No better teacher than Mike

JOLIET – In 2010, frustrated at the continual low enrollment for his community-based Chinese classes at local junior colleges, Mike Hainzinger dubbed himself “Laoshi Mike” (“Teacher Mike”) and started a whimsical YouTube series called “Chinese with Mike.”

To film the series, Hainzinger donned a Hawaiian shirt and then set up a digital camera, white board, mattress and alarm clock in his garage – the initial episode shows him “sleeping” with a teddy bear.

With it, Hainzinger found success.

That video, along with the ones that followed it, led to a publishing deal and Amazon UK bestselling status. By using Hainzinger’s methods, people can easily learn conversational Mandarin Chinese, he said.

“In 10 to 15 years, China is going to be the number one economy in the world and it’s already a key player,” said Hainzinger, now a full-time English professor at Joliet Junior College. “If we want to be competitive as far as trying to find jobs in business, especially international business, we should have a basic knowledge of Chinese.”

Although Hainzinger only advertised the episodes on his Facebook page, those 10-minute videos eventually garnered more than a million collective views and a publishing contract with John Murray Press, an imprint of Hachette, Hainzinger said.

The “Chinese with Mike: A Coursebook for Absolute Beginners” package contains a textbook, 60 “Chinese with Mike” video lessons, a companion workbook and an audio CD, recorded with native Chinese speakers, Hainzinger said.

The series will be released in the United States in November. One may pre-order it at amazon.com. Hainzinger and his publisher agreed to leave the first 10 on YouTube, so people can see his teaching style before deciding to purchase products.

“Since this was my baby, it was very hard to surrender some of the control to the publisher,” Hainzinger said, “but I could never have dreamed of the marketing they’ve done around the world. It’s very humbling that they dumped so many resources into this program.”

Hainzinger said the videos really took off when Geoff Rusch, JJC media producer and technician, became interested in Hainzinger’s project, provided some suggestions for improving quality and finally began producing them.

Rusch was happy to help, to the point of creating original music and making a few cameo appearances. He said Hainzinger’s style makes Chinese fun and easy to digest.

“If anyone wants to learn Mandarin,” Rusch said, “there’s no better teacher than Mike.”

Ironically, it was Hainzinger’s English degree that laid the foundation for learning Chinese.

Hainzinger said he realized too late that the degree – without being coupled with an educational component – qualified him for two jobs: flipping burgers and delivering pizzas.

However, during college, Hainzinger spent a semester studying in Italy, where he befriended students from Taiwan. One friend told Hainzinger about an opportunity for teaching English in Taiwan. Hainzinger took it and taught there for two years, starting in 2003. In some ways, he was also a student.

Hainzinger learned that Chinese food doesn’t come in white takeout containers, fortune cookies aren’t authentically Chinese, tipping is nonexistent, decorative beer can displays are for funerals and not housewarming gifts, and picking up Chinese from real conversations simplified learning the language.

It’s the Chinese characters that often cause people to shy away from the language, Hainzinger said. The basic sentence structure – noun, verb, object – is similar to English and doesn’t have the extensive verb conjugation of, say, French and Spanish, he added.

“Once you build confidence, you can learn the more intricate grammar patterns and then go from there,” Hainzinger said.

A student simply needs to master the basic sounds, about 35 of them, Hainzinger said.

Reading and writing Chinese was simplified with the invention of Pinyin in the 1950s. Pinyin writes the sounds with the Latin alphabet instead of Mandarin Chinese characters, Hainzinger said.

That said, even learning the characters is not difficult, once a person understands the patterns. For instance, Hainzinger said, characters that concern water – such as rain and river – all share a similar pattern.

“Practicing the characters became a stress-relieving activity while riding the bus or watching television,” Hainzinger said.

Email and social media has increased opportunities for practicing written communication with individuals from other countries, Hainzinger said, a good thing in an increasingly global society.

“Nelson Mandela said, ‘If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head,’ ” Hainzinger said. “ ‘If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.’ ”

KNOW MORE

For more information, visit www.chinesewithmike.com. For more information about Hainzinger's Chinese SILP class, visit www.jjc.edu/academics/divisions/arts-sciences/english-world-lang/Pages/silp.aspx.