RATING CHINESE LANGUAGE SAMPLES:
WHAT IS HARD AND WHAT IS EASY?
Cornelius C. Kubler
Williams College
There are occasions when it may be desirable to rate samples of spoken or written
Chinese as to degree of difficulty. This could be, for example, in selecting linguistic
content to teach in our own classes, in preparing pedagogical materials for the use of
others, or in assessing the proficiency levels of learners in one or several of the various
language skills and modes of communication. But how is one to determine the level of
difficulty of a given Chinese word, grammar structure, conversation for listening, or
reading passage?
Clearly, the native culture and language of the learners (as well as other cultures
and languages with which they may be familiar) will influence whether a language
sample is considered hard or easy. What is similar to the learners’ native language will
tend to be easy while what is different may be harder. It follows from this that, for
maximum efficiency, group classes should be organized based on the native language of
the learners. For the same reason, pedagogical materials should be prepared with the
needs of learners of the same or similar cultural and linguistic backgrounds in mind.
Other factors influencing level of difficulty include relative frequency of use of an
item (since the more frequently learners encounter something, the more likely they are to
learn it), technical/professional vs. lay usage, and style or register. In general, very formal
and very informal register tend to be harder for non-native learners (in part because of
lower overall frequency and in part because non-natives may seldom be in situations
where they encounter such usage) whereas unmarked or neutral register tends to be
easier. Additional factors that affect difficulty include discourse organization, length and
complexity of grammatical structures, literary and historical allusions, references to
society and culture, and standard vs. non-standard usage. In general, it can be said that
learners at the lower proficiency levels should be expected only to be able to handle
standard usage, while learners at the higher proficiency levels must be able to deal with
ever greater degrees of variation from the standard.
Besides linguistic content, factors related to linguistic form can also affect
difficulty level and must not be underestimated in learning, teaching, materials
preparation, and testing. In spoken Chinese, these may include volume, speech clarity,
background noise, false starts, and slips of the tongue. In written Chinese, they may
include font style, font size, print clarity, mechanical as opposed to manual production of
written symbols (including, if handwritten, the degree of cursiveness), punctuation, and
typographical errors.
Finally, there are the related questions of speed and stamina—that is, how long it
takes learners or examinees to complete a given task involving a Chinese language
sample; and over how long a period of time they are able to maintain a certain level of
performance.