The 2017 National TPRS conference was my first experience being approached by many teachers who more or less said: “Oh you teach Mandarin? Ni hao! Wo xihuan he kafei. Wo meiyou shui. Wo yao he cha. Baba mama ai wo.” When I asked when and how long they had learned Chinese, most said it was from one demo lesson (or several consecutive days of demo lessons) at the National TPRS conference the year prior. Some had experienced the demo a year or two earlier, and some had done it fresh, just days prior. Later that year (2017) at ACTFL, Diane Neubauer and I attended a TPRS teacher’s party. There we met a TPRS Spanish teacher, Andrea Schweitzer, who similarly approached us and showed off the Chinese sentences she remembered. I had an idea, borne out of the need for immediate convenience.
I exchanged phone numbers with her and texted her a Chinese character based sentence. It was something like this: 爸爸有咖啡。 I recycled the same words in a few more sentences with minimal variation. Something like: 爸爸有水。 and 妈妈没有水。 妈妈没有咖啡。 Our reading interaction went like this (I’m approximating what happened partially to illustrate how I did this each time with different teachers after). Me: “This is going to be easy. I’ll read the first sentence to you: baba you kafei. Now you read it.” Andrea: “baba you kafei” Me: “Awesome! Now read the next one.” Andrea: “uh (looks at line above, then at second line again)... baba you ... Me: “ That’s water.” Andrea: “Oh! Baba you shui.” Me: “Awesome! Next line, that’s mama.” Andrea: “Ok. Mama...” Me: “meiyou” Andrea: “meiyou... oh! Doesn’t have. Ok. Mama meiyou shui.” Me: (points to next line) Andrea: “uh... mama meiyou kafei” Me: “Awesome.” Then I started texting questions: 爸爸有咖啡吗? She would read each new question or statement out loud in Chinese and I helped her recognize each new character (which I had typed only if I had heard her say it before). I helped by either saying the meaning of the word in English or by saying the Chinese word. Both proved equally helpful. She would read the question out loud and then say the answer to me, all in Chinese. If she showed hesitation in saying a word in Chinese, I would check comprehension after by asking for an English version of the whole sentence. This year at the 2018 National TPRS conference, as soon as Andrea saw me we immediately sat down to do more Chinese texting, with one big difference. I showed her how to set up a Chinese pinyin keyboard on her iPhone, and after each question I sent her, I showed her how to type in pinyin and choose the characters to send responses and questions back at me. Throughout the rest of the conference we sent each other silly texts about chocolate and beer, who likes it, who wants it and who has it, it. If she sent anything worthy of corrections (e.g. 我要和茶 which should be 我要喝茶), I would first respond with a reaction to the meaning (meaning: “I want to drink tea”; so I wrote 茶!!!!!!!!!) and then I would use the corrected character in a relevant response (我也要喝茶!!!) and I might add a pinyin version after to confirm the sounds (wo ye yao he cha). She often added pinyin in a text just under mine so she could look back and remember each character and the sound that matched to it. Andrea soon started texting with Linda Li and the two of them had fun, they each told me. What makes me most excited is the relative quickness Andrea made from receptively sounding out sentences I sent her, to then enjoying sending me sentences back, to then texting with other people without my help. At this year’s National TPRS conference I did this again with about four other people. Each time I started this, I first needed to hear what words the person knew and how they used them in a sentence. From there character recognition came fast, so long as I made the character repeat five or six times before moving on. Terry Waltz calls this “proximal repetition” in her book, TPRS with Chinese Characteristics (2015), and I find the term and concept very useful. The Chinese texting we did is essentially Cold Character Reading (CCR) as Terry conceptualizes it (having people read Chinese characters that they already have the sound and meaning for firmly in their heads), but instead of introducing Characters in a story text, it’s through real-time interpersonal communication on an everyday communication device: our phones. I hope more people try this.
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Reed Riggs (Author)
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