As a professional Mandarin instructor with almost two decades worth of teaching experience in American schools, I came to recognize how language-learning in a school setting is only one step in the long journey of acquiring a foreign language. I felt a need and urge to bring my profession beyond school, and I believe professional teaching should be accessible to anyone at any point in their life. It is with this belief that I founded MAD Mandarin LLC in 2018 with the goal to incorporate the latest teaching methods with my own innovative approach of Mindful-Active-Dynamic to positively achieve the best language-learning results.
“Studying Mandarin is not just to acquire a useful skill, but also to capture an indispensable part of your pursuit of a fulfilled life.”
My Approach
What is the challenge of professional Mandarin language teaching?
I've been teaching Mandarin in the US for about two decades. The biggest challenge to me as a teacher is to see the student drop rate remaining high despite having technologically advanced teaching devices and well-trained teachers. The schools I worked with usually had a 50% drop rate for beginning students.
The primary reasons for the high drop rate are due to unpleasant learning experiences and unsatisfied results. Students usually found that the language they've learned with painful effort was not practical and useful in the real world.
Worse, the poor learning experience may lead some students to question their learning capability and even stop them from pursuing their dreams.
While traditional Mandarin teaching, focusing on knowledge delivery and testing, current professional Mandarin teaching promotes learner-focused methods with addressing language acquisition and use. However, this updated practice can hardly help make students stay.
A true learner-centered teaching starts with listening—student-focused listening.
What is missing? #1: Learner-focused Listening
— To understand and anticipate each student's learning difficulties linguistically and psychologically fully and help enhance a positive learning experience.
— To emphasize the complex and lengthy nature of acquiring a new language and help plan the learning as a long journey.
— To provide a student with opportunities to discover and reassess their direction, motivation, and support in reaching their learning goals and take ownership of their learning.
A Solution: Mindful-Active-Dynamic Approach
Acquiring a new language is a long and manifold process. Once you make the journey challenging but rewarding, you will gain not only a skill but also a fulfilled life.
Learning is too important to be taken seriously -- it should be the fun part of your daily life.
The Mindful-Active-Dynamic approach will help you make your learning as an enjoyable habit/routine, a foundation for the best result with a positive experience of acquiring a new language.
Dynamic:
Language is alive, so is learning a language. All is dynamic.
We, the language teaching experts, may not pay enough attention to this truth, so even the most current and updated language teaching methods, such as communicative and task-based approaches, are treating a language as an object and learning a language as a definable process. Meaning making or critical approach is better addressing the issue, but still not adequate.
With the dynamic concept, learning a new language is like building relationships with the learner him/herself and all other resources, the language, people, and environment. As the nature of all kinds of relationships, dynamic or constant changing should be identified and utilized throughout the entire learning process.
How MAD works? Please click below for a free consultation.