Be clear on your reasons for learning Chinese.
Whether you are new to studying Chinese language or have been at it a while, it’s very important that you are aware of your reasons for studying the language. The more specific your reasons for studying Chinese, the more successful you will be at achieving YOUR particular goals.
Sure, you may be thinking, “I already know why I want to study Chinese.” You may even have some seemingly good reasons for learning Chinese, such as:
“Chinese is the language of the future” or
“China has a population of 1.3 billion and growing” or
“Chinese language skills are in high demand”
I’m not saying these aren’t good reasons for learning Chinese. They are perfectly good reasons. The problem is that they aren’t specific enough or personal enough. It is important to have PERSONAL reasons for learning Chinese because those are the only reasons that will motivate you throughout the long and sometimes challenging process of learning Chinese. Also, the more specific your reasons the better. Someone who’s reason for learning Chinese is “I want to research the effects of China’s ‘Go West’ campaign on ethnic minorities in QingHai province” will have a much stronger source of motivation than someone who’s reason is “kung-fu movies are cool.”
Having clearly defined outcomes in mind will also help you to learn Chinese in a much more efficient manner. You see, if we look at the first three reasons listed above, we will realize that they fail to address several key questions that everybody needs to ask themselves when deciding to learn Chinese. Future articles will deal with what these questions are and how to answer them in greater detail. For now, let’s just look at two questions in order to illustrate how having good reasons can make the process of learning Chinese much easier:
“Will I learn simplified characters or traditional characters?”
and
“Do I want to learn to read and write Chinese, or to just learn spoken Chinese?”
Having clear reasons for learning Chinese will help you answer these types of questions, and considering these questions will help you make sure that your reasons are the right reasons for YOU. This will make your learning process much more efficient.
Let’s look at the first question. “My wife is Taiwanese” may be your reason for learning Chinese. Well, because they use traditional characters in Taiwan you’ll probably want to learn traditional characters from the get-go. On the other hand, your reasons might be: “I would like to be able to communicate more effectively with my product source in Tianjin.” In this case, learning traditional characters may not be necessary. These examples are somewhat obvious, but many people never really consider this question too seriously before embarking on the journey to learn Chinese. Either way you go, simplified or traditional, it can be a BIG hassle to re-learn all the characters in the other system if you change your mind down the road. That’s why taking the time to consider such a question carefully can end up saving you a LOT of time in the end.
The same goes for deciding whether or not to learn Chinese characters or to simply learn the spoken language. Many people are intimidated by the large number and (perceived) complexity of Chinese characters, choosing to learn “conversational Chinese” and stay away from “han zi” (characters). I personally think this is a bad decision for anyone who wants to attain at least an intermediate level of spoken Chinese (I will explain this in a future article), but it may be the right decision in certain cases. For example, if you are planning a short trip to China and just want to learn some basic phrases for travel, you can probably save yourself quite a bit of time by not learning the characters. Either way, having specific goals and clearly defined outcomes will help you make your decision.
These are just two examples of questions that will be much easier to answer if you have specific and personal reasons for learning Chinese. Many other questions will arise along the way. Having good reasons for learning Chinese will ensure that you make the right decisions for your own individual situation.
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