I hadn't thought about the differences between how one goes about learning phonetically vs...whatever the optimal way of learning Chinese/Japanese would be called.
At the college I went to, which had a good Chinese department, as far as I could tell, classes were taught entirely by native Chinese professors. I would expect them to teach in a way that works for the language, but as pretty much everyone there had previously learned a Romance language to some degree (very typical of the high schools in the area), I wonder if they brought preconceptions from that experience.
I knew many of the students in the department, and their experience lines up pretty well with what the author explains (they studied intensively for 4 years and could still only read at any reasonable pace from textbook passages/speak passably on certain predefined topics).
At the college I went to, which had a good Chinese department, as far as I could tell, classes were taught entirely by native Chinese professors. I would expect them to teach in a way that works for the language, but as pretty much everyone there had previously learned a Romance language to some degree (very typical of the high schools in the area), I wonder if they brought preconceptions from that experience.
I knew many of the students in the department, and their experience lines up pretty well with what the author explains (they studied intensively for 4 years and could still only read at any reasonable pace from textbook passages/speak passably on certain predefined topics).