(By Mengmeng Tu on September 4th, 2023)
While many of us have embarked on the journey of learning a new language through the pages of textbooks, have you ever considered learning from detective stories?
“Detective fiction is all about everyday life,” says Dr. Ruth Herd, the coordinator of Mandarin Chinese at the Horizon Programme, Imperial College London. “What was the suspect wearing? Where was the body found? Just details of everyday life. And that’s especially useful when you’re not in the language.”
Diverging from the complexity often found in literary works, detective narratives offer refreshing accessibility while staying deeply intertwined with daily experiences.
Ruth points to Can I dance with you 我可以请你跳舞吗（a textbook in Chinese Breeze Series, 300 words level）. The text tells a story about a man who works for a bank unexpectedly falling in love with a young woman, only to find that suddenly the police knock at his door and suspect him of stealing ten million Chinese yuan (approximately £1.09 million) from the bank. The man is forced to leave his lover and then take an adventure to vindicate his name.
Ruth did a detailed analysis of the lexis in this story: for the 366 distinct characters composing the text, a remarkable 65% appear five times or more, allowing ample opportunity for learners to consolidate knowledge through repetition. “The detective story, unlike many other forms of literature, tolerates a degree of repetition that in the context of other literary genres would most probably render the writing style tedious and bland, ” writes Ruth in her research paper.
Though consolidating the existing character knowledge and expanding the vocabulary are both important and inextricably linked in learning knowledge, Ruth thinks the former is more helpful to learning Chinese and believes the relatively low occurrence of new characters should help students who tire from memorizing a totally unfamiliar script. What’s more, detective stories also consist of many dialogues, which is suitable for students to practice oral Chinese.
Ellie Bruce is a Chinese learner from the University College of London. She also thinks that learning Chinese from detective stories is a great idea. “Some text in tutorials is sometimes too boring,” she says. Ellie remembers an entire textbook chapter centered on a photography competition, the aim of which was originally to teach terms about photography, but it’s tedious for an average learner. “If you have a story, like detective stories will be more fun, ” said Ellie. She is a devoted fan of detective stories, and enjoys the Chinese TV crime drama, The Bad Kids (隐秘的角落) very much. The drama tells a story about three children who unintentionally film a murder scene and therefore they are inadvertently entangled in the chase with the murderer.
It is not solely in the realm of Mandarin that detective stories wield their enchanting pedagogical potential. Texts like Troll i Ord for Norwegian and Mord Am Morgen for German also stand as parallel examples, encouraging language learners to try this fascinating approach. Therefore, no matter what the language is, reading detective stories may always be an enthralling way to practice.
But to read a detective story one must already have a grasp of the language. Chinese is notoriously difficult for foreigners, not just characters but those all important tones. Pinyin, in addition to characters, would be advantageous.
I started learning Chinese in the mid 80’s (damn I’m old). We had 2 x 3 hours per week. One for characters, tone, grammar, etc., whilst in the second a person from Beijing would tell us children’s stories, everyday topics, and so on, for conversational practice.
I did that for 18 months.
All we had was a text called Colloquial Chinese, which was quite good because it was everyday topics. We did simplified characters and pinyin.
Lack of immersion, plus work, meant that what I’d learnt fell by the wayside.
CV19 comes along and I think I’ll refresh my Chinese, and ended up in touch with a young lady in Guangzhou who needed English for work, so it became a one-way lesson, which I was ok with because I know the difficulties I had at first.
Sometimes I’d watch that show 非诚勿扰, just to try and follow what was said, and I recalled more than I’d anticipated.
This is how I progressed:
We go through the above text at a certain pace, but I wanted to do better. I went back to the very start of the text, and started again, but that time I covered any answers, and translated both ways. This was in addition to the 2 classes. If the questions at the end were something like ‘fill in the missing character’ I did that, and then did the same answer in both English and pinyin.
I also started teaching myself traditional characters. What helped me with those was getting old newspapers, a brush + ink, and using a whole newspaper sheet for each character. I wasn’t interested in the calligraphy aspect, but I found that doing them large, and most importantly correctly, made it easier when using an ordinary pen.
It took time but eventually I caught up to where we were in class, and those classes were much easier, so I continued and went into the following lessons before the classes, which by then were more revision.
Personally, I feel the focus is better when tones are emphasised when learning, to avoid repeating bad habits.
I once worked with someone from Lebanon.
He was telling me how he grew up in a Christian school in Lebanon, and although Arabic was first first language others would tell him he had an accent (which he couldn’t pick up).
I still try to have a short conversation with some Chinese people I interact with, but without the constant practice it isn’t easy (for them as well as myself).
Despite living in SE Asia for a couple of years, everyone spoke English.
When covid hit I thought I’d practice/refresh my Chinese. I ended up in touch with a young lady in Guangzhou who needed English for work. It soon became one-way lessons, but I was fine with that, as I understood how difficult it can be. She progressed from texting to phoning me so that she could practice.
I’m pleased to say that it’s been 12+ months since I’ve heard from her, so can only presume she’s now confident enough to go solo with English.
Detective stories?
They may be great once one knows enough, but I seriously doubt they’d be of any value to someone starting out.
But everyone learns differently.