SWIHART, DE–AN, & CONG MENG. Success with Chinese: A Communicative Approach for Beginners (Listening & Speaking).
Boston: Cheng & Tsui, 2005. Pp. xvii, 269.
SWIHART, DE–AN. Success with Chinese: A Communicative Approach for Beginners (Reading & Writing).
Boston: Cheng & Tsui, 2005. Pp. xiii, 210.
One of the hallmarks of the development of any less commonly taught language (LCTL) field is the diversification of its textbook options. The relative field maturity in LCTLs such as Japanese and Russian is at least partially reflected in the variety of text and material possibilities in aspects such as level appropriateness (i.e., primary, secondary, or tertiary), pedagogical orientation (e.g., communicative vs audiolingual), and the integration of technology. In contrast to these languages, for the majority of the 20th century, the Chinese language field generally could claim but a single primarily preferred textbook series. In the 1950s, it was the Yale Mirror Series (Speak Chinese and Read Chinese); in the 1960s and into the early 1970s, it was the DeFrancis textbooks. Beginning in the late 1970s and continuing well into the first half of the 1990s, Practical Chinese Reader and its multitude of supplementary materials dominated the Chinese language pedagogical field. And it can be safely conceded that since its initial appearance in 1997, Integrated Chinese has indeed become, as its publisher claims, “the leading introductory Chinese textbook at colleges and universities around the world” (Cheng & Tsui Catalogue, Fall/Winter 2006, p. 40).
Even more interesting to observe is how the shift in Chinese textbook design moved from a bifurcation between the spoken and written forms of the language for language learning purposes in the 1950s through the 1970s, to an integrated approach for development of the four language skills in concert, less by conscious design in Practical Chinese Reader (given that is a reader) than in Integrated Chinese. Consequently, the appearance of Success with Chinese (hereafter, Success) is all the more striking in that it reflects a deliberate choice to separate the aural/oral and reading/writing modalities, at first glance a somewhat retrograde approach. But Success is anything but retrograde, and in fact presents a distinctive option to the growing range of textbooks now available for beginning-level Chinese language courses.
The distinction appears in the opening sentences of the introduction, with the authors citing the ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines as “a significant change in the contemporary direction of foreign language teaching” (p. xi). At the higher educational level, the Chinese language pedagogy field has distinguished itself as being relatively reticent to recognize the importance of the ACTFL Guidelines, much less integrate them into a program on other than a localized basis. The distinctiveness continues throughout the introduction’s claims to how its design “leads to success with Chinese”(p. xii), with its explanatory attention to matters of sequencing (spoken before, but serving as a reinforcement for, written language development), mechanical and cognitive learning strategies (repetition and character analysis, respectively), and a clear understanding of adult second language acquisition processes.
Equally reminiscent of its Yale and DeFrancis predecessors, the two volumes—listening and speaking, and reading and writing—of Success are not simply content carbon copies, distinguished only by the use of pinyin Romanization in the aural/oral volume and Chinese characters in the reading/writing volume. Although both books use the same topical sequencing—seven modules of a highly practical nature, beginning with “Numbers” and ending with “Time, Schedules, and Forms”—the space devoted to each topic varies considerably, with nearly 70 fewer lesson pages (but twice as many lessons) in the reading and writing volume. For example, on the topic of food, the speaking volume devotes two lessons; the writing volume spreads its treatment over five. The lesson-internal content is distinctive in each book as well, with the aural/oral volume carrying the explanatory load for grammar and culture, whereas the reading/writing volume focuses exclusively on literacy development, with detailed attention to learning radicals, character structure, and writing characters with Chinese software. Two audio CDs accompany the volumes, but they are little more than a recording of the text of the speaking volume.
What most separates Success from the majority of current Chinese language textbooks is its focus on living and working in China and its divergence from the generally accepted topical sequencing norms for foreign language textbooks in general and Chinese in particular. A case in point: Every existing popularly used Chinese textbook includes in the first lesson the expression Ni hao (literally You well), the most multipurpose form of greeting in modern standard Chinese. Success instead devotes its first module to “the immediately useful skill of counting numbers. Greetings . . . can wait until Lesson Three” (p. xiii). Equally striking is how Success textually defines the term Chinese culture. In the speaking volume lesson 2 on Counting, the headings in Understanding Chinese Culture range from using an abacus to some Chinese superstitions about numbers. For lesson 6, Making Phone Calls, they include Chinese names, busy signals, and how to use pagers. To be sure, some instructors may find it counterintuitive to have beginning students acquire skills in reading a Chinese menu before they have learned how to tell time, as the content of Success specifies.
Exercise activity is largely traditional, particularly in the reading and writing volume, with a heavy emphasis on translation and mechanical character writing practice. There are a handful of practically oriented activities in the latter chapters of the writing volume, with tasks including completion of a medical record form and school application. But there are few activities that assist teacher or student in assessing one’s level of understanding of the various reading texts, none of which include any follow-up questions, much less translations thereof. Only the Reading Practice sections of the writing volume chapters, requiring students to read new (to the student) compounds combining a character from the current lesson with previously learned characters, and predict their meaning, is in a significant way innovative, in its attention to the analytical skills that the adult learner brings to the classroom.
In summary, Success is certainly more than a survival course for users to build the most rudimentary foundation for life in China. Indeed, in its separation of the spoken and written textual components, it may well prove to be another alternative for the teacher struggling to find materials appropriate for the large and growing Chinese heritage language learner population in the United States. Options alone do not confirm the maturity of a field, but for the Chinese language field, Success is a distinctive option.