Learning a second language?

What do high school students find difficult about learning Chinese as a second language?

• I didn't begin learning Mandarin until my mid-20s so I can't speak from the experience of a high school student. However, I would imagine that the difficulties for foreigners learning Mandarin are the same regardless of age. I'd imagine that in general those are the pronunciation (specifically the tones) and the characters (especially writing them from memory). Grammar is probably regarded as one of the lesser difficult aspects of learning Mandarin. And I think listening comprehension, as well as simply verbal expression, at least at the beginner level, is probably easier for new learners to get the hang of than many might think. For me personally characters are a joy, and not a hardship. But I know that for many they are the most difficult part of learning Chinese. Some actually skip them altogether and just learn "spoken" Mandarin, although I really can't imagine this method at all.

• Answer:

  Hi, I am a native Chinese. I am teaching non-Chinese people to learn Chinese. My students always show their feeling of learning Chinese to me. Here is a typical opinion. Hope it helps.   When other English speakers find out that I’m learning Chinese, they often admit that they are too daunted to even try. But just how difficult is it for the average English speaker to learn Chinese? The answer is, surprisingly, that it’s not that difficult if you’re willing to commit to learning a new language. As an adult it’s not as easy to pick up a language just by hearing it: you have to study and memorize vocabulary and grammatical structures, as well as use them. This takes time and effort. Unless you’re a genius, you can’t learn a new language without time and effort; that’s just the way it is. Chinese is just like any other language in this respect. Since I imagine you shaking your head in disagreement, I will say that Chinese can be difficult. Chinese characters and Chinese tones are most difficult aspects of learning Chinese. There are apparently over 80,000 Chinese characters, which can seem pretty intimidating! Luckily, you only need to know 3,500 in Standard Chinese. Modern Mandarin Chinese is a tonal language, meaning that words differ in meaning based on tone as well as pronunciation. Modern Mandarin Chinese has four tones (five if you count neutral tone) and depending on tone used can change the meaning of a sound. This can be confusing for English speakers because we often use tone over a sentence such as a rising intonation to signify a question. The best part about learning Chinese is the grammar. Chinese grammar is pretty straightforward for English speakers. Most sentence structures are similar to English, and to help simplify things even more, Chinese has no verb conjugations, declinations (think Latin, German, or Russian), or hardly any inflections at all. More simply put – no irregular verbs, no verb tables, no noun plurals, no gendered parts of speech or worrying about agreement. For all you students of school Latin, French, German, or Spanish, I think you know what I’m saying here! I hope you’ll find the idea a little less scary. eChineselearning (http://www.echineselearning.com/?ecl=ptfb0930) has now made it even easier for you by providing 24 hours online on-on-one Chinese courses and free Chinese learning resources. If you have any questions on learning Chinese, just feel free to ask me from .