A PRC politician wants schools to spend more time teaching Pinyin.
You may read the full article here.
The following are extracts and my comments.
Xu Xudong (徐旭東/徐旭东), a member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference and a professor at Central China Normal University in Wuhan, is advocating that public schools in China allocate substantially more time to the teaching of Hanyu Pinyin.
“Public kindergartens don’t teach Hanyu Pinyin, and the first grade of primary school teaches Hanyu Pinyin for only one to one and a half months, making it difficult for children to keep up. The problem is widespread and the repercussions are strong.”
What has been happening is that parents with money tend to send their kids to private preschools where they learn Pinyin and otherwise get a head start on the school curriculum. Or the parents teach their youngsters themselves.
Students who don’t get this early boost often fall behind, which is a real problem for something so fundamental. As a result, Xu is proposing that schools spend a semester or even longer teaching Pinyin. The article, which is from a CCP mouthpiece and should be regarded as representing an official position by at least some influential figures, calls this an easily overlooked but important issue in basic education.
Well, let us hope the above recommendation is carried out. But what Xu Xudong and other educators including those from the Central China National University in Wuhan are not aware of is the wrong way Pinyin is being taught in many schools in China.
If schools are going to continue teaching Pinyin using sounds from Bopomofo I’ll bet that most of the intelligent kids who are predisposed to shutting down/disengaging from learning to read will leave school as illiterates in Pinyin and English. This will happen even if they teach Pinyin for a year.
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