Simplified vs. Traditional Chinese Characters

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Permalink Reply by Sandy Harvey on October 24, 2010 at 4:58pm

James,

This has been an issue in my district for a long time and, truth to tell, I believe that if your distirct offers Chinese, you will eventually confront the question of which one to teach. I can only tell you what we do in my district. My teachers are Taiwanese, however, this is not why we continue to stress the traditional character system in our curriculum. In my district, the concerns that I get are more from people who are from mainland China proposing that we should be teaching Simplified Characters. The justification is that more people use the Simplified characters and that Traditional Characters are archaic. However, the fact is that many newspapers still use traditional characters. As long as students learn Traditional characters, they can always decipher Simplified, whereas the reverse is not necessarily the case. That said, my teachers do actually accept both in writing, but they do make a point of teaching Traditional. We have had many discussions, and I always play the "devil's advocate", questioning whether we should be emphasizing Simplified, but the conversation always comes back to the fact that they feel strongly that to completely ignore Traditional characters would cut students completely off from an important part of the language, as well as the history of the language. I, like you, came into my position after these policies and the curriculum had been established, but our decision to stay with the philosophy of teaching Traditional characters first, but also teaching and accepting Simplified, has grown from NUMEROUS conversations I've had with my teachers and with professors at the university level. Most of the better textbook resources you'll find will provide both Traditional and Simplified. Feel free to contact me if you wish to talk further. We offer our Credit by Exam in both Simplified and Traditional. It's a complex issue and I know that you are aware that it is also a politically charged one that may never be solved completely.
Sandy Harvey
World Language Coordinator - Fort Bend ISD

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Permalink Reply by Thomas Sauer on October 28, 2010 at 8:43am

I think this is a great discussion and Sandy brings up some good points. I can see arguments for both and think that in order for Chinese to be a success story in this country the profession will have to come to some sort of agreement. (Of course, I feel the same about Spanish and it's myriad of variations.)

Let's look at the study of English in German schools for example: It is interesting that despite the fact that the US is by many consider an international leader in, German school children learn British English for the first 4-5 years and not until later have the option of "adding" American English. It seems that focusing on one gives them the foundation to succeed in the other.

I'm wondering if the Chinese language community could come to an agreement, but I agree with Sandy that there this is a politically charged issue and we quiet possibly never find a resolution. It certainly would make collaboration among teachers and the development of learning materials much easier.

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Permalink Reply by Greta Lundgaard on November 1, 2010 at 5:05pm

well, I'll be next. When we began teaching Chinese language, we made the decision to teach Simplified only. I was not in this position at the time, but the thinking was that in order to respond to the limited sequence we are able to offer (level 1 starts in 9th grade), Simplified was the better option. Our hope was that non experienced learners of Chinese would have a greater chance to achieve the highest writing proficiency possible in a limited time if we taught Simplified, since the characters were, well, simplified.
Our heritage population is Taiwanese. 2 of our teachers are from Taiwan, 2 are from China. We offer our credit by exams for levels 1, 2, and 3 in both Simplified and Traditional, so that all of our heritage speakers can have an equitable opportunity to achieve credit.

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Permalink Reply by Diane DeNoon on November 1, 2010 at 10:02pm

I am really glad to listen in on this discussion. Our district is considering Chinese courses for the near future so there will be an opportunity to guide the program in the most fitting direction for the program and the success of students.

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Permalink Reply by James R. Yoder on November 1, 2010 at 11:59pm

Why can't teaching be non-political?? (That was a rhetorical question...no answers needed.) I'm in the same boat as Greta regarding my teachers. Half are from mainland China (or were educated there), the other half are from Taiwan. In surveying them all, I found that my Taiwanese teachers don't want to teach Simplified Characters, and some of them aren't (even though our curriculum guides tell them to do it.). We have a large Taiwanese population here in Las Vegas as well as a large mainland Chinese population. I certainly don't want to get involved in any political battling with these groups. I often think about the whole Spain-Spanish vs. American-Spanish issue. As a Spanish teacher I never had my students speak with the theta, and I didn't use vosotros when I spoke to them. I taught it to them for recognition and did my best to include examples of regional speech so that they would hear the differences. I would image that if I were in China teaching English, I would teach American English, but someone from England would teach British English. It all seems pretty logical to me, but when you have an angry parent, somehow my personal life philosophies don't hold much weight. :)

Thank you all for your answers. I think this is a good discussion to keep going. It's great to hear what other districts are doing.

We're on the final countdown to conference time... :)

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Permalink Reply by Sandy Harvey on November 2, 2010 at 9:55am

It's definitely a conundrum and one that I believe only time and open minds will solve. We are moving more and more toward actually teaching both, although, due to the nationalities of my Chinese teachers historically, I'd say that we taught mostly traditional in the beginnings. Our current philosophy is based on hours and hours of conversation, reading, learning (much of it my learning), and a population of students in our Chinese classes who are no longer predominantly Chinese or Taiwanese. We have parents (and even counselors of Chinese origin) who question and even complain, on both sides of the argument. It may not surprise you to know that their opinions for or against teaching Traditional characters depend on whether they are from Taiwan or mainland China. Just Google Traditional vs. Simplified characters and you'll find lots of information from both sides. Although I always take the information I find on Wikipedia with a good dose of salt, when I looked on there, I saw a lot of the same arguments and cases that have been presented to me on many occasions: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debate_on_traditional_and_simplified_C...
I see this as a healthy and productive discussion. The more that we talk about it and grow to understand the many layers of the issue; which include history, culture, politics, nationalistic pride, systems of language, art, etc., the more you realize that there is no better representation of the Five C's anywhere! Meanwhile, language programs grow and we get to learn new things! What could be better than that? Have a great day, everyone!

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