... from the BMUG Newsletter, Fall 1996




Mandarin Courseware With Character

Review of HyperChina

by Christopher R. Clowery



HyperChina is superior Mandarin courseware, the best electronic Chinese language-learning program anywhere. I recommend HyperChina for its intelligence, its effectiveness as a teaching tool and for its vision. I believe this package has created the conditions for someone to actually learn the basics of spoken and written Mandarin. HyperChina introduces a new dimension in language learning, at the same time it showcases the power of the Macintosh environment as a tool for education with plenty of gongs and flutes.

LetÕs put HyperChinaÕs innovations into context. If you began learning Chinese in 1966, as I did, language study was a boring, colorless process. The textbooks of the late sixties usually had half a dozen illustrations, or none at all, and a bunch of unconnected exercises. The texts by John DeFrancis, in particular, were political, and designed to prepare students for contemporary (read Socialist) Chinese society: ÒcomradeÓ was the preferred noun of address, and vocabulary included Òcollective farmÓ and Òreactionary.Ó The scratchy-sounding reel-to-reel tapes and the three-pound headset were state of the art audio-visual equipment. The droning voice put you to sleep by the third drill.

Berkeley, Harvard and Princeton used Y. R. ChaoÕs Mandarin Primer, a witty book that we loved and hated, and a linguistic tour de force. But it lacked illustrations, and was stingy with exercises. A workbook and character text were added as afterthoughts by ChaoÕs daughter. Audio lessons were available on a Folkways phonograph record. To hear the exercises again, you lifted the tone arm, guessed at the right groove and dropped the needle. A non-interactive, user-hostile medium, to be sure.

Learning Chinese on computers took its first steps in 1989 with HyperGlotÕs Chinese Survival Manual, Writing Tutor and others. The format included sound and animated brush writing; the scope of the materials was limited and the interface was utilitarian. But it was a start, and expanded our horizons.

Enter HyperChina, a brand new interactive learning environment for the Chinese language, designed, programmed and recorded by Dajuin Yao and Dr. Zhilian Tsao, two former instructors of Mandarin at the University of California, Berkeley. Yao and Tsao had taught Mandarin to undergraduates in the Dwinelle Hall bull-pit for years before they created Sinologic Software in 1991. They grew tired of academiaÕs Òinstitution-first, students-lastÓ priorities; they decided to create a learning tool that empowered students to customize and control learning, based on studentsÕ needs and their interests, not on bureaucratic policy.

Yao Dajuin got inspired by the potential of HyperCard as a teaching tool; he improved on the best parts of the Hyperglot concept, while retaining the strengths of the classroom experience. He and Dr. Tsao know the problems that beginners, particularly Westerners, face in learning Mandarin. They provided features using the HyperCard format that address those problems. In the process they make possible a satisfying and engaging interaction with the Chinese language and its surrounding culture.

For example, the section that introduces the Chinese language includes some poetry. The selections are old favorites, memorized by Chinese school children. But the ability to enjoy their subtleties of sound and meaning, on the spot, without dictionary work, has eluded all but educated literati with big vocabularies. HyperChina gives you the poem on a card, and adds three buttons; push one button and you get the romanized pronunciation of each character; push another button and you get the literal English translation, which is left in raw Chinese syntax for the ÒfeelÓ of the original. Press a third button and notes appear giving accurate explanations and a bite of information about the poem to whet the appetite for more. Where was this program when I was an undergraduate? (add graphic ÒPoetryÓ)


Desktop Language Lab

Enrolling in a schoolÕs language class opened the door to the language laboratory, a mixed blessing. If for example, you took Chinese at UC Berkeley, the first challenge was to find the lab in the basement of Dwinelle Hall. There are tales told of hapless freshmen getting lost in Dwinelle on the first day in September and wandering for years between floors until Spring, surviving on candy and coffee from the vending machines. Assuming you found the lab, you had to stand in line for a carrel, sit at a filthy desk wearing greasy headphones, breathing the stuffy, anxiety-laden air. In your ear from all sides you enjoyed the United Nations in stereo: mangled Lakota, Midwestern Italian, and loud Swahili.

HyperChina capitalizes on the functionality of the Macintosh to recreate on your own desktop the advantages of the language lab without the drawbacks. To learn a new language successfully requires repetition of sounds until the physical responses of ear and tongue build new habits. Repetition and drill is limited, even with patient human instructors. The computer environment enhances language learning: you can repeat a word, a sound or a phrase as many times as you need to reinforce a pattern. You can also adjust the pace and the volume to your preference. Aural tapes give you little choice of pace; you also cannot stop the lesson and return later as easily as you can with the computerÕs Òrandom access.Ó And there is the issue of patience. If you want your electronic teacher to say ÒYou mean this isnÕt the train to Chengdu?Ó thirty times in a row in perfect Mandarin tones, it happily repeats without fatigue. If you want to see the stroke order for the character ÒdragonÓ until you can visualize it with your eyes closed, just keep clicking your mouse.


Gongs and Flutes

HyperChina employs sounds all around. The main section of each lesson has its opening Chinese musical motif. The stackÕs control buttons are clear and accessible, and each one says its name as you click it. For example, the ÒhelpÓ button announces itself by saying. Òzemme ban?Ó (What can I do?). The computerÕs responses, such as ÒokayÓ, (hao) Òhello,Ó (Ni hao?) Ògood-bye,Ó (zaijian) speak up when you give the stack a command, open the program, or quit it. When you open the sound control panel in the lessons, it says Òkong zhi banÓ (control panel). A marvelous talking textbook! ItÕs cute, and also effective. Hearing the sound reinforces the new word. Later in the kitchen when you reach for the dial to turn on the stove-burner, you find the sound Òkong zhi banÓ on your mindÕs tongue. The program sparkles with wit that teaches you the language: exit HyperChina and the dialogue box asks you to confirm the action with two radio buttons emblazoned: ÒbuÓ (cancel) and ÒzaijianÓ (good-bye).

You are given the opportunity to hear difficult sounds both right and wrong. Hearing it wrong sensitizes the ear by contrast to the right sound. No textbook IÕve ever used includes this clever idea; the Hypercard format delivers it to your desktop.

Throughout, HyperChina uses eye-filling graphic images selected from Chinese art. The authors are scholars of Chinese art history and Chinese music. Their exquisite taste shows in the choice of illustrations that adorn the screens, the packaging, and the Chinese lute riffs that introduce each section.


HyperChinaÕs Three Parts: Language, Lessons and ChinaGuide

(add graphic Òopening menuÓ)

HyperChina is divided into three parts. The lessons amount to a complete integrated course, not just flashcards and phrases converted to computer format. Part One is an introduction to Chinese, which explains sounds, grammar, and calligraphy. This introduces the writing system, a major stumbling block for beginning Chinese and Japanese students. The writing lessons in HyperChina are animated, to give the right stroke order and a simulated feel of brushing the characters onto electronic paper. Again, this was impossible before Chinese met the Mac, and HyperChina makes the most of it.

Part Two offers ten extended lessons. Topics are standard textbook material: greetings, family, profession, shopping, eating out, having fun, on the phone, a friend's birthday, getting out, and going home. This include new vocabulary, sentence patterns, and drills. There is an integrated recording function that lets you record your own voice as you repeat the instructorÕs clear Mandarin. You then play it back to hear your own progress. Compared to a silent textbook, or a Babeling lab, this is language-learning heaven.

The cultural notes that follow the grammar sections of the lessons are informative. For instance, the authors admit that most commercially available Mandarin phrase books are full of inauthentic sentences that are borrowed directly from English idioms (ÒGood evening, how are you?Ó ÒGesundheit,Ó ÒPleased to meet youÓ, etc.) Such phrases are useless, they donÕt exist in colloquial Chinese.

There is a cool arcade game for character recognition based on Hou Yi the legendary Chinese archer who saved the world from burning up. His unerring marksmanship shot down the extra suns that appeared in the sky. Like Hou Yi you shoot arrows at new vocabulary items that appear in round Òsuns.Ó (See graphic).

Part Three includes the China Guide, which gives frank opinions on the best Chinese dictionaries to buy, the phrase books to avoid, names of movie stars, and samples of Chinese music, (see graphic) including the voice and photo of the famous Mei Lanfang. I always wanted to hear his falsettoÑin Beijing Opera men sing the womenÕs roles. HyperChina includes a libretto for the brief sound clips, so you can understand the text and sounds of Chinese opera and pop. (add graphics ÒoperaÓ or ÒpopÓ) China Guide topics include helpful notes. You get a talking map (add graphic ÒmapÓ) and the cities say their names. You learn about numbers, currency, date and time (with a talking clock and calendar), small talk, etiquette, the Chinese restaurant experience, signs, music (this one is cool) and a dictionary.

The dictionary deserves mention because it is designed to make Chinese words memorable to non-Chinese speakers. It pronounces each word and when you turn the page, you hear the sound of a real book page turning. It gives you a search mode in both English and Chinese. Every dictionary entry (over 1,200 words from the ten lessons) is keyed to the search function. The definitions are standard and reliable. (add graphic ÒdictionaryÓ)


Sound Advice for Business and Travel

For the authors to inject subjective opinions is risky, but after reading an entry or two, I trusted their expertise to guide me through a treasury of Chinese culture. Topics include subtleties in the changing idioms of Mandarin as spoken in China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. People eager to do business in China, to study acupuncture, or take a trip to the Great Wall will find HyperChina full of sound advice.

The authors include a Q &A section to correct common misconceptions about the Chinese language. For example, they skillfully explain the debate between simplified and traditional characters. In the 1950s, the Communists on the mainland simplified many of the ancient characters. Singapore and Malaysia adopted their changes, Taiwan and Hong Kong did not. Yao and Tsao advise us not to struggle with this endless debate. You need to know both writing styles to be competent, and the situation is not likely to change in our lifetime.

You can practice writing the new words of each lesson. You write the character next to the computerÕs sample, which appears in animation, stroke by stroke. A button prints a number on every stroke to show the correct order, if you chose. The electronic brush lets you ink up the entire page, desk, or window if you are feeling frustrated or inspired. You can hear the pronunciation of the word at the same time you write it. Volume and speed of the drills can be customized by the user in three modes from soft to loud, from slow to fast. (add graphic ÒcalligraphyÓ)

The authors suggest that if a student does the drills thoroughly, and doesnÕt skip any steps, the ten lessons could be completed in twelve months, the equivalent of three semesters, or one and a half years of college work.


Suggestions for Improvement

Early releases of HyperChina included misspellings and typos in several of the lessons. The current upgrade (1.0.3) corrects them. Sometimes in multi-word answers to the drills, the recorded voice sounds a bit mechanical, like the numbers spoken by the telephone companyÕs directory assistance robot. This may have been a function of the size limitations: all of the lesson segments are trimmed to fit on 1.4 MB floppies. The up-coming CD-ROM version should allow bigger files and smoother sentences.

Dr. TsaoÕs Mandarin is crystal-clear and mellow. Even so, it would be nice to have a choice of voices for variety. I would prefer more male voices and perhaps a sampling of the typical local accents of Mandarin that one encounters in the West: Cantonese, Taiwanese, Shanghainese and Manchurian.

When HyperChina was first coded four years ago, HyperCard had no color capability. The addition of color might be nice; still one could make a case for keeping the monochrome format. Color is not necessarily an advantage to language learning. Some people will find fault with HyperChinaÕs small window size. Many students have a MacPlus, a Classic, LC or PowerBook. Prof. Yao designed the window-size for those smaller modular monitors and monochrome screens. It makes sense to design the program not just for high-end computer users, but for as many future speakers of Chinese as possible. A CD-ROM version of HyperChina is in the works with new features including an automatic Chinese name-maker, an Instant Letter Kit with a dozen templates in Chinese, that students can personalize and send to friends. This version will also include color and bigger screens.


A Bargain, Given the Alternatives

In the promotional material the authors make the point that you would pay a great deal more for one semesterÕs (roughly fifteen weeks) tuition in a college program. You share the typical class with between ten to thirty other students. In a course of fifty-minutes you might get to exchange words directly with the teacher two or three times, and that is often only drill. With HyperChina you increase your contact time exponentially.

The program comes in ten lessons, on eighteen floppies. Version 1.0.3 updates six modules. If you load all the lessons at once it takes 24.2 MB on the hard drive, and you can install one lesson at a time.

Some people may blink at the $195.00 price tag, but if you look at the choices, you will find that it is a bargain. Right now in the Bay Area, you can enroll in Cal or Stanford or State. This requires a high G.P.A. and lots of money. You had better prepare to match brains five days a week at 8:00 AM with the 18-year olds named Zhang and Chen and Wang.

If you are really serious about it, you can check out summer intensive programs at Monterey or Middlebury or Cal that offer Òmaximum immersionÓ learning. Prepare to digest one hundred vocabulary items a day and learn to cope with stress.

Assuming you havenÕt that much ambition, you can enroll in Cal Extension, or Laney College, and go to evening school. Courses are limited, but you can learn good Chinese this way, depending on your self-discipline. If the classroom environment is not your style, you can hire a private tutor, or take a Berlitz course to learn the basics one-on-one with an instructor. This takes money and motivation.

The do-it-yourself method is to buy a Mandarin textbook and tapes. Check out East Wind bookstore, or Cheng and Tsui in Boston, or the in-flight magazines on the airplane. You will spend over a hundred dollars and you will acquire some vocabulary and a pattern or two. Pay attention to the four tones! Without a native speakerÕs modeling of correct tones, your accent has every chance of sounding like Chinglish. There is no end to the jokes about Americans who learned bad Chinese. The sentence ÒI have two examples, one is about America, one is about China,Ó when said with the wrong tones, can become, ÒI have two farts, one is in America, one is in China.Ó<br>
Or you can buy HyperChina and spend a year absorbing its ten lessons. The price is the equivalent of fifteen hours of private tutoring. It is not edutainment or a video game, but an educational tool with a serious purpose. Learning any language you need discipline and hard work. You can make that effort enjoyable. HyperChina turns your Mac into an interactive Chinese learning environment with sounds, animated calligraphy, and even a dictionary that speaks its entries in pure Mandarin. HyperChinaÕs customers include U. Mass, U.C. Davis, Motorola, and the C.I.A.!

Americans have always pretended that English is the only language that matters. Foreign languages programs in high schools and college reflect our self-centered attitude. Surveys report astounding attrition rates in college language classes: across the board, 65% of those who start learning a foreign language do not make it past the second semester. More programs like HyperChina could teach us to expand our horizons; there has never been a better time to learn from and talk to one quarter of the family of humanity.

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Christopher R. Clowery has been using Chinese on Macintosh computers since 1989 and reviewing Asian language software for BMUG since 1993. He wishes HyperChina and the Mac had existed when he began to study Chinese.