Many people who are learning Mandarin in China have the feeling that Chinese is difficult to learn. Chinese is considered as one of the most difficult languages together with Japanese, Korean and Arabian. Maybe this thought will be the obstacle for people who are learning or going to learn Chinese language.
The establishment of international Chinese education discipline needs us to research many theories and solve many practical problems, as well as pay attention to the challengeable subject met in the internationalization of Chinese language. The two issues which are accordant with the above criteria are the difficulty of learning Mandarin Chinese and the difficulty of Chinese characters and the later is the academic and practical subject.
No matter the subject of “learning Mandarin Chinese characters is difficult” is true or false, it is an unavoidable question for us, for this is the international cognition. Maybe it is discrimination, but from a certain triangle it is the truth. For instance, compared with learning English, French, German and Spanish, European and American learners will have the conclusion of “learning Mandarin Chinese characters is difficult.”
However, this comparison is not on the same starting line, thus it is not equal or objective. The kinship exists in the European and American language family, culture and characters, while Chinese only has kinship with Japanese and Korean culture and characters, for their geographical relation. The conclusion will be lack of science to compare learning language which has kinship with one’s mother tongue with learning language which has no kinship with his mother tongue. That is to say, if an American student makes the conclusion that learning Mandarin Chinese is more difficult than learning Spanish, he should be considered not objective.
For this reason, making clear that in what kind of degree that learning Mandarin Chinese can be considered difficult, researching which parts are difficult in teaching practice, then further studying how to bridge the difficulty and how to transform difficulty into easiness, these are the significant subjects we should deal with.
What’s more important, we should announce to the world that Chinese is only a foreign language and before the experimental comparison between Chinese and other difficult foreign languages and before the appearance of acknowledged conclusion, nobody can say learning Mandarin Chinese in difficult. At least Chinese teaching field should hold this attitude.
In fact, to correct a kind of worldwide prejudice and change a global world view is much harder than to establish a Confucius Institute, make a set of international criteria or even cultivate a group of excellent teachers, so the former is more important. In the process of the internationalization of Chinese and the establishment of discipline, we mustn’t ignore the voice of “learning Mandarin Chinese is difficult” or echo the point.
What we should do is to recognize the negative influence brought by this global view of “learning Mandarin Chinese is difficult”, for this view may decrease the confidence of people who are learning Mandarin Chinese.
In addition to this, another meaning of researching this subject in a scientific attitude is that we can transform pressure into dynamic and unite experts and teachers in domestic and overseas related fields to breakthrough this rumor from the aspects of language theory and teaching practice.
Especially, we should integrate and search for all kinds of high-quality and high-efficiency teaching moulds, explore a variety of teaching means which allows students to learn Mandarin Chinese easier and happier; promote the development of Chinese teaching trough the rich achievements of discipline establishment; breakthrough the fear of people to Chinese language by cultivating more international Chinese talents so that more people can choose to learn Mandarin in China.
In one word, we should use absolute principles to correct the international prejudice. Of course, this cannot be done just by saying something. But the theoretical research, discipline establishment and teaching practice should be developed towards this orientation.