Making Chinese easy to learn

Online language lab offers new lectures every day

By Chung Hyun-chae

More and more people are rushing to learn the Chinese language amid China’s rapid economic growth and the nation’s increasing international influence, according to a well-known instructor.

“Although English has yet to yield its status as the world’s common language, the demand for learning Chinese keeps growing,” said Moon Jung-a, director of the MOONJUNGA Chinese Institute, the biggest online Chinese language lab in Korea.

“China has seen remarkable economic growth since its entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001. With the rise of China, people all over the world feel the need to learn Chinese,” she said.

“In particular, if Korea and China sign a free trade agreement (FTA) and put it into practice in the near future, economic and civilian exchanges between the two countries will be accelerated. It is likely to fuel the demand for Chinese language education in Korea,” Moon added.

Chinese is the language currently used by more than 1.3 billion people all over the world, about one-sixth of the world’s population.

With the increasing numbers of people learning Chinese, on the back of the growing global power of China, many believe that Chinese will soon replace English as a global language.

But Chinese remains as an elective foreign language in most schools, rather than a required language such as English.

Moon said that is largely because Korea started training Chinese language teachers a bit later.

“The Chinese language education market is belatedly burgeoning in Korea, with annual growth of around 20 percent in the past 10 years. Online language institutes account for about 20 percent of the total and are expanding their presence,” she told The Korea Times.

Moon became interested in the Chinese language while studying medicine in China and decided to become a Chinese language instructor.

Being a sought-after Chinese instructor, she wanted to allow as many students as possible access to her class. This drove her to establish the online Chinese language institute in 2003.

The institute boasts the largest number of successes with the HSK, or the Chinese Proficiency Test, and the largest number of students taking Chinese language courses through the website.

“We have 5,059 Chinese lectures on our website so that students of all levels can take courses based on their levels. And for working people who have no time to study sitting at their desks, we provide an e-learning application in which we upload new lectures every day,” the director said.

“A growing number of conglomerates require their employees, as well as job applicants, to submit a certificate of a second foreign language skill, mostly Chinese. Given these circumstances, we expect that more people will come to our institute,” she added.

Most people who have studied Chinese have often said the most difficult part is to memorize Chinese characters because of the complexity of the numerous strokes used to write even one Chinese character.

“If you learn the 214 basic codes that form Chinese characters, it becomes a lot easier to memorize the total of 47,035 Chinese characters, as well as 2,238 simplified characters,” the director explained.

English experts say that the best way to learn English is to enjoy learning it and to have an affinity for it.

Moon said the same goes for learning Chinese.

“It is important to be exposed to the Chinese language as often as possible. I recommend watching Chinese dramas, movies and listening to Chinese music, which are fun to indulge in,” she said.