Chinese is one of the most popular languages in the world, and it is one of the most complicated. Today, most schools in Taiwan require all students to attend Chinese classes in order to train their basic knowledge and language skills of Chinese. However, learning Chinese is a huge pain for most Taiwanese students because of the puzzling characters and obnoxious classical literature. Moreover, most teachers teach Chinese incorrectly.
Too many different characters to memorize
Chinese is a language that contains many different characters, and their pronunciations and meanings vary. In addition, sometimes one character will have multiple meanings and pronunciations.
For example, in Chinese, there are many series of characters with similar shapes such as “辯、辦、辨、瓣、辮” and “櫃、饋、匱、潰、貴”. Next, the character ”的” can be pronounced “de” ̇, “di”ˊ, or “di”ˋ. In addition, the character “上” can mean arrive, emperor, high place, or climb.
Memorizing these characters is an arduous task for students because the variety of definitions, pronunciations, and characters is confusing. Therefore, most students write Chinese essays that contain tons of character errors, and they will make many pronunciation mistakes when they read their essays out loud.
Classical literature collections are hard to decipher
The way people used Chinese in ancient times is different from today, and ancient Chinese writers composed articles and poems based on their speaking. Also, there are many idioms and obscure literary allusions in these articles.
For example, “閑靜少言，不慕榮利，好讀書，不求甚解，每有會意，便欣然忘食” has a hidden meaning: ”Gentle and mild was he, rare and humble his words. Loved not wealth nor fame, only reading. A sudden perceptiveness sprouted joy beyond comprehension.” This poetic style completely frightens most Taiwanese students when they read it because the wording is hard to comprehend. Even though some students attempt to decipher this, they usually misunderstand its meaning.
Deciphering classical Chinese is difficult for students because the ideas are too abstract. For example, sentences in classical Chinese works have hidden meanings which students can barely discover, and classical Chinese completely baffles students because these ancient works do not get straight to the point. As a result, many students fail Chinese literature exams and drag down their overall Chinese grades.
Weak teachers
Most teachers analyze Chinese articles for students directly in Chinese classes, but this will have an adverse impact on students because they will not obtain the skills to read new articles since teachers have explained and analysed the articles to them. Therefore, students cannot fully understand new articles by themselves since they have relied on their teachers’ explanations. As such, most students will start to lose confidence to Chinese.
Teachers should not analyse the articles to students straight away. Instead, teachers are supposed to assign students to get into small groups and make them read new Chinese articles without the teachers’ help first. Then, teachers and students should have class discussions about the new articles after that.
Conclusion
Some Taiwanese students think that reading ancient Chinese articles and memorizing Chinese characters is easy. Chinese is fun for these students. Nevertheless, broadly speaking, Chinese completely perplexes most learners. Chinese characters are too complicated, and classical Chinese texts are terrifying. Also, most Chinese teachers use wrong methods to teach Chinese. Clearly, Chinese is the most difficult subject of all.
Using the example of “閑靜少言，不慕榮利，好讀書，不求甚解，每有會意，便欣然忘食” to elaborate the complication of classic chinese and the need to understand the hidden meaning of this beautiful but complicated launguage is quite bright and symbolic, also impressive for readers. Well done.