Speaking Mandarin Is Good for Your Brain

To raise my two bright boys, I have become more interested in understanding human brains and try to help my boys to fully develop their brains. In school, I majored in computer science and learned how to get computers to work with human intelligence. I understand neurology is much more complex than computer science and start to read anything I come across about developing the brain.

Yesterday I read an article on CNN http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/08/25/nostrils.tone.deaf.lost/index.html

It conveys to me the idea that similarly to music training, learning to speak Chinese, a "tone" language, could help enlarge the brain pathway that connects perception and motor areas of the brain.

Does this mean that on average Chinese speakers are better at singing and playing piano? I really don’t know since I do neither. However, I hope through my Mandarin teaching, I can help children to develop their brains and adults to keep their good brains.

I copied the text from the article below for your interest:

Tone deaf? Brain pathway may be missing

Some people are really bad at singing a song they've heard, and scientists are figuring out why.

The phenomenon, called tone deafness, refers to people who do poorly at distinguishing between different musical tones.

Researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts, looked at images of the brains of 10 people who tested as being tone deaf, and 10 people who were not. Here's a tone deafness test similar to the one they used.

Previous research has shown that people with lesions in the brain pathway that connects perception and motor areas of the brain have trouble with language, said Psyche Loui, instructor in the department of neurology at Harvard University. People with damage to this area tend to have problems with repeating words they hear.

The new study in the Journal of Neuroscience also found that the pathways in this brain area, which usually have top and bottom branches, were implicated in tonal recognition. In fact, scientists could not identify a right-top branch in any of the 10 tone-deaf participants.

"The better you can tell the difference between two tones, the larger that particular brain pathway was," Loui said.

The findings do not mean there is no hope for tone deaf people, however.

"I think there's a lot of music training in general that could help enlarge these pathways," Loui said.

In fact, a treatment for tone deafness might also help people with speech disorders such as dyslexia, she said. There has been evidence that people with dyslexia have same auditory processing problems as people with tone deafness, she said. Her lab showed last year that children with musical training performed better on dyslexia tests.

On the other end of the spectrum, some people have perfect or "absolute" pitch, and can name any musical note they hear. Diana Deutsch, psychologist at the University of California, San Diego, has found people who speak "tone" languages, with words that change meaning entirely depending on tone, seem to have a greater likelihood of perfect pitch. More speakers of Mandarin and Cantonese, two tone languages, tend to have perfect pitch than English, for example, she said.

In theory, in Deutsch's view, it should be as easy to call a pitch "F" as it is to say that an object is red or blue.

"If you assume that there's something missing in our environment in terms of early exposure to the right types of sounds, and that it is bundled in with speech, then the whole thing makes sense," she said.

A Trip to Beijing and the Four Tones of Mandarin

Last week when it was raining hard outside, I stayed at home and took a vicarious trip to Beijing in a book by Canadian journalist Jan Wong: A Comrade Lost and Found, A Beijing Story. In 2006 she went for a one-month stay to reconnect with her schoolmates from Beijing University where she studied Mandarin Chinese in 1972. Throughout the trip, she explained the language and the history associated with Beijing, covered some of its ever-changing history, recalled the Cultural Revolution, and discovered the city’s last two decades of economic development and its inhabitants’ new lives. It was interesting to compare her view of the city and its people with my own former life there and what I have heard from friends who either currently live there or have traveled there in recent years. She also compares Beijing with other famous cities in the West, such as Paris and New York, and compares Chinese culture with American and French cultures which I have experienced since I left Beijing. I was born in Beijing, went through my childhood during the Cultural Revolution, and then spent 7 years at Tsinghua University which is near Beijing University. I feel well connected to the people and the places on Wong’s trip, and I am glad to see the latest changes before the Olympic Games in Beijing 2008 which is part of the Beijing life I didn’t experience.

While it rained outside in Salem, I totally immersed myself in the book, traveling with Wong in the city I lived in 23 years ago. I couldn’t put the book down until I finished it early Thursday morning so that I could travel back to Salem in time for my class in the evening.

In my adult Chinese class at the Salem Athenaeum, I had the students practice the four tones of Mandarin which is the basis of the language. Everyone was carefully listening to me speaking the vowels and constants of the Pinyin, as well as the pronunciation of characters, words, and phrases. They mentally mapped these into something familiar to an English speaker, then tried out the sounds one by one, exchanged notes with each other as I helped them make corrections as needed. Without doubt, the challenge is in the tones. We started with single vowels, a, e, i, o, u, ü, then moved on to pronounce individual characters. Finally we put several characters together to form a phrase. Speaking the right tones is crucial. Some words with the same sound, but different tones mean totally different things. As the head of the world language department at a nearby prep school said to me, if you are not careful, you might as well call your mother a horse--ma with the first tone means “mama” while ma with the third tone means “horse”. I put a lot of energy into teaching Pinyin and the four tones to my students. For younger children, they simply imitate what I say and make perfect sound. For adults, I do a lot of practice with my students. Often someone who has a good ear for music masters the pronunciation faster and shares her notes with others to help with their pronunciation.

During the trip to Beijing with Jan Wong, I learned her description of the four distinct tones of Mandarin:

The first tone rings like a note on a bronze bell,
The second rises gently like yeast,
The third swoops like a hawk, and
The fourth clatters like a stone on a marble floor.

As a native Mandarin speaker, I never thought so much about the tones before. It is all natural to me. The description is more interesting to me than helpful, but I hope it makes sense to my students. I can certainly understand the difficulty for a native English speaker to pronounce the right tones since I myself had great difficulty to pronounce French when I lived in Paris during 2007-8. French people corrected my pronunciation all the time and no matter where I was, whether at a pharmacy, a fish shop, or a party at a friend’s family château, and of course in my French language class. To take things easy, I set a goal for myself: I don’t have to be perfect in my French so long as I can make myself understood.

四世同堂 / Si Shi Tong Tang

四世同堂 / Si Shi Tong Tang -- Four Generations Under One Roof by Lao She 1957; Four Generations of Americans Study Mandarin in Panda Land by Judy Wang Bedell 2009.

On a rare sunny day this month, I walked into downtown Salem, where I saw the owner of the Lotus Gift shop setting up her shopping cart with traditional Chinese children’s outfits. She is a well known and respected Chinese lady in Salem. I said hello to her and told her about my new endeavor of teaching Mandarin Chinese. She was very interested and asked who was learning Chinese from me. I told her that this summer I started to teach a girl age 3, a gentleman age 77, and others of many ages in between. She exclaimed with a big smile: “Oh, you teach 4 generations!” I felt so delighted and took that as the best compliment. Only a Chinese would praise my teaching in this way since a family of 4 generations would be considered a very happy, prosperous family.

The phrase of “Si Shi Tong Tang” echoed in my head. Si Shi Tong Tang was a novel by a famous Chinese writer, Lao She, describing the life of the Chinese during the Japanese Occupation. I am tempted to adopt this phrase to describe my students in Panda Land (Panda Land’s Chinese name is 熊猫学堂/Xiong Mao Xue Tang) as四世同堂 / Si Shi Tong Tang--four generations of Americans study in Panda Land.

Panda Land Children Love to Draw and Write

In the spring, nine young children studied Chinese with joy. They love to draw and write. They love to sing and play. They have learned the basic greetings and simple dialogs. They have also learned to count to one hundred and to one thousand. Some of the older ones have learned to recite the times table in Chinese. I am so proud of them!

Happy Achievers

I remember back when I was in school, feeling a sense of great achievement after the intense period of final exams, walking with delighted footsteps and enjoying the beautiful trees and flowers of spring. This week, I shared a similar sense of happy achievement with the children in Panda Land.

This week nine children, boys and girls, received their certificates for completing Level 1 of Panda Land Chinese. With one class, we had a lunch party. Children enjoyed authentic Chinese food and wonderful American delights while watching a Chinese “Monkey King” movie and playing Chinese checkers. In another class with girls from China, we had ice cream sundaes and a certificate presentation with the parents to celebrate the children’s achievement.

Congratulations to the lovely children. Thanks to everyone who has supported Panda Land!

Studying Mandarin is “IN”

As I was walking home from the Salem Athenaeum on Saturday after my Chinese class, a couple of neighbors greeted me.  Commenting on my Mandarin Chinese teaching, one mother of a child who is taking my Chinese class said, “Your timing is perfect, and I am glad she (her daughter) is interested in learning it.”   Another woman who is a professor at Harvard Extension School said, “At Harvard now, Mandarin Chinese is the most popular language.”

In the last couple of weeks, my husband and I have been visiting several prep schools.  All of them offer Mandarin in their world language program.  To my surprise, one school even encourages their freshman students to take Mandarin instead of French.

I have this sense that Mandarin is “IN” now, and am very happy that I can be of service to those who want to study it.  This is further confirmed by today's Associated Press’s report on Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner’s visit to Beijing: 

Geithner planned a speech Monday at Peking University assessing the global economy and U.S.-China relations. He spent two summers at the university as a college student learning Mandarin Chinese.

At a briefing previewing the trip for Asian journalists, Geithner referenced those ties, saying he had taught Chinese while in college and had a "long personal interest" in the country. But he insisted that while he had worked very hard at his Chinese language studies, he was not proficient.

“I cannot actually speak Chinese with competence,” he said.  “I did study though for a long time, very hard.  I practiced my characters very carefully.”

To read the full article, go to http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2009/05/31/geithner_calls_for_closer_economic_ties_with_china/

I agree:  to be competent with Chinese, one needs to study long and hard and must practice the characters very carefully.  However, at Panda Land we encourage you start learning with your own interests, your own objectives, and at your own pace.

 

Teaching and Learning Chinese in America

On Saturday May 23, I went to the Association of Chinese Schools Annual Conference in Burlington MA thinking that I would get some information on teaching Chinese. I walked into the Marriott hotel and straight to the registration desk.   Just after I filled in the form, I started to realize that this was an association of people from Taiwan.  I am from Beijing, People's Republic of China not Taiwan,  Republic of China.  I do know there are two different Chinese school systems  in America:  one is organized by and for people from Taiwan, the other  mainland China (please allow me to use this term to make the point). All I was thinking before coming was to learn about teaching Chinese in America, but didn't think about which association the conference was for.  Seeing I was a bit puzzled, the lady at the registration desk encouraged me to join the association and said there was a lot of communication between the two associations in recent years.   I signed in and paid the membership fee. 

Many of my friends are involved with Chinese schools around the country, but they are all with the mainland China association.  I started walking around the place and first found no one I knew and felt out of place.   Should I join this association?  I started to doubt my quick decision. Then I spotted a familiar face at an exhibit table – a Mandarin Chinese teacher at a local private high school.   I went to say Hi to her.  She was happy to see me and showed me the books and CDs she uses to teach Chinese.  She explained the challenges of teaching Chinese to Americans and her approach to teach Chinese to American high school students. 

After talking to her, I felt better.  Although most people here were from Taiwan, they teach Mandarin Chinese just like I do in America.  Although people in Taiwan study and use the traditional-character version of Chinese, we study and use the simplified version of Chinese and the Pinyin system.  Now, many Mandarin teachers from Taiwan teach simplified Chinese and Pinyin in America.  And they have a lot of experience.

Knowing I am from Beijing, the Chinese teacher pointed to the table next to her.  I went to introduce myself to the woman and man at the table.  It turned out to be from mainland China.  The woman is a director of the Confucius Institute at UMass Boston, and the man is with www.iMandarinPod.com – a website to promote teaching and learning Chinese.  He even went to the same University I went to in Beijing, Tsinghua University, one of the most prestigious Universities in the country.  After chatting with them, I felt so good.  Okay, after all, I didn't come to a “wrong place” or a “wrong association”.  We are all Chinese and teaching Chinese language and culture in America.

With my doubt gone from my mind, I was able to enjoy the conference.  I looked at every exhibit table and looked at many books and CDs.  A woman from Flushing New York showed me her way of using computers to teach Chinese and encouraged me to do so since I am a software engineer by trade.  I learned a lot, and most of all I got a lot of inspiration from the conference.