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Sinologist Victor Mair reports: " On Thursday we had our Spring mid-term examination. I always test the students on a seen portion and an unseen passage. Beca

Sinologist Victor Mair reports: " On Thursday we had our Spring mid-term examination. I always test the students on a seen portion and an unseen passage. Because we go over the text in class together so very carefully, they usually do well on the seen passage, but often the unseen passage — for which I try to pick a text that is at about the same level of difficulty as the stage we're at in class at the time — completely throws the students for a loop. This time it happened that the students (2 from China, 2 with a Japanese background, 2 from the United States, 1 from Hong Kong, 1 from Vietnam, and 1 from Ghana) were stymied by the unseen passage that I gave them. They could understand all of the characters singly, and I even gave them additional vocabulary notes and explanations. But they just couldn't make sense of the passage as a whole nor even of its constituent sentences. Among the 9 students, only 2 could roughly figure out what was happening in the unseen passage. Of course, this is terribly frustrating for the students, but it is also good practice to push them to their limits to see what they can do unaided (like letting a child try to ride a bike without training wheels after a period of using them). In cases like what happened on Thursday, I tell the students that I will be lenient, so I'll add on 20 or 30 points to their grade because I fully realize how hard the test is. If they can get any part of it, I'm proud of them." ( http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=24459 http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=24459 ) and also a detailed answer from an otherwise-anonymous stackoverflow user: http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/15452/can-chinese-people-read-the-literature-of-2-500-years-ago-as-easily-as-yesterday http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/15452/can-chines...

huahaiy 10y ago
These students are college aged people in US. They are not what I call "educated Chinese people". The way the classic Chinese was written has always been different from everyday vernacular Chinese. This has been true for every generation of Chinese learners since ancient times. How people spoke Chinese have changed over the years dramatically. I don't think the ancient ways of speaking Chinese is understandable by modern Chinese. However, the way the language is written in formal setting has changed little up to the end of Qing dynasty in 1912. An education in Chinese means to learn how to read these traditional Chinese writings. This education is still enforced today in modern China, hence my claim that an educated modern Chinese person can still read them and understand them. For example, a part of the Chinese college entrance exam requires the students to read an unseen piece of traditional Chinese text, and answer questions about it. During the exam, some enterprising students could even write their essays entirely in classic Chinese, garnering wide circulations on the internet.
- thaumasiotes 10y ago
  > An education in Chinese means to learn how to read these traditional Chinese writings. This education is still enforced today in modern China, hence my claim that an educated modern Chinese person can still read them and understand them. For example, a part of the Chinese college entrance exam requires the students to read an unseen piece of traditional Chinese text, and answer questions about it. There's a serious conflict here with your simultaneous claim that college graduates aren't yet "educated".
  - huahaiy 10y ago
    What's the conflict? College graduates from where? A college graduate who has gone through the entire Chinese education system would be required to learn reading comprehension of classic Chinese. Granted, there are always students for one reason or another claimed that they have leaned nothing from school. It's either a false claim, or if that's true, calling them educated would be a stretch, isn't it?
- GFK_of_xmaspast 10y ago
  It's not clear from Mair's post if he's teaching undergraduates, graduate students, or both, and Penn's course catalog isn't much help as it looks to have been cross-listed at a variety of levels: https://www.sas.upenn.edu/ealc/pc/term/2016A https://www.sas.upenn.edu/ealc/pc/term/2016A including CHIN492/EALC222/EALC622 Regardless, please note that of the 9 students, 2 were from China and a third was from Hong Kong.
huahaiy 10y ago
Did you even read your cited stackoverflow answer? The first answer said exactly the same thing as I said: the understanding of classic Chinese is part of the modern Chinese education, and is enforced by the state administrated college entrance exam, which is arguably the most important thing in determining a pupil's life prospect.
wangyounonce 10y ago
Victor Mair does not indicate if the two who did ok were the ones from China and the rest not from or educated in China. Which would be kind of telling.

huahaiy 10y ago

These students are college aged people in US. They are not what I call "educated Chinese people". The way the classic Chinese was written has always been different from everyday vernacular Chinese. This has been true for every generation of Chinese learners since ancient times. How people spoke Chinese have changed over the years dramatically. I don't think the ancient ways of speaking Chinese is understandable by modern Chinese. However, the way the language is written in formal setting has changed little up to the end of Qing dynasty in 1912. An education in Chinese means to learn how to read these traditional Chinese writings. This education is still enforced today in modern China, hence my claim that an educated modern Chinese person can still read them and understand them. For example, a part of the Chinese college entrance exam requires the students to read an unseen piece of traditional Chinese text, and answer questions about it. During the exam, some enterprising students could even write their essays entirely in classic Chinese, garnering wide circulations on the internet.

thaumasiotes 10y ago
> An education in Chinese means to learn how to read these traditional Chinese writings. This education is still enforced today in modern China, hence my claim that an educated modern Chinese person can still read them and understand them. For example, a part of the Chinese college entrance exam requires the students to read an unseen piece of traditional Chinese text, and answer questions about it. There's a serious conflict here with your simultaneous claim that college graduates aren't yet "educated".
- huahaiy 10y ago
  What's the conflict? College graduates from where? A college graduate who has gone through the entire Chinese education system would be required to learn reading comprehension of classic Chinese. Granted, there are always students for one reason or another claimed that they have leaned nothing from school. It's either a false claim, or if that's true, calling them educated would be a stretch, isn't it?
GFK_of_xmaspast 10y ago
It's not clear from Mair's post if he's teaching undergraduates, graduate students, or both, and Penn's course catalog isn't much help as it looks to have been cross-listed at a variety of levels: https://www.sas.upenn.edu/ealc/pc/term/2016A https://www.sas.upenn.edu/ealc/pc/term/2016A including CHIN492/EALC222/EALC622 Regardless, please note that of the 9 students, 2 were from China and a third was from Hong Kong.

huahaiy 10y ago

Did you even read your cited stackoverflow answer? The first answer said exactly the same thing as I said: the understanding of classic Chinese is part of the modern Chinese education, and is enforced by the state administrated college entrance exam, which is arguably the most important thing in determining a pupil's life prospect.

wangyounonce 10y ago

Victor Mair does not indicate if the two who did ok were the ones from China and the rest not from or educated in China. Which would be kind of telling.