Chinese Program's Web page teaches students to talk

By Ken Gewertz

Gazette Staff

Talking computers have become fairly common, but in a number of rooms around Harvard, students are talking back.

The dialogue isn't exactly witty. In fact, it is downright parrotlike, and, to many, incomprehensible. The computers are teaching students how to pronounce Chinese.

By calling up a particular page of the Chinese Language Program's website, students can click on a series of Chinese words and hear the voice of a native speaker pronounce each of them, including the subtle tonal variations that can indicate radical differences in meaning.

Also on the website are class assignments, discussion groups, a fast-growing archive of Chinese texts, and a host of links to connect users with everything from Chinese radio broadcasts to photos of the Great Wall to visa information.

The site is the brainchild of Baozhang He, director of the Chinese Language Program, and Wenze Hu, a Chinese instructor and self-taught Internet expert who solved the project's technical problems. Unlike many course-related websites, which are accessible only to those who have paid their tuition and been granted a password, the Chinese Language site can be visited by anyone with Internet access.

"The main elements of Chinese are here," said He. "We decided to make it open to everyone. Anyone teaching Chinese can download the materials and even get instructions for using them."

In addition to pronunciation aids, the site contains a rich harvest of materials designed to enhance the experience of Chinese culture. For example, the Web page for Chinese 101x, the advanced beginners' course, includes specimens of Chinese calligraphy and brush painting, a restaurant menu complete with brightly colored pictures of Chinese haute cuisine, portraits of Confucius, and Chinese landscape photos, including a spectacularly detailed, wide-angle shot of the Great Wall snaking endlessly along the top of a rugged mountain chain.

One fascinating audio feature is a paragraph of Chinese read in the four major Chinese dialects -- Mandarin, Shanghai, Cantonese, and Southern Min (the dialect of Taiwan). Although the four native speakers are reading the same set of characters, what comes out sounds totally different. "We call them dialects, but they are actually more different than German and English," He said.

But perhaps even more significant than the cultural material are the interactive features that link students and instructors in one continuous digital conversation.

Chinese Bb, the course in elementary modern Chinese, taught by He and preceptor Craig Butler, is in the vanguard of this trend. With an enrollment of almost 90 students, it is the largest class in the program, and it is entirely online, including assignments, discussion groups, texts, and announcements of films, cultural events, and other activities.

"We still hand out some photocopied materials, but we are trying to get to a completely paperless class," He said.

The near-paperless course has proven popular with students.

"I really like it," said Robert Sarvis '98. "It's very convenient for me. It provides up-to-date information that I might have missed in class or just forgotten, and it can be printed out if you prefer hard copy."

In addition to saving paper (Butler estimates that the online course has halved the number of photocopies he cranks out for class use), the use of the Internet may also change the way language is taught.

"Traditionally, lectures have been conducted largely in English and have been concerned with discussions about the language, while the sections, which are conducted almost exclusively in Mandarin, provide opportunities to use the language," Butler said.

"The Web page allows me to deal with the questions and difficulties that come up for students in the form of a document. This means that we don't have to spend so much lecture time talking about these issues and we can potentially devote the time to other things."

To check out the Chinese Language Program's Web page, set your browser to http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~clp/China/harvard.htm.