I in no way consider myself a technology person but just have realized the fact that I could hardly start writing in English with paper and pens. Being aware of this change, I asked myself if I had the same problem with Chinese writing. Fortunately, I figured out a NO. Then came the WHY. Writing on a computer, I can easily redo my sentences without leaving any traces of revising which sometimes may frustrate and interrupt the flow of thinking. Would I say technology is a helpful tool thereby? Yes and No, because it diminishes my ability to write in a second language in a traditional way. Does it matter given the reality that we write mostly on computers nowadays? I’m not sure if I have an answer, but it reminds me of a story. A Chinese language instructor told me that the Chinese-learning students in her university were only required to type instead of writing the characters for their writing assignments. The rationale for this decision was that Chinese characters were hard to write and it’s more likely for students to type rather than write characters in the future. It sounds reasonable and practical. So, the statement made in the discussion question for Arnold & Ducate’s article- “If technology is how students today use to live their everyday lives, it follows that these are the tools we should use to teach them.”- could be rephrased as “If technology is how students today use to live their everyday lives, it follows that we should teach students how to use the tool to produce language.”
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Hi Jin,
ReplyDeleteI wonder if Chinese and similar logographic systems are a different case, in that it's very easy to forget stroke order and character structure if you never have to do it when you type--in effect, more reading is involved with word processing in Chinese than when writing by hand. But I'm interested in your comment that technology "diminishes your ability", and would ask what you mean by that. Do you think seeing your trace, your thought patterns and revisions, helps your writing?
Hi Jin--
ReplyDeleteI think the idea of typing Chinese characters instead of learning to write them is really interesting. It's almost like the idea of graphing calculators or statistical software...if the computer can do it for you, why learn to do it yourself? You don't "need" to.
While this may be more practical (and certainly better than not learning the characters at all) I can't help but wonder if something is lost. Also it reminds me of a story I heard on NPR about educators who think teaching American kids to write in cursive script (vs. just block printing) will soon be obsolete. Is the ultimate step that we won't write by hand at all anymore? Will we need to? What about the idea that each person's handwriting is different from another's in the same way that voices are different and personal...will we lose that part of our identities to homogenized, typed text?
humm...we need to see the two sides of typing and writing in computer. I agree with you about the advantages you have mentioned. However, the drawback, from my personal experience, is that my spelling and self-check ability is weakened.
ReplyDeleteI mean when I type English in computer, the incorrect spelling would be hightlighted or even corrected automatically by the computer. Moreover, when I encounter some spelling problem or confusion, I turn on the English-Chinese dictionary installed in my laptop to find the write spelling. To some extent, I become lazy to memorize vocabulary and spelling ( that is why I worry so much about my spelling when writing in English without my laptop). So language learners, especially beginners who are supposed to memorize new vocabulary and spelling, would depend too much on the technology.
As to typing Chinese characters, I would say this wouldn't do any good for Chinese learners. When I learned Chinese, I learned the pronunciation and the character at the same. I admit that writing in character are not easy to grasp. When typing characters in computer, we have various typing tools. The most popular one is typing accouring to Pin Yin (the pronunciation. typing the pronunciation, choosing the right characters that pop up). In this way, learners actually practice pronunciaiton instead of characters. As a native speaker, I sometimes forget how to write some stroke in a complex character in that I type way too much in computer and get used to choosing the right one. I assume that typing characters in computer is not a practical way for Chinese learners to practice writing characters (for their own good, writing characters is a "must" when learning Chinese).
Dr. Reinhardt, by saying technology "diminishes my ability ," I meant that I felt hardly to have the patience or stay focused to write in English on a piece of paper except when I have to. Referring to the sloppy revisions drawn on the paper is not as helpful as the much more organized electronic document where I can also keep a record of my writing process.
ReplyDeleteKatie and Yi, actually I do not agree with the idea of replace writing Chinese characters with typing. However, the reality is that typing has become our primary way to produce written language rather than writing with a pen. So, the challenge teachers are facing now is how to find a compromise between the reality and the tradition. Also, what do we want our students to be, a practical language user or a serious language learner?