mandarin in their dealings with Chinese firms. Haier, a white-goods maker, for example, reports that every Chinese employee posted to its 15 overseas industrial parks, 22 trading companies, 30 plants and eight R&D centres outside China speaks good English.
Within China companies can hire an expatriate who speaks Chinese. Or, more often, they take their pick from an abundant supply of local graduates in English who are happy to work for 2,000 yuan (£130) a month. “I took an 80% pay cut to come here because I wanted to learn the language,” says Ken Schulz, a software engineer from Silicon Valley who studied Chinese full-time for four years at Beijing's University of Language and now works in the capital at WorkSoft, an outsourcing firm. “I'm the only foreigner in an office of 1,200 people, and I hardly get any opportunity to use my Chinese.”
At Search Bank, a Beijing employment agency, Hai Yuen points out that, whereas the value of compensation packages for expat executives has been shrinking over the past ten years, the number of Chinese-speaking foreigners she handles has been rising. Better language skills, she reckons, are a product less of market demand than of a general enthusiasm for China. Reason enough, perhaps, to learn the language.
From The Economist print edition
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Ken Carroll, Mandarin guru from Chinesepod.com has somewhat angrily replied to this article (below) taken from his blog here.
'What's happening at the Economst'
I love the Economist, but it ran an incredibly weak article today - False Eastern promise whose sub-heading tells us that the ‘craze for teaching Chinese may be a misguided fad’. The craze for teaching Chinese may just be a fad? May be a fad?
Of course it’s possible that this is a fad, but what precisely is that saying? There’s a lot of things that may or may not happen out there, that may or may not be fads, no end of things we could speculate wildly upon without providing data. Why this particular issue? The premise is so vague, speculative, unsubstantiated, and out of the blue, that you have to wonder where the author suddenly got the idea from. It’s bizarre.
Then it gets worse. He states that there is worldwide growth in the study of the Chinese. That’s probably correct. Then he says that ‘Barring some kind of sea change in global language learning’ all these speakers of Mandarin will not be rewarded with better careers. Let me think about that for a second. He first says that there is a masive change in worldwide learning, then he says that these people will not find jobs unless there is a change in worldwide language learning. I’m not even going to try to uncork that one.
And anyone that knows anything about China should know that you don’t accept government statistics on face value anyway. Two years ago, the government claimed that there were 30 million people worldwide studying Mandarin, which is ludicrous. (The total number of people in Japan and Korea combined studying Mandarin is probably around 2-3 million. These are the countries with the highest density of Mandarin learners by far.
The US has no more than a few hundred thousand. So, where are the other tens of millions of students?) The author simply accepts that number and goes on to unquestioningly accept the claim that it will reach 100 million by 2010. This is facile stuff in any publication, but in the Economist it’s staggering.
Then we’re told that the Chinese writing system is ‘horribly complicated’, which strikes me as entirely subjective, judgmental, and inappropriate for an article of this nature, as if to invoke ignorance as preferential to ’complicated’ things.
The author has now hit bottom, but he keeps digging: “The vast majority of Westerners who travel to China to study Mandarin give up, go home and forget what they have learned.” How does he know that? How do you measure that? How much do they forget? Does it happen instantly? What does it even mean? And while you’re still reeling at that one, he suggests that people would be better of studying law instead, because law is easier.
Well then, that settles the matter. Let’s all study law - no let’s all just study easy things, not hard things. But then he crowns the vacuity with a sentence I shudder to see in the Economist (and it is a beauty), “… anecdotal evidence suggests that there is little call for Britons with Mandarin”. Ah, yes, the anecdotal evidence. That seals the argument. If it’s one thing that the science of economics needs it’s vapid cliches to prove sweeping generalizations on the basis of what anecdotal evidence suggests.
Now look, I admit that I have a vested interest in promoting the study of Mandarin, but this is probably the worst article I’ve ever read in the Economist. The writer seems to have put this together so quickly and superficially you have to wonder if he did it purely to fill a column space on a bad morning. As I said, I read and love the Economist, but this is appalling. Tell me this was written by an intern with a bad hangover, please!
Ken Carroll
Comments