Welcome to the Changing Scripts Podcast. Every Sunday we'll have one of two types of episodes, all of them revolving around learning and using Mandarin Chinese. One type of episode will be my updates on what I'm learning, how I'm learning it, different quirks within the language, and sometimes information about China itself since I am living in Shanghai China right now. The second type of episode where I'm interviewing people that are either learning the language like I am, or people who grew up with Mandarin Chinese and have learned other languages. The updates used to be on a YouTube channel, but have now migrated over into the podcast only. The interviews started on the YouTube channel as well, and they very quickly ended up on the podcast. So everything's been kind of going back and forth, but I think this is where we need to be. I think we need to be in your ears. I really, really do. Now having said that, the podcast is also available to listen on its own YouTube channel. Check out the show notes and you can find the link to the YouTube channel there. Just an audio form. If you are studying Mandarin Chinese, have studied Mandarin Chinese, uh, whether it be as a child, as an adult, if you're currently studying, you're currently using the language, I would love to interview you. So please contact me. Also, I am happy to announce that we now have an Amazon affiliate account. What does that mean to you? It means that you can support the podcast without actually spending any extra money. In the show notes or on my Weebly account. So if you go to Steph Fuccio, S-T-E-P-H F-U-C-C-I-O.weebly, W-E-E-B-L-Y dot com, go all the way to the bottom, you'll notice that there's an Amazon button. Click on that, and that'll bring you to my very personal podcasting affiliate account with Amazon. Here's how it works. You just click on that link, shop normally, pay, get your items, be happy, and I'll get a tiny percentage of whatever you ordered. You do not pay anything extra, you also don't get a discount, but you get to support the podcast without doing anything super specially different. I greatly appreciate your support. I have one fancy new microphone, but I could use the second for my guests, and my computer, it's very quickly dying. And there's a lot of podcasting conferences, to be honest with you, I'd love to be able to go to. But since it's a passion project, kinda need some help with that. So that's what we're doing. I'm setting up some affiliate accounts and hopefully getting some sponsors soon, and hopefully we can make the podcast even better with each passing season. There's a few ways that you can feedback about what you hear in these two types of episodes. In any given episode, actually. If you go back to that Weebly website that I mentioned earlier, stephfuccio.weebly.com, go to the contact page and you will see a bright orange button. That's where you can send me a voice message. Thanks to Speakpipe. I love this service. You can leave me a voice message for free, and I can even reply in voice message form back to. Let me know what you like, what you don't like, questions you have about the episodes, life in general in China, learning Mandarin Chinese, anything that you're curious about related to what we're talking about on this podcast. Thank you very much for supporting the podcast in any which way you can, and I look forward to your feedback. And again, if you know anybody learning Mandarin Chinese or interested in Chinese culture, especially modern Chinese culture, please do pass on the podcast. These kinds of podcasts are passionate projects. They're created from a place of deep interest, and they need to find other people that have those interests. And the best way to do that is word of mouth. So you can go fill out an Apple Podcast review if you really want to, but honestly, I'd much rather you tell a few of your friends about this podcast, especially if you know they share this similar interest. Thank you so much, and let's dive into the episode. Alright, so this week on Changing Scripts, we have Zui Zhou, who is originally from Hunan Province in China. He did his master's degree at the University of Pennsylvania, and he is currently finishing up his PhD degree in applied linguistics and technology at Iowa State University in the U.S. as well. So his research interests include phonology acquisition, basically the ability to make linguistic sounds correctly, pronunciation instruction, and pedagogy, which is basically teaching methods, music, cognition, and speech. He's also working on some textual uh research right now, such as moves and steps within certain genres of writing. So what all that means is that he's incredibly diverse linguistically, not only in functioning in languages, multiple languages, Mandarin, Chinese, English, French, and Spanish, so far. So far. But it also means that he is able to research and statistically understand the research statistically uh quantify the research that he's doing and explain it to the rest of us. Yes, he is that diverse, he is that intelligent, and he's that hardworking. How I met Zwei was when we were both in the applied linguistics program at Iowa State University. Now, as you well know, if you've heard this podcast before, I did not stay in the program. It it didn't really fit me in the end on what I wanted to do with my research and my language studies. But it is incredible, incredible program. And Zue is making the most of that program both with the implied linguistic and technology side, and he's added on another degree in statistics to make his research even more powerful. He was so methodical and kind and really hardworking and focused and intelligent, and it I could just keep giving you additives all day long. It's not like the rest of us were not those things, but his drive and his patience with everything was just just unreal. I mean the rest of us would be breaking down over the workload and he just seemed to be going forward effortlessly. I'm sure there were struggles that he had, but he was so focused and so even-tempered. He just was able to manage things in a way that the rest of us seemed to not be able to do. And that is something that I remembered when I was struggling with trying to learn Mandarin Chinese when I first started, and I knew eventually I wanted to have him on this podcast because that kind of persistence and that kind of patience when learning is something that I want to personally adapt in my own language learning. I've given up way too many times in my language learning of different languages before, and I don't want to do that this time. So I thought, I thought, I hoped, that getting Zui's side of language learning and getting his viewpoint of how you just keep going would be not only useful for those of you who are also studying Mandarin Chinese, but for those of you studying English and uh feeling like you're not quite up to a certain level, hearing his mastery of the language as he talks about learning the language, I think that's kind of inspiring too. If you're not learning any of these languages, but just learning something. I think listening to how matter-of-factly he approaches learning in general is just amazing. So let's listen to how he does this. Here's the way. Thank you so much for joining me, Zwei. Can you please quickly introduce yourself?
SPEAKER_02Okay, my name is Zwei Zhou. I'm originally from uh Shantan City, Hunan Province, um, from China. And now I am doing my PhD study in applied linguistics and technology from Iowa State University here in the United States of America.
SPEAKER_04So, first language. I'm assuming your first language is Mandarin Chinese, is that correct? So, did you grow up with Putong Hua with dialects or both?
SPEAKER_02Or no, uh, we speak the Putung Hua in school. And I think it's only like in in family when the parents come from different regions.
SPEAKER_04Sure.
SPEAKER_02So they you know they come up with different uh dialects, though. They may use Putong Hua to, you know, as the language to raise the kids, but in my family, because my parents come from the same city, so you know, we speak we just speak the local dialects back at home.
SPEAKER_04Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha. Okay. See, I grew up with Italian parents in the US, and so when I went to school, there were things that sounded different than I remember. So I think I have some memories of learning English, like my first language, of learning it more than most people that had that around them all the time. So this question might seem a little odd. From learning Mandarin Chinese in school, is there anything that sticks out to you during the learning process as a child?
SPEAKER_02Oh, that's a long time ago. It's probably in uh primary school, even you know, preschool. So yeah, we just learned learned the uh the uh pinging alphabet, finishing symbols, and I think we learned first of all from characters, and then we moved up to words and uh anything that stood out?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, was there anything that you remember really liking or really not liking about learning the language, playing with it, any of the homework?
SPEAKER_02You know, I can barely remember because at that time I was just following what others were doing.
SPEAKER_03Sure.
SPEAKER_02And uh yeah, it was just made basically like read out loud. You know, we led by the the uh the instructor. Yeah, I didn't yeah, I probably I don't remember. I did I like explicitly put efforts into like memorizing I think because probably at that time everything came very naturally because I was at a really young age and whatever I was close to, so I pick up picked up quite quickly.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, sure, sure, sure. Do you remember how kind of how big the classrooms were? Were they like 20, 30, 40 students?
SPEAKER_02In primary school, we probably had some 20 to 30 students. And yeah. Yeah, I think in middle school we we we do have Chinese classes, but I think we're we're done with just learning the like the pronunciation spelling of Chinese at that stage. So we were more exposed to some of the the like the literary works, the literature, Chinese literature, and you know, some some old Chinese literature.
SPEAKER_04Really? In like elementary school or older later than that?
SPEAKER_02Elementary school, we have in Chinese classes we have poems, yeah. Yeah, just simple ones. Yeah, so we we got exposed to Chinese literature at very early age, actually. Yeah, right. Yeah, so yeah, I was talking about the class size. So we moved up to like uh middle school, so we can get up to like 50 or 60 students in one class.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, when kids learn Chinese in school in China, opinions used. How is it used? Do you just read it? Are you actually writing it at some point, or still a little yeah?
SPEAKER_02Actually, we we probably started learning pinging from writing it. So, yeah, that's what I remember from like the probably very first couple of China classes back in um elementary school. So we were trying to follow the strokes, yeah, try to make how to, you know, what is so we started learning pinging by following strokes just like we'll just like what we are doing with the Chinese character. Just to make sure that, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_04Huh? Okay, wait, explain that.
SPEAKER_02You have to write the English alphabet, which is like pinging, following exactly the order, like the A, you have to do this first and then the circle or the semi-circle, right? So we we did a lot of practice and wrote practices like that.
SPEAKER_04Okay, okay. So it wasn't just a sound thing, you were also writing opinion, also.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's what I can remember clearly. So you always remember the form. You need to practice on your hand first, then you can try to establish the connection between its form and its pronunciation. And teachers will easily read it, like repeat it again and again, read out loud. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Gotcha. So was opinion used just at the beginning until you guys uh got used to the characters, or was it used for a long stretch of time?
SPEAKER_02Uh it was I think it was probably just for elementary school. Like after that, you know, people just assume that you are equipped with this kind of a knowledge and you know yeah.
SPEAKER_04I'm slowly going through the HSK levels of the word. And uh they put there's six levels now. It switched a few years ago. I don't know if you know the old levels, but they had pinyon and Hansa characters in the first two levels, and then I'm halfway through the third level and it's gone. It's just gone. There's nowhere. I like the characters, it's part of what drew me into learning it this time around, but but it's quite a traumatic experience to have no help at all to just have the characters there. Yeah. It's quite a quite a switch. But but yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02But how do you figure out the pronunciation then?
SPEAKER_04I'm listening. I'm using a lot of they have listening, reading, and writing practice in the books that I'm using. And so well, sometimes they'll have like the glossary will have some pinion.
SPEAKER_03Yes.
SPEAKER_04But sometimes if there's just random new words thrown in, I'll just have to listen and then I'll I'll kind of I'll I'll draw it into my dictionary. My dictionary, you can use the pinion input, or you can you can draw it, and so I'll draw it and then look up the sound there and press the sound button and that kind of thing. Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. That actually reminds me if you uh look into the uh uh textbooks from the elementary school Chinese classes, I mean, all of the characters have the uh corresponding pinging at the top. And then probably if you open up some textbook in high school, yeah, there's some probably just a couple of a handful, very few words that have like parentheses, and inside of which you know you have the pinging. So those corresponds to like very difficult words or some character has multiple pronunciations. So only for that situation they would provide pinging as some sort of glossary. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Sure, sure. I guess it would be the equivalent then now that I'm thinking about it, like in dictionary uh English dictionaries, they'll have the IPA in the uh in the dictionary next to the word so people can know how to pronounce it. Interesting. Okay. As a kid, did you because some people seem to lean towards they prefer they like speaking more than writing, or they really like reading? Like, did you have an affinity to any part of the language?
SPEAKER_02In terms of learning Chinese, for example.
SPEAKER_04Just using using the language. Like some people are more comfortable with speaking than, or some people like I grew up really, really liking reading and writing, so I was kind of like alone in my room reading for long stretches of time, or yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02I think I enjoyed more by just following the read aloud led by the teacher. Yeah. Part of the reason was like you're in the group, so whatever weird noises you're making, you sort of you know. So I just wait, what kind of noises were you making in class? Yeah, just to try to be uh to make a little bit of fun.
SPEAKER_03Too funny, too funny.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, but in terms of writing, like um yeah, that kind of reminds me because it can be used as a means of punishment. You know, when you do something wrong, it can be used as a penalty to to punish you to just copy the pinning or that word, like many times the the the more times, the more serious the the mistake you committed. So stuff like that.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. Oh my gosh, that's so similar. We had the same thing in school for the really, really naughty kids during uh the break time and stuff. The teachers would have them go up and write like a specific sentence on the board, like, I will never talk in class again. I will never like over and over and over and over. That's so funny. I hadn't thought of yeah, wow.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, for us, it would probably the teacher would just you know open up the last pages like the appendices of the Chinese um book and just copy the glossary like 50 times or 100 times.
SPEAKER_04Oh for some reason this seems like it might be more torturous because there's so many more strokes in the characters than there are than there is in the screen. Wow. Did you ever have to do that?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I think yeah, I think I did it. I don't remember the reason. Yeah, yeah. I was kind of naughty in class, you know, in primary school.
SPEAKER_04It's all those noises you were making during story time.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. And especially in high school, I remember I like to imitate the sounds from the teachers, especially the teachers with accents. Yeah, but uh, we we do this quite in a sneaky way, and then you know, we try to make a lot of fun with the teachers.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh my gosh, that's so funny. Wow. Well, let's move on to second languages. Clearly, you have learned English. Are are there any other languages that you that you know slash use slash are studying?
SPEAKER_02In college, I used to learn Spanish and French. Wow. Okay. That was that was just at that time. You know, I was, you know, it was in college, I had m relatively more free time, and I just registered for this kind of you know, uh foreign language to it's not tutoring, it's like a class, but there are multiple companies and you know, training schools that offer the you know foreign language classes. So yeah, and I took it pretty seriously and found it, I enjoyed it. There was a very interesting incentive for you to uh keep on learning. Is that they at the end of the first level French class, they give you a test, and if you get like the top one out of the class, you're gonna get free class for the second level.
SPEAKER_03Wow.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and I and I got the first one and I get uh free lesson for the second level.
SPEAKER_04Wow, that's pretty good incentive, yeah. Where was the this is your undergraduate work, right?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it was in my undergrad.
SPEAKER_04Was that was that in China? Was that in the US?
SPEAKER_01It was in China.
SPEAKER_04It was in China, okay. Yeah, wow, free class. I think I would have been more motivated had I gotten free classes.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, but I never took any classes with the Spanish. You know, at the time people say Spanish and French were so similar, so it's a good idea to do lender, you know, simultaneously. So I learned some Spanish by myself, and you know, it was just really rudimentary. You know, my French level at the time, I was able to like engage in some you know very basic daily uh conversation, like introducing myself, talking about you know weather and stuff, and uh yeah, yeah. I was I was I was good at m speaking and I can read some French text as well.
SPEAKER_03Right.
SPEAKER_02But we did not have much practice on writing because it was just you know level one.
SPEAKER_04So sure, sure, sure. Now can you describe what the French classes were? Were they as big as like the the classes you had in?
SPEAKER_02No, it was it was much smaller. You know, I think at that time probably you know students were still busy with figuring out how to learn English. So, you know, a lot of students like like I I started off learning English uh pretty early and I explicitly put some efforts into learning that. So I have been always been good in in English compared to my peers. So for people like us, they have you know, they're they're really strongly interested in languages, so they are fine with coursework with English, so you want to you know learn some additional language. So I did find a couple of examples, like my examples in the French class. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Okay, so it sounds like you learned Mandarin Chinese first, then English, French, and Spanish. Is that the right order?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_04So by the time you got to French, how long had you been studying English for?
SPEAKER_02Six years or so.
SPEAKER_04In the French classes, what did they do? Did they like split it into different skills, or was it just one class that did everything? Like I know this is still quite a while ago, but do you remember what the classes were like?
SPEAKER_02Yeah. We were using some like canonical or uh what they call like their classic textbooks. And then uh so I think it was the integrative skills, but they did not like intentionally split that into like four skills. So every chapter in a unit has a main passage, so that's like the most difficult part. So before that, you they they probably will equip you with uh the target vocabulary, and from there you can probably work on the pronunciation, yeah, and that will prepare you to the reading text. I don't remember exactly uh how much we were able or supposed to write as I said because it's level one class, so probably not much focus on writing, but definitely reading and listening and you know vocabulary pronunciation is there.
SPEAKER_04Sure, sure, sure, sure. Was there anything that the teacher did in the class that you ended up using to self-study either French or Spanish outside of class? Like any method?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I think I think those probably have always been focusing on pronunciation. I think the rules, the the grapheme, phoneme rules, the teacher's thoughts, I think I use that a lot in you know, apply that outside of class situations.
SPEAKER_04Okay, so you're gonna have to explain that.
SPEAKER_02Um so like when you read the structure or the form of the word, that helps you to connect to its pronunciation. So so with that, with with you grasping that skill, you can read the French text without understanding its meaning, right?
SPEAKER_04Ah, okay, yeah. So it's just like the sound spelling connection, yeah. Oh gosh, that's called graphic phonems. That is that is exactly what I'm doing right now in my in my Chinese learning. I can read even the new stuff really well, but there's a lot of sentences that I'm like, hmm, first time around, first time reading it, I don't really know what this conversation because it's usually conversations, I don't generally know what it's about. Out, but I come back to them four times before I take the test. So I'm like, okay, second or third time I'll focus on the meaning, but the first time I would just want to make sure I can read it. I didn't realize I had a word. Thank or a phrase. Thank you.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, like phoneme grapheme.
SPEAKER_04Phoneme graphing. Awesome. That's gonna be my next music video.
SPEAKER_02I I never I I you know I never noticed that you can make that connection because in Chinese the connections are really uh complicated, right?
SPEAKER_04The the the phoneme graphing connection?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_04Uh I don't think no, I mean I feel like everything is complicated in switching from English to to Punanghua. So I'm not sure. I'm not sure how to answer that. Hmm. Why did you think it'd be more complicated?
SPEAKER_02So so I'm interested in knowing what are some of the like strategies you apply to like figure out the pronunciation without knowing the meaning.
SPEAKER_04Oh I don't figure it out. For me, it's exposure. I'll again I have like a ton of flashcards, I have the listening text, and uh and there is opinion sometimes when they're introducing a word. And I and I use do you know Pleco, the dictionary pleco?
SPEAKER_02No.
SPEAKER_04Oh, it's awesome. I guess it's for learners of Chinese, I suppose. It's an online dictionary, so you type in the word and then you go into it, and then it has all kinds of things. Oh, that one doesn't have it. Sometimes it will tell you the strokes, it'll show you the strokes order in a video, it'll like have the sound. It'll even color code the different syllables for tones, kinds of things. So there's a lot of tools out there to help with that.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_04But I found kind of accidentally that even though like the meaning, I was studying a lot of the meaning, like the opinion and the meaning to kind of understand the words so I could read, I found that the sounds of the words was staying sooner than the meaning. Like I can read a lot more than I can understand right now, and I don't really understand what's happening, but I figured that's at least progress on some level, so I'm just going with it for now. Yeah, but I was surprised because I thought because my brain does a lot of animations with the characters because I know they're not all pictograms, but my brain likes to turn them into that anyway. So I thought that the meaning would come be would would I'd remember the meaning more than I'd remember the word sound, the sound, but it's actually the opposite for me. Yeah. So it's really weird. Does that happen a lot for people in other languages?
SPEAKER_02I think for for native Chinese, it's probably the opposite. The meaning first. Yeah, with with how we were trained back in primary school.
SPEAKER_04Right.
SPEAKER_02So so like there's thing called like silent reading. So that kind of uh is uh also a good way to measure like your speaker uh like reading proficiency, how proficient in reading. So some people can read it really fast. So in the Chinese language test, in whether it's entrance to the high school or entrance to the exam, so so test decades are tested with the long passages. So you uh rely on like the their reading proficiency scale to to speed read.
SPEAKER_05Okay.
SPEAKER_02So in that situation, they probably cannot have the time to you know uh to think about the uh the pronunciation, it's just the form and connect to the meaning and cognitively like very fast, understand the context. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Right, right, right. So they're speed reading, but is there a comprehension task that they're doing as well?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. Oh their reading speed is not explicitly tested, but it's like the prerequisite because you know, the the item writers make the passages so long and cognitive demanding, and it's possible to just read it slowly and then you know, to enjoy the the text. It's impossible.
SPEAKER_04And wait, you said that is this part of the Gao Cao, or this is the whole other yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02What like after probably yeah, I think it's the same situation. I I'm I would not be surprised to find it even in like primary school. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_04Wow. See, but the advantage of of growing up with it is that you hear the language for a few years before you start reading it. So maybe that's part of the reason why I don't know. I don't I don't know.
SPEAKER_02I don't know if my experiences because it it may be the situation in the north, but the thing in the south is that probably it was the day one of Chinese class, it's the first time like a kid from like Central South village or some suburban exposed to this kind of a standard Mandarin Chinese. Back home, they'd have been raised with just the local dialects.
SPEAKER_04Sure, sure.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Oh boy, yeah. So that's like a new language for them that they have to learn. Hicks, Pats and Geopats, what do you do with the annoying paper mail that you get to your old addresses in your home country? For a few years, I'd have all of my mail forwarded to one friend, and then I'd feel guilty for bothering them so much. So then I'd have a family member deal with my mail and so on and so forth. And I did this for about like what, 12, 13 years. And it got annoying, and let's face it, I missed some mail because people have better things to do than look after my paper correspondence. So I finally broke down and got a service from traveling mailboxes. They will literally receive your mail, you get a US address, you get to pick the city that it's in, and you receive mail, and they'll let you know when mail comes in, they'll open it, scan it for you so you can read it. If you really need to, they'll forward it to you for a fee. You can also get packages delivered as well, and so there's like a variety of different services that you can have where you don't have to keep bugging your friends and family to deal with your paper mail. So if you go to stepfuccio.weebly.com, it's s t-e-p-h-u-c-ci-o.weebly, w-e-e-b-l-y.com. If you go to the bottom, you'll see the blue ad on the right, traveling mailbox, click on that. I am now an affiliate program with them, so if you join their services, we both end up very, very happy campers, and you never have to ask your friends or family to receive your mail again. It's truly a beautiful thing. Do you still use or study French or Spanish at all?
SPEAKER_02No, no. Yeah, it's a pity that I don't have time.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, well, you're super busy, right? You're done with the PhD program. What is it, next year?
SPEAKER_02No, it's still gonna be two years from me. I'm starting the uh the stats degree this yeah, this semester, so it's gonna take like an additional year. So it's a two-year program.
SPEAKER_04That's so smart to do though. So smart. My goodness. So when you were first learning English, I'm assuming that was primary school, is that right?
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Was English taught the same way that Mandarin Chinese was taught, or did they do that differently? Reaching back in your memory.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, of course, the the obvious difference is that for the English textbook is just simple conversational dialogue, you know, and some you know, simple vocabulary, but for for Chinese, it's like like like literature works are introduced very at very very early age. Yeah. So I I don't think in primary English classes they introduce poems. Right or any literature.
SPEAKER_04Huh. Do you the poems that you guys learned in Chinese, did do you think the students understood what was I don't know the concepts that were in them, but do you think the students understood the meaning of what they were reading in those poems?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, because it has like a simplified, it has explanations.
SPEAKER_04Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. So it has some kind of uh footnotes and sometimes marginal notes. Yeah. Okay, so this character, because in in in ancient uh in poems from ancient times, it's one of the characteristics is that it's very concise. So probably the idea can be expressed by five to six characters, but if you want to explain it, you come up with probably even a passage.
SPEAKER_04Okay. Okay.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_04So I wonder, because there are poems in existence in English, lots of them. And we actually learned some in my elementary school in our in our English classes, actually, a lot of them. We had to memorize poems and recite them in front of the class and do those kinds of things. So I wonder why those aren't used in in second language textbooks. That's an interesting point.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. I was not exposed to English poems until college. I think only like English major students get exposed to uh English literature.
SPEAKER_04That's so funny. Because there's even some poems that were written. I remember they were written like specifically for children. Like some of them were even in children's.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Um, yeah, and so what? That's interesting. Oh my god, there's a whole market out there that's not exploited, so we gotta get on this.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I think now it's it does not, you know, include in the mainstream education because all of this materials are decided from like the the Department of Education, the Ministry of Education, right?
SPEAKER_03Sure.
SPEAKER_02So, you know, for some reason they probably did not like to include that, but in the uh like book markets, you can you can buy a lot. Um now, you know, they but it's still big expensive because it's called like uh imported books, you know.
SPEAKER_04So yeah, yeah, yeah. So the things that you were learning, they were just like functional conversations, like how to open a store, kind of why would they teach that to children? They're not gonna really have those conversations, even if they were in environments that were used.
SPEAKER_01A lot of grammar.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Huh. Okay. So it sounds like despite this, these these textbooks, which are not uh unique to China, there's awful textbooks all over the world for English. So despite this, you learn the language anyway. Can you remember when you were a kid learning these learning English, did it feel like a subject or did it feel like a language that you could communicate with people?
SPEAKER_02I I think it's more about the latter, I mean communicating with people because you know, it's uh the hometown where I grew up, it's like we would talk about different levels of cities in China, right? Like the first level city would be like in Shanghai, and you know, the second level, so the my hometown was probably like the third level. So back at that time, it's pretty rare to see you know people with you know yellow hair, blue eyes, you know. So yeah, it's it's definitely more of a subject, and I have no doubt, you know, everybody in the class presumed this in the same way. But but for me, I put a lot of efforts in learning like extracurricular stuff. So, you know, I was I was purchasing the uh the English magazines, and I back at the time, you know, I I remember I thought it was really cool to have to have those kind of uh extra stuff and some I bought some tapes to listen to, you know, and those stuff really helped me a lot because if you follow the instructor's uh agenda, uh it's it's going to demotivate you. You know, you you you don't have any fun learning in that way.
SPEAKER_04Sure, sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I I just talked to a gentleman last night who when he started learning, oh gosh, what language was it? He knew French and Mandarin. He's uh an American man who learned French and and Mandarin Chinese. And when he first took his university Mandarin classes, he knew he wanted to learn the language, but he didn't like the instruction. And these were university classes in the US, and so he went up to the the teaching assistant and was like, Look, do you want to make some extra money? I want some tutoring. And so he hired her to teach him the material but in a different way, twice a week outside of class. And that's how he got kind of around the the general uh curriculum. And now, like fast forward 32 years, and he's been he uses the language for his professional purposes and all kinds of things, and he's he has a Weibo account and all kinds of things. Like he's he's functional. He's in I wonder, I I often I'm not really someone that wants to write textbooks or anything, but I do wonder why they end up being such stale creatures, like why that kind of material in that method ends up in those books and ends up in so many schools. I don't know. That's a pondering.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, the policies.
SPEAKER_04Right? Tell me about the magazines. What kind of magazines were you reading?
SPEAKER_02It was just like a monthly magazine and the mag the magazine that was accompanied with tapes. So you can you can play the tapes and listen to the sound, the reading of the passage. You know, back at the time, I think I was you know exposed to like real English, like far more beautiful English than what I learned in school.
SPEAKER_04Hmm.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Beautiful English. Sorry, I I still as a it being my first, well, only fluent language at this point, I have a hard time thinking of English as beautiful. It sounds very plain to me in comparison to other languages. But anyway, sorry, that's a sidebar. So were these learning English magazines?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_04Were they made in China?
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Oh, okay. I wonder if they're still around. Do you remember any of the names of the magazine? I'm really testing your memory today.
SPEAKER_02No. Look, listen and look, listen, and learn. My wife is sitting beside me doing the face mask. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I remember one is called English Salon. Salon.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Part of the reason is that like they the package looked really good. You know, the the quality of the paper. Yeah. And it's the design of the uh the layout of the pages. You know.
SPEAKER_04So but they came with tapes and they had the magazine themselves.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, tapes and later on with C D. Yeah, it's really cool.
SPEAKER_04Very nice. Very cool. Speaking of tapes, was there a lot of like listening and speaking cla uh practice in the English language classrooms that you went to?
SPEAKER_02Not a whole lot. Because I've always been interested in pronunciations and speaking. And when it's speaking time of class, I got super excited. And I remember I didn't get much of that opportunity.
SPEAKER_04So as you were listening to the tapes, did you kind of mimic what they were saying? How they were saying it.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. I would just I would pause.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And very following, like very meticulously and very religious.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_02You know?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Wow. And you're in the PhD program, you're working with pronunciation issues, also, right?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_04Is there a way you can explain that to our listeners in a simplified way? I know it's very complex, but is there a way you can kind of explain what we can do?
SPEAKER_02Oh, you mean by work with pronunciation? It was like only the beginning of my PhD. I'm now working more with text actually, but you know, I can try to yeah, I'm I'm working with Elena now.
SPEAKER_04Oh, gotcha. Okay.
SPEAKER_02Oh yeah. Um yeah, basically we were trying to figure out for students studying in the North American university context, trying to capture their pronunciation development and trying to gain some understanding from that development and trying to come up with better courses, whether it's working with software or tools and trying to compare it with explicit pronunciation instruction and trying to figure out which way it is more effective.
SPEAKER_04Gotcha. Okay. And now you're working more with tech like written text, like student texts.
SPEAKER_02No, Elena has a project of so we are looking into the corpus of you know a bunch of research articles. So I'm in I'm mostly doing modeling, the machine learning modeling, and the building, you know, classifiers for her. And uh and then uh we focus a lot on not just increasing the model performance, but we we we want to gain some understanding about the feature. So nowadays we we we are doing the uh what they call the error analysis, a feature-based error analysis. So we want to figure out what features are driving the automatic models positions or are confusing the model versus how humans judge the features to be indicative of you know certain you know moves or steps, and that because they're doing the move-step analysis for that articles.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Awesome. Wow, wow, wow. Part of why I started my YouTube channel and part of why I'm doing these interviews is I've always been someone that's really struggled with learning languages. I tried Spanish, I tried German, okay, in reverse order. I tried German, then I tried Spanish, and I've this is my I think my third time trying to learn Mandarin Chinese. And I keep meeting people who seem to naturally, not that it's not hard work, but they seem to pick up on languages quicker. Do you do you believe that some people are more skilled in picking up more like have natural ability to pick up languages quicker, or do you think that everybody can do it the same rate?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I do believe that some people, you know, people are different in terms of you know uh inherited from, you know, I think it's it's a natural propensity.
SPEAKER_04Well it makes sense. I mean, we have other things that we know that we go, okay, clearly we understand that with a lot of athletes, a lot of them have a genetic advantage. So why wouldn't we believe that some people have a linguistic advantage? Okay, but that but without being too pessimistic, do you think it's still possible if people don't have a linguistic advantage cognitively, do you think they still can learn multiple languages?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I do believe that's the case. You know, it's just it takes a lot of effort, and you know, for those people who are good at language, they probably uh will be poor in some other aspects. They're probably not good at like memorizing, you know. So for those people who are not that sensitive to like distinguishing different sounds, but they you know, they probably are more industrial and you know, they you know, pay more, they put more efforts into um and simply just more time into that. I think that would make a good difference there.
SPEAKER_04Sure, sure, sure, sure. And when you were using these tapes and you were kind of shadowing the the sounds in them and things like that, did you have a goal of where you wanted to use the language?
SPEAKER_02Did you think you were gonna study overseas or yeah, actually why I I started at the very at the get-go, at the very beginning, I was interested in it. I I remember the English lesson was introduced in fourth grade of primary school.
SPEAKER_03Okay.
SPEAKER_02And a year before that, I went to the bookstore to to just, you know, use my pocket money to buy the textbook and the and the tapes.
SPEAKER_03Wow. Okay.
SPEAKER_02I started learning that the reason was that at a very young age I knew I have relatives living in California. So at some point in the future, I will be studying in the US context. So from the very beginning, I already know that okay, I'm gonna use English in the context, even though I had no idea what you know using English there would be. I have no idea. I know nothing about that country, but you know, I have some kind of implicit understanding of where to go.
SPEAKER_04If you're enjoying this conversation about the Chinese language and would like to participate if you're studying the Chinese language, or if you come from the Chinese language and have learned other languages, either perspective is greatly actually both perspectives are greatly appreciated on this channel. Let's have a conversation. Let's take that sucker and let's get it into this podcast. Contact me and let's adjust the details on how to get you and your valuable language learning experience onto this podcast. All of my information is in the show notes. Also all over social media except Facebook. I am Steph Puccio S-T-E-P-H, F-U-C-C-I-O. That includes Gmail for my email, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, and LinkedIn. So I look forward to hearing from you. Because part of it yet seems to be natural ability, part of it seems to be motivation, like you have your motivation from the beginning, and part of it seems to be a patience. Especially when you're switching scripts and doing things as differently as going from English to Chinese or Chinese to English, there's a lot of differences between the two languages. What do you think might be some of the reasons why people give up on learning languages early on?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I think it has to do with what you said about patience. You know, it has to do with with people's personality. I think I am a I'm pretty patient. So, you know, I never and also I have very strong motivation in learning language, so I never thought about giving up. Learn English, that's always been fun to me. So if you wanna want me to talk about some of the reasons why people may give up, or I think there are a lot of reasons.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Some of people just started learning English just by some extrinsic reasons. You know, they want to pass certain tests, they just you know want to have the certification. Those group of people may not learn not last very long. And uh a lot of the I think that that mainly comes from the students I taught is that they don't really have the environment to practice what they learn in class. So they don't have the opportunity to use English to communicate.
SPEAKER_03Sure sure sure.
SPEAKER_02And other than just because English classes offer these less required classes for like college students that the majority of my students came from. So you know is if you think about students from like engineering disciplines, you know, they they probably would not have any opportunity to use English outside of those English classes provided by some training school or some summer camp things like that, you know?
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Yeah definitely yeah the ability to use it and see it as that communicative tool is a powerful thing that's not there for a number of years. Like my poor German teacher I talk about her way too much. It's not her fault. I mean we were in a high school classroom she had what 40 or 50 minutes and she had a textbook she had to get through but I swear I never even envisioned speaking to anybody in German outside of that class. I really did see it as a subject and and as the sounds that I was supposed to make with those letters that didn't look like they should go together I was just like this is crazy. Why am I doing this? It was a requirement I had to two years of a language.
SPEAKER_02Nowadays with with the people traveling more abroad it's probably one of the reasons why more and more people started to pick up for languages you know before it was just English it's like the only language you need to grasp but nowadays probably there are multiple of them and people are aware of that or people are catching up.
SPEAKER_04Yeah absolutely absolutely had I had the internet then and was able to take some of the things I liked in my first language like if I could have watched German like music videos or German movies or TV shows or things like that it would have connected more I think and I would have been like okay it's not just this cheesy conversation about buying fruit. It buying fruit's not that hard you pick up the fruit you give money you don't even need language in most countries I really wonder if kids these days are using the internet more when they're in those static classes. Are they looking at resources outside to to supplement? Yeah I think now it's better the in terms of the materials they get exposed to yeah for sure for sure was there any part of learning English or French or Spanish that was difficult or took more time than the other parts?
SPEAKER_02For English I think it was just the test items. You know I focused like probably 80% of the time I spend in learning English it was self-learning. I was just mimicking like the I was trying to think of some of the materials I like some of my favorite materials like music MTV uh movies and tapes like you know presidential debate and you know they they have these kind of materials you know still circulating in this book market so it's it's just all of them are outside the mainstream curriculum yeah and then so from from learning like I watched the tons of movies so I never paid explicit attention to how grammar works but in class you have to know that you have to know the rules. So I did find especially those uh the the period before the Gao Cao it that's when you get exposed to tons of test items right and the test items are really tricky to solve so I get quite annoyed. Yeah the test you with tens and they just sometimes the test item to made to to intentionally to trick you.
SPEAKER_04Right, right right yeah to dis to sort of distract you yeah yeah whoa okay so they got really into really into the grammatical structures and things in the test items yeah yeah so that I sorry I'm I'm processing what you just said that's so crazy. So you were learning language you were using the language you were you were you were doing all these things in it but then when they went into the grammar bits that was the part that was discouraging. Because you don't think about it when you're using the language yeah yeah yeah it's much more about the the trends and and using things that that work and getting the information back in the conversation that you're having. Yeah interesting do you know if well you didn't take the gout count that long ago did you so like uh it's it's been a while. It's been a while because they have done some changes in the past few years. Have you heard anything about how it's changed in the English language part?
SPEAKER_01Not a whole lot.
SPEAKER_04No me neither so I just know there's been changes but there's I I don't yeah I should have looked at more it's uh it's a good like research topic yeah if it's changed if it hasn't though yeah but it's not again that's not distinct to China a lot of a lot of testing is focused on those parts which isn't really how the language is used. You don't you know you don't walk up to someone and say hey give me an example of a causative passive it's like it no it just doesn't happen.
SPEAKER_02Well and if you did they'd walk away what are you saying to me if I ask you in China with all of the accents and dialects and whatnot where do you think is the clearest accent the one that would be the easiest most standard Pudonghua oh you definitely uh from the north you know Beijing right around that area province because that's the basis uh from from where the the the the Pudonhua derived yeah and what might be the hardest accent to understand oh there are there are just so many of them okay really you know all accents are just difficult even in the same province yeah people from the north of the province may have no idea what people from the south of the province are talking about even with within the city in some some uh you know from the uh east coast not Shanghai but like Jiangsu and uh that that area you know even within like one like county yeah you have multiple you just just it's just multiple language barriers people just have no idea without conversing in Putinhua they have no idea what others are talking about right right even though people maybe just live in from the next village yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah I mean they're if we're talking about the US and English they're definitely it our regional accents problem understanding you know from the north and south east and west you know have you traveled a lot in the US kind of you know in the the east you know Philadelphia and New York in the west it's California and Chicago in the north and down Texas so you know been to a couple of places. Yeah yeah yeah yeah um mostly in cities or any small towns mostly in cities yeah but but you know if it was just traveling like first time in the US you there's a must see of course of course of course I'm just thinking as far as in the US the more difficult accents tend to be in the smaller towns not all but for sure but in the places where you did go what was the accent that was the hardest to understand um let's see I think Texas is supposed to be the accents that is difficult to understand but I did not spend a lot of time there in Texas. So I did my masters in Philadelphia and in Philadelphia I think there is a relatively speaking um there are more African American vernacular English going on there. Yeah yeah I think I think uh that that type type of variety sometimes you know can trick me.
SPEAKER_04Sure sure sure yeah yeah yeah that's funny I grew up about an hour and a half or two hours west of Philadelphia in a small small town which had a Pennsylvania Dutch accent and we yeah we came from New York City and I was as a child even as a child I was just looking around going you guys sound weird like I fought like crazy like I lived there when when I was from when I was eight until I was 20 and I fought like crazy not to take on the accent because I was young enough to pick up the accent and I was fighting it. I lost my New York accent but I didn't gain their accent and there's nothing wrong with them they were very nice people but it just sounded so twangy and so weird like German has some lovely moments Dutch even has some lovely moments but this Pennsylvania Dutch accent was just so weird to me and I was just like I'm not gonna take this so my poor third grade teacher when we moved I was just like I must have been looking at her like the whole time because she had such a deep accent and I'm like you're not gonna infect me. Yeah yeah but it's interesting even within Pennsylvania just that hour and a half difference how how different languages sometimes I honestly wonder how communication happens there's so many things in language that can stop us from understanding each other yeah it's it's truly amazing truly amazing well when you're done with your PhD do you have any want need or desire to pick up any new languages in the future yeah yeah I always wanted to learn more languages. What are some that you want to learn?
SPEAKER_02Well I'll continue with French and Spanish and yeah I have not decided on the new language yet probably is some Asian language yeah like Japanese or Korean actually I as an English major you were required to choose the second language at the time I chose Japanese but I did not learn anything about Japanese the class and wow because of the the usage of the Chinese characters and or the Hamza characters in Japanese is that how no I was just memorizing some testing items and yeah wow okay and you passed the classes with that wow yeah the the test is it was you know it was the first level class so it was easy so it was mainly about figuring out the the the the structure of pronunciation you know yeah yeah well two final questions for you one do you find that being in the US and using English a lot that you're losing some of uh your ability to communicate in in Chinese first language yeah yeah yeah especially the first couple of not couple of not just first year or two yeah yeah and that that's quite common because I talk a lot with you know Chinese some of my friends are mostly Chinese so they you know they they all experience that and saying that okay now I don't know how to my Chinese is not as fluent as while I was in China.
SPEAKER_04Sure sure sure yeah so did you find yourself trying to do like like read or listen or do certain things in Chinese to keep it active or no I did not do it I never did it intentionally yeah okay last question and this question was one that a lovely woman named Lucy who works for Sixth Tone magazine in Shanghai and she likes asking people what language or languages do you dream in?
SPEAKER_02I think both Chinese and English. Yeah yeah yeah I just gonna say to you that the top of my head was you know because I was the other day I was you know it's totally irrelevant but I just want to share it with you the other day I was it's that department of orientation and the uh one of the professors said that if you can dream in R that means that you probably has has just managed that language and oh my gosh you know Evan's doing a lot of stuff in R right now so I I've got to ask him that now because I just yeah dreaming in R. Seriously are you dreaming in R No I don't I I don't think I I ever did but but but but you know in terms of dreaming another language uh in in my in my college I was teaching in the the New Oriental school. Oh yeah so yeah I at that time I think especially in the summer that's when courses are like intensively uh you know scheduled and you know offered so you know there's just multiple nice that I just keep lecturing in English.
SPEAKER_04Yeah in your dreams yeah oh yeah yeah in Chinese of course you know when I you know dream talk I speak in the first language so yeah do you find that a dream will will switch between the two languages or it'll just be like one dream one language kind of thing? Oh it'll be it'll be really interesting to record and see and figure out what's going on right yeah but I I don't remember exactly you know like like I ever did like code switch during dream yeah but it's so funny right that'd be a really really fun movie for someone to make like if they did a science fiction movie on like uh dream recorders and then you can go and watch your dreams and oh that'd be cool that'd be cool anyway thank you so much I really really really really really appreciate this. Yeah no problem let's keep in touch yeah definitely and tell everyone I said hi all right thank you okay thanks thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Changing Scripts podcast again this is a sister project with my own language learning blogging on YouTube also called Changing Script so come on over and take a peek at that again if you are learning the Chinese language or if you're coming from the Chinese language learning another language I'd love to interview you for this podcast. Please feel free to contact me in any social media way that you see fit. Go ahead and contact me and we will hash out how to get you on the sound creation known as the Changing Script podcast.
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