Most Chinese courses offered in the UK rely on 'imported' grammatical concepts to explain the Chinese language. These concepts are often inappropriate and overly complicated, hindering the learner's rate of progress. In addition, they create an unnatural divide between language and culture which impedes real cultural understanding, and hence communication with Chinese people. Since the 'natural' concepts used by TDR teachers are simpler and more effective, we can devote more of our classroom time to practical exercises which improve the ability and confidence of our learners. In fact, over three quarters of class time is generally devoted to practical communication and practice. As a result, our learners quickly acquire a solid grasp of the basics of both language and culture, enabling them to communicate effectively with Chinese people in a relatively short space of time. Just sixty hours of participation in the TDR course can be enough to grasp the fundamental grammatical concepts and read eighty percent of the most frequently used Chinese characters, as well as to speak basic Chinese.

Success to Date
The first elementary level TDR book (TDR: The Dao of Chinese Grammar) is currently being prepared for publication in April 2007. The Meridian Chinese Studies Centre has been established to promote the teaching of Chinese language and culture using the TDR approach. The first elementary level courses to be arranged by the MeCS are now entering their second term of teaching and more elementary level courses are planned. In addition, we have trained more than 60 teachers, all of whom are currently resident in the UK and ready to begin teaching. Many of our graduate teaching students have considerable experience of teaching Chinese using the methods more commonly used in the UK but are keen to put the new TDR approach into practice.

Our Teachers
In the UK, most of MECS teachers are university teachers and native speakers of Chinese. MeCS teachers have taught Chinese language and culture classes at all levels to individuals, businesses, media and organisations including government departments and financial institutions.

Mr Su Liqun , the principal of MeCS, is an established Chinese language specialist, humanist, writer and playwright. He has published a variety of books including 'Chinese For Everyone', 'Contemporary Chinese Fiction' (Picador, Macmillan); and 'TDR: The Dao of Chinese Grammar' Elementary Book. He also is the major writer of the BBC Mandarin Language Program which was broadcast in European countries in 2004. Mr. Liqun Su is well known as having been the main Mandarin teacher at the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London between 1987 and 2007. For over 20 years Mr Su has taught Chinese language and culture classes at SOAS to individuals, businesses and organisations, including MOD, Foreign Office, British Council and financial institutions.

The introduction of Chinese characters of TDR is written by Dr Zhou Shoujin, who holds a Doctorate in the History of the Chinese Language and is now Associate Professor at the college of Chinese Language Studies, Peking University. Some of the exercise sections of TDR are written by Dr Song Lianyi (Linguistics and Intonation), a Lecturer at SOAS with a doctorate in Linguistics who was formerly Chairman of the British Chinese Language Teaching Seminar.

In order to help our students develop a better sense of what life in China is really like, and to give them the chance to put their language skills to practical use, MeCS has established a number of Language Environmental Points (LEP) in many locations including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Suzhou. Students visiting these areas can meet with tutors who can accompany and guide them. All tuition in China takes place in Chinese, so that the students may learn to speak Chinese with confidence in real-life situations.

Examples of the TDR Approach: 1

Yin and Yang & the Five Basic Sentences

TDR uses the well known concepts of Yin and Yang to explain the harmony present in the structure of the Chinese sentence.

The relationship between Yin and Yang is fluid - they combine, separate and interact, coming into and then out of balance in a never ending cycle, as night follows day follows night. Human life (including material and spiritual life) also follows a Yin and Yang cycle of balance and imbalance, followed by again coming into balance, and so on. But this principle is even more noticeable in the Chinese language. Every sentence of Chinese displays the relationship between Yin and Yang and the balance and imbalance between them. The head of the sentence represents Yin, the tail represents Yang - between them we often find a connecting concept, acting as a wire to join the negative and positive poles of the sentence.

If, for example, we are talking about Jack, we can form the sentence 'Jack is a person'. Jack, at the head of the sentence, represents Yin. The concept 'person', at the tail of the sentence, represents Yang. And the relationship between them is that of being, so 'shi' (to be) is the connecting word in our first basic sentence.

安娜 - 是 - 人 (Anna shi ren)

In the same way, in the sentence 'Anna is in London', Anna represents Yin while London represents Yang. The connecting word is 'zai' (to be in a location).

安娜 - 在 - 伦敦 (Anna zai Lundun)

In the sentence 'Anna has a flat', 'you' (to have or possess) is the connecting word.

安娜 - 有 - 房子 (Anna you fangzi)

In the sentence 'Anna is reading a book', 'kan' (to read) is the connecting word.

安娜 - 看 - 书 (Anna kan shu)

However, in the sentence 'Anna is pretty', Yin and Yang are combined as a single element which cannot be separated; Anna's prettiness cannot exist without Anna. Their relationship is internal as well as superficial so there is no need for a connecting word between them.
安娜 - 很漂亮 (Anna hen piaoliang)

So the first four sentences follow a common pattern, and we call this the 'Yin and Yang pattern', while the fifth sentence has a different pattern which we call the 'Yin Yang pattern'. In our Yin Yang pattern sentence, Anna is the Yin element while 'pretty' is the Yang element. These five basic sentences are shown in the table below.

Without these five basic sentences, there could be no communication about the human, material or spiritual elements of our world. 'What is it?' confirms its nature; 'Where is it?' confirms its location; 'What does it have?' confirms its possessions; 'What is it doing?' confirms its activities; 'What is it like?' confirms its character. During the slow course of mankind's progress, language has naturally developed from these most basic and simple, 'classic' sentences into the language we speak today.

The Chinese language certainly follows this rule and preserves it to this day. According to the Chinese classic The Yi Jing, the concept of Yin and Yang is timeless and universal. Yin and Yang are the origin of the universe and everything in it. In terms of our everyday life, Tian (the skies and the sun's rays) represents Yang and Di (the earth and the oceans) represents Yin. The sun's rays nourish the seeds of life on the earth and in the oceans and perpetuate the cycle of life. The ancient Chinese believed that, in the natural world, Yin and Yang also produce the five elements of metal, wood, water, fire and earth and so are the basis of everything in our world.

Examples of the TDR Approach: 2

The Heart of the Sentence - or 'Qu Zhen Xing'

For more complex sentences, TDR teachers use the concept of Qu Zhen Xing or 'getting to the heart of the sentence' to explain Chinese sentence structure. Although Chinese can appear complicated, in fact Chinese has a very natural, logical word order which learners using our method grasp easily and can very quickly put to practical use. Chinese sentence follows a very simple logical order with the most important concept or final outcome at the end of the sentence.

To give a very simple example in English, the sentence 'This train is for Morden via Bank' would be expressed in Chinese as 'This train via Bank to Morden'. Since Morden is the final destination, this must come at the end of a Chinese sentence - and since the train passes through Bank on its way to Morden, so does the Chinese sentence!

To give another simple example, when addressing an envelope, Chinese people write the address the opposite way to British people. The order is: country; city; area; street; house; person's name. This is a logical order if you think of the letter arriving at the person's house, having first been delivered to the right country, then to the right city etc. Chinese sentences always follow this logical pattern of working from the large to the small, from the general to the specific, in the order that things actually occurred.

Because Chinese sentences follow this logical pattern, when a sentences includes the elements of timing and location, we place the time element before the location element, and this before the personal element. Hence Tian (representing time) comes before Di (representing place) which comes before Ren (people). Let us take an example of a sentence about going to the college library computer room to study English. If we want to use both time and location elements in this sentence, then we have two choices of word order:

(1) I went to the college library computer room today in the evening at 7pm
"我去学校图书馆的电脑室今天晚上七点。"
or
(2) Today in the evening at 7pm I went to the college library computer room.
"今天晚上七点我去学校图书馆的电脑室"。

The first choice is not Chinese, as it does not follow the Tian Di Ren pattern. According to the Tian Di Ren principle, we must identify the time before the location - I can not go to the college library computer room without the time having already been determined. So, following the pattern of how the event actually unfolded, the sentence order should be: today in the evening at 7pm - I went to the college library computer room - to study English'. It must be in this order to be standard Chinese.