The path to blue-ocean digital Chinese study
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TELDAP e-Newsletter (August, 2011)
The path to blue-ocean digital Chinese study
TELDAP e-newsletter/Chen Tai-ying, Lo Yan-yun
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E-learning is an important channel for people to win new knowledge in the 21st century, and in the rising economic environment of East Asia, will the Chinese education market also sail ahead smoothly? How should TELDAP integrate Chinese and e-learning, and thereby tap the Chinese cultural content locked within digital archives and produce effective, attractive Chinese learning services? The TELDAP e-newsletter is delighted to have invited Chen Di-zhi, General Manager of IQChinese, to share his incisive views from a practical industry perspective with our readers.
This interview was undertaken with the generous assistance of the Institute for Information Industry, for which we express our thanks!
Internationalized Chinese Learning Services
Within the towering buildings of the Xizhi Science Park, scholarly-looking General Manager Chen Di-zhi shared his views of the development path of Chinese digital learning in detail from the perspective of an industry operator.
After spending many years cultivating in the digital content production industry Chen discovered that while Taiwan was well- versed in the production of e- learning technology,it was not easy for service providers to expand their business as a result of the limited size of the domestic market, and when trying to sell English e-learning products which had enjoyed success in the Taiwanese market, a never- ending succession of new queries from foreign consumers appeared: “I’m studying English, why can’t I study Sesame Street, Cambridge, why do I have to learn from Taiwanese people? Taiwan isn’t an English-speaking nation: are English study materials produced in Taiwan good enough?”
So, how were Taiwanese e-learning products and services to be sold that matched brand essence and a blue ocean in the international market found? Internationalized Mandarin e-learning services were the new seas Chen with which Chen became fascinated. In order to realize his dream, Chen, who had once worked at CTS, planned to establish a website for people to learn Chinese by watching news,integrating CTS’s news audio and video content; regrettably, the market atmosphere wasn’t right at the time, as a result of which the website was closed after CTS digital ended.
After getting into IQ Technology, Chen had another opportunity to make himself known. During a tour of inspection of the North American market, he made a detour to Canada and co-operated with Xie Yi-mei, a teacher who had been actively cultivating the Chinese learning market for over 30 years. Previously, when designing e-learning content and study services, he had never tried to further clarify the major questions of “Who is the consumer? What services do they need? If not answered, such questions can increase operational difficulties, and make it difficult to get return on investment.
Xie’s target market was the North American K-12 market, that is, students from kindergarten to senior high, who would use digital materials developed by IQChinese to study Mandarin, with the clear aim allowing IQChinese to find a more effective direction and design materials suitable for students.
World Cultures Differ, and Behavior Even More so
“We might already have defined a clear target market with “Mandarin learning materials for foreigners,” but there are many different types of foreigners! Different countries, different languages, self- taught, learning with a teacher, young, middle-aged or older, there are too many different levels.” Chen again pointed out that generational, cultural, and other factors may produce disparities in the behavior of users. IQChinese’s early development strategy was originally direct distribution to students through the buxiban cram school model, finding associates through teacher training, and assisting them in the use of IQChinese Chinese materials developed through either character input or pinyin technology. However, the West differs from Taiwan in that it does not have many buxibans; students instead take part in all manner of sports activities after class. Here, Chen cracks a joke: it’s only the relatively unfit ones who go to a buxiban. Most buxibans are directed at SATP exams, and the idea of going to one to study Chinese is, as far as ordinary you Western pupils are concerned, by no means widespread.
Chen also analyzed the differences between the two educational models of self- study and study in a classroom. Those who choose self- study are more motivated, but they are much harder for providers to find amidst the crowd- a large quantity of promotion is necessary to communicate with consumers and increase their brand awareness; as for classroom learning, although the motivation of those studying in a class may be lessened by their teacher’s lack of digital literacy, a fixed route to the customer makes it easy to contact them, “you need only find a school which offers Mandarin classes to meet a Mandarin teacher.” Accordingly, after due consideration, IQChinese chose the school market and a strategy of offering teacher training to get into the North American Chinese learning market.
When making a tour of many North American cities, and after undertaking the training of more than 400 Chinese teachers, Chen discovered another important fact. Teachers could understand the classes offered by IQChinese, “but couldn’t use what they’d learned, because of limited information literacy and the digital divide, they found it hard to use ready-made digital teaching materials and designing their own materials was even more difficult”. Chen believes that a successful Chinese teacher, in addition to Chinese and teaching skills, also needs to have the ability to use the Internet to be able to help students to make use of Chinese in the 21st century.
Using the Most Effective Methods to Teach You Mandarin Chinese
In response to the uneven quality of Chinese teachers, IQChinese decided to invest more resources and technology to undertake the development of teaching material, to design more teacher- friendly and useful educational software and services, and, more importantly, IQChinese discovered a path away from the traditional way of Chinese learning, namely, the use of computerized “character writing” to study Chinese.
As far as Taiwanese children studying “the national language” are concerned, their access to an environment of their mother language is obvious, and writing by hand is a mainstream method of communication, owing to which “learning charactersby writing in the exercise book” is an effective learning strategy for young Taiwanese students:“furthermore, the more children write, the faster they become.” However, as regards foreign learners, they rarely come into contact with Chinese, and the complex structure of Chinese characters, combined with the traditional study method of “copying, and drawing characters” may be unable to improve the efficiency of their study, and may even wear their interest in learning Mandarin away.
Although as far as foreign children are concerned, it’s not so easy to see Chinese on TV, in newspapers, or signs on the street, however, one need only connect to the Internet to enjoy a Chinese language environment; and typing characters is also the main method of communication on the Internet. Due to this, when designing IQChinese’s materials, ability to type characters is is used as the measure of learning success.
The design of Chinese input has always focused on users for whom it is a mother tongue. Take the Phonetic Symbol input method, for example: inputting ” ㄑㄧㄥ” produces many homonyms such as qing, qing, qing, qing and qing…, and a mother- tongue user can choose the right character themselves, but this is still a nightmare for a low- level foreign learner. In IQChinese’s materials, the character practice in each class is limited to those characters the student “knows”, and, what’s more, the computer reads out the correct pronunciation, as soon as an error is made, it instantly provides the correct pronunciation, reducing the possibility of confusion and the difficulty of remembering characters, which effectively overcomes the problems of “there are so many characters and they’re hard to remember, there are so many difficult pronunciations, and so many are difficult to write” “Also, kids all like computers, and they’re more open to the idea of studying on a computer.”
In the process of learning Chinese, Chen believes that letting students listen to CDs, watch movies, is the early stage of digital study; while using computer games, teaching using a smart board, to increase student motivation, is the mid stage of digital learning. Training students to use computers in Chinese, and use the Internet is the main aim of digital language learning in the 21st century. If teachers can raise their digital literacy, download popular blogs, and have more exposure to social websites, they can use these platforms to help students to improve their writing in Chinese writing and use of the language and he believes that it will certainly be helpful in raising the overall level of language ability.Adding Archives
to Study, and Taking Service to a Higher Level
In the overseas Chinese market, traditional characters have met with more than a few challenges, which has also made Chen think on the advantages Taiwan has. Chen believes that “digitized cultural assets” are Taiwan’s largest advantage, but as far as American middle- school students are concerned, Chinese culture is still far removed from their lives, and just glancing at a digital archive which the student can’t really appreciate isn’t really enough to start a cross- cultural comparison and dialogue. At the end of the day, what kind of strategy should actually be used to link the content of digital archives, foreign language study, and the lives of students?
Chen believes that the design of digitized archives should include division of content by type, from which teachers should choose material relevant to different levels of language learner. Sinologists and researchers in related areas can come into contact with the files, ancient books, and images; as for ordinary students, only the most commonplace materials which can be used for intercultural communication will be accepted by users. In 2010, IQChinese collaborated with the Academia Sinica’s TELDAP to design teaching materials based on the changes through which Chinese characters have gone through using oracle bones, bronzes, Chu characters, and other materials from the Academia Sinica Inscription Rubbings Collection.
IQChinese discovered that such materials were not only welcomed by teachers who used traditional characters, but even those who normally used simplified characters were more receptive to them, as these materials successfully displayed the process of change from oracle bone characters to modern simplified characters, such as the character “home” from oracle bones, which is comprised of a house and a pig. Such processes of recognition which merge pictorial elements with character form allow students to study Chinese in a relaxed atmosphere. It’s interesting to note that after Chinese language teachers become product members, using the IQChinese materials database is free.
“If suppliers don’t see archives, they will probably be unable to think of ways to add value. Moreover, professors with institutional repositories aren’t really adept at thinking up ways archives can make money.” Chen believes that the industry- academia matching of the content of archives and the supplier who uses them, whether an e- learning provider or cultural innovation company, is a key service. Take the teaching materials which showed the changes in characters- they were produced by a collaboration between III and Academia Sinica, and it was only then that IQChinese was able to get their hands on the material, and produce a new type of service for teachers of Chinese.
From the viewpoint of an enterprise in the business, Chen also gave his observations on digital archives and e-learning sustainability. Aside from previous national programs that provided subsidies to suppliers, matching by and support from programs to promote the industrialization of digital archives provided suppliers with many more opportunities to add value. He advises that national plans can help to establish a licensing business feedback mechanism in the next two years, which would provide civil servants with a legal basis, and assist providers to make money in accordance with the law. Furthermore, in the areas of e-learning and digital content, Chen is waiting the government to be able to assess the present level of maturity enterprise, to undertake improved design of role allocation and transformation.
Soft Power Is Taiwan’s Strong Point After many years cultivating the worldwide Chinese learning market, Chen believes that “Soft power is the advantage Taiwan currently enjoys.” Due to Taiwan’s pluralized, free, and open environment, added to a deeper inheritance of traditional Chinese culture compared to the Mainland, the results is a level of culture, design, and life experience which still ranks as the best in the Chinese world. “However, it’s not as if soft power cannot be overtaken”, and as China actively opens to the world, in an environment of strong economic growth, if Taiwan continues as before, our only advantage will be used up in a few short years. Chen hopes that Taiwan’s industrial, government, academic and research and other communities will be able to maintain their present collaborative approach, and use culture and intelligence to open a new blue ocean for Taiwan’s economy.
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Publisher：Fan-Sen Wang, Vice President of Academia Sinica Editor-in-Chief：Zong-Kun Li Publishing Department：Taiwan e-Learning and Digital Archives Program, TELDAP Executive Editor：Sub-project: Digital Information - the New and Creative Way of Communicating Mailing Address：The Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica No.130, Sec. 2, Academia Rd., Nangang District, Taipei City 115, Taiwan TEL： (02) 27829555 ext:310 or 183 FAX： (02) 2786-8834 E-mail：newsletter@teldap.tw
Issue：TELDAP e-Newsletter (August, 2011) Publish Date：08/15 /2011 First Issue：02/15 /2007（Published on 15th every 2 months）
The copyright of all contents in this e-Newsletter belongs to TELDAP,Taiwan. The e-Newsletter publishing system is supported by the Core Platforms for Digital Contents Project for TELDAP.
No.130, Sec. 2, Academia Rd., Nangang District, Taipei City 115, Taiwan