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Chinese Classes Brought Back to UT |
| By
Kimyette Finley |
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Oct 2, 2002 |
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| Pickering Lee |
Dr. Gene Chang, professor of economics and director of the Asian Studies Program, recalls many students who asked him the same question — how come there are no Chinese classes at UT?
Those students no longer have to drive to Bowling Green State University or take classes at a local Chinese school. After about a 10-year absence, Chinese classes are back and part of UT’s course offerings in the department of foreign languages.
Pickering Lee was tapped to teach an introduction Chinese course at UT. Dr. Antonio Varela, chair of the foreign languages department, said, “Pickering Lee has taught Chinese at Start High School for many years. He is a greatly loved teacher.”
Lee came to the United States from Taiwan in 1965 and moved to Toledo after studying linguistics at Kansas State University.
The arguments for bringing Chinese back are varied. “The economic relationship between the U.S. and China has developed very rapidly the past few years. China is the major trade partner of the United States. Also, many large companies here have operations in China,” Chang said. According to him, about one-fifth of the world’s population speaks Chinese, including mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore.
Lee, who has taught Chinese to high school students for 35 years, said he plans to put more emphasis on the spoken language and listening during the first-year course at UT. “The tones can be difficult to handle, because with every word in a sentence, there are ups and downs you have to remember.” Lee said in the total language, there are only about 400 syllables. “We need tones. To Americans, it may all sound alike. If you can’t handle the tones, you can get into a lot of trouble, but if you pronounce the tones correctly, the Chinese will praise you,” Lee said with a smile. One word can be pronounced different ways and have different meanings. For example, the word “ma” means mother, hemp, horse and scold based on four different tones and pronunciations.
“I don’t want to teach the whole book and you don’t know anything,” Lee told his UT students during the first week of class. He plans to tailor the course to the students’ pace. “In high school, you have to feed them spoon by spoon. Here, it’s more serious and the pace is faster. But I’m impressed so far.”
As far as the written characters, Lee said learning about 200 to 300 should be sufficient. “The characters are hard, but they have a lot of interesting meaning behind them. The language has nearly 50,000 characters and that includes the variety of the same character. Probably no one in the world knows 50,000,” he said with a laugh. If a student learns about 3,000 to 4,000 characters, they should be able to read the newspaper, Lee said.
Joel Hammer, a UT sophomore who is looking at law, education and business as potential majors, studied Chinese with Lee at Start High School. “In high school, we had to take the foreign language requirement, and there was a little bit of everything — French, Russian, Spanish, German. Mr. Lee came and introduced the Chinese language. I thought it was interesting and different from all of the others, especially the characters. I figured I’d try it out, and it just kind of clicked with me.”
Hammer is now studying the language with Lee at UT. He said he’s aware that many people think Chinese is a hard language to pick up, but he recommends speaking it whenever you can to feel more comfortable with it. “You practice while you’re driving or in the shower if you don’t like to sing. Whenever you get a chance.”
Varela said the plan is to teach two years of Chinese — at the beginning and intermediate levels. If enough interest is shown, the department will request that a minor and possibly a major be offered in the language.
Lee said one of his main goals is for students to feel comfortable learning Chinese. “I want them to like the language — I want to seduce them with it. And I want them to love the Chinese culture. It’s a fun language once you learn the structure.”
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