Today we had a very brief review session to close out the first book of the third grade. This also concludes our first (calendar) year of Chinese school at home. It's been a great year. We finished the 2nd grade book and a third of the 3rd grade. My daughter has been making great strides in learning characters and reading comprehensions.
Happy Holidays!
Sunday, December 23, 2007
Thursday, December 20, 2007
The Smart Afanti
One of the reading materials in this week's lesson is about the smart Afanti, a legend figure in Xingjiang folklore who is smart and cunning. We had grown up with a lot of such stories of his adventures.
Anyway, my daughter decided to translate it into English. Here is what she comes up with:
Anyway, my daughter decided to translate it into English. Here is what she comes up with:
Nobody Can Fool MeThe original Chinese is:
On the road, it is very busy. Zhang San yelled to everybody:
“I am the smartest person, nobody can fool me! If you don’t
believe, you can all try!”
Not long after Zhang San yelled, Afanti happened to pass
by. Afanti stopped and told Zhang San: “Mister, I trust that
you are the smartest person in the world, nobody could fool
you. But my friend says, he is even smarter, he has a method
to fool you! Please wait here, I will find my friend, and we
can see who is smarter?”
Zhang San quickly agreed: “Okay, okay, if you go quickly, I
will wait here.”Afanti went, Zhang San stood and waited, and waited until
nighttime. The road didn’t have many cars, not many people,
and Afanti and his “smart” friend still hadn’t shown up. Of
course, Zhang San was fooled into waiting for them.
谁也骗不了我
马路上，车来人往的真热闹。张三对着来来往往的人们高
声喊着： “我是天下第一聪明的人，谁也骗不了我！不信，
你们谁都可以来试试！”
张三喊了不久，阿凡提正好从这里走过。阿凡提就站下来
对张三说：“先生，我相信你是世界上最聪明的人，谁也骗
不了你。可是我的朋友说，他比你更聪明，他有办法能骗
得了你！请你在这儿等一等，我去把我的朋友找来，看看
你们俩到底谁聪明？”
张三满口答应：“可以可以，你快去吧，我就在这里等着。”
阿凡提走了，张三站在那里左等右等，一直等到了天黑。
马路上车少了，人也少了，阿凡提和他那“聪明”的朋友还
是没有来。当然，受了骗的张三是怎么也等不到他们的了。
Saturday, December 8, 2007
Is Panama A First?
Thanks to James who alerted me the news that Panama is moving towards requiring all schools to teach Chinese. I am not aware of any other countries which are not China's close neighbors to make such a bold move. Is Panama a first in this aspect?
Saturday, December 1, 2007
For Practical Reasons, Is it Important to Learn Chinese?
There are many reasons for a non-native Chinese person to learn the Chinese language. Many of them are based on non-practical rationals: the love for the country, the people, the culture, and so on.
In more recent years however, a practical rational is gaining a huge momentum. This is based on the tremendous development of China's economy and influence. There is a wide-spread belief that China may overtake the west, namely the United States, as the world's leading power within this century. As such, learning the Chinese language would enhance one's future career opportunities.
I am very suspicious about such claims. Just about 20 years ago, when Japan was on the rise and threatening to take over the US in economical power, there had been a lot of talk about the importance of learning Japanese. We don't hear about that any more. For one thing, Japan has been in a bad slump for more than a decade. But more importantly, most, if not all, of the business conduct involving Japan are done with English language. Knowing Japanese is not a prerequisite to a career there.
A recent article in the Economists magazine touched on the same issue.
According to that article, there are 30 million foreigners studying Chinese language today. But it did not say how many of them are doing it for the practical reason.
In more recent years however, a practical rational is gaining a huge momentum. This is based on the tremendous development of China's economy and influence. There is a wide-spread belief that China may overtake the west, namely the United States, as the world's leading power within this century. As such, learning the Chinese language would enhance one's future career opportunities.
I am very suspicious about such claims. Just about 20 years ago, when Japan was on the rise and threatening to take over the US in economical power, there had been a lot of talk about the importance of learning Japanese. We don't hear about that any more. For one thing, Japan has been in a bad slump for more than a decade. But more importantly, most, if not all, of the business conduct involving Japan are done with English language. Knowing Japanese is not a prerequisite to a career there.
A recent article in the Economists magazine touched on the same issue.
According to that article, there are 30 million foreigners studying Chinese language today. But it did not say how many of them are doing it for the practical reason.
Sunday, November 11, 2007
Pinyin is done
The first four lessons of the 3rd grade book are about teaching pinyin skills. We went through them quite quickly since my daughter had learned pinyin a couple of years ago. Today, we started with the fifth lesson, a "normal" one after all the pinyin was taken care of.
It's quite curious that the lessons in this first book of the 3rd grade book seems to be easier than those in the 2nd grade book. For this lesson, we have a nice story of a General's son figuring out how to weigh an elephant (曹冲称象), a famous historical tale which is more likely a legend than a factual. The story is pretty much the entire lesson. We don't have any grammar or other language teaching.
During the teaching of the 2nd grade book, we had settled into a routine in which I would have her read after me the text a couple of times before her reading on her own. She had complained it as tedious and boring. Today I tried something slightly different. I had her trying to read the text all by herself without teaching her first. She did pretty well for the most part, aided by the pinyin I had put on the new characters. After that, we went through the new characters and explained the meaning of the text.
The lesson was done in less than an hour, which made my daughter pretty happy.
It's quite curious that the lessons in this first book of the 3rd grade book seems to be easier than those in the 2nd grade book. For this lesson, we have a nice story of a General's son figuring out how to weigh an elephant (曹冲称象), a famous historical tale which is more likely a legend than a factual. The story is pretty much the entire lesson. We don't have any grammar or other language teaching.
During the teaching of the 2nd grade book, we had settled into a routine in which I would have her read after me the text a couple of times before her reading on her own. She had complained it as tedious and boring. Today I tried something slightly different. I had her trying to read the text all by herself without teaching her first. She did pretty well for the most part, aided by the pinyin I had put on the new characters. After that, we went through the new characters and explained the meaning of the text.
The lesson was done in less than an hour, which made my daughter pretty happy.
Friday, October 26, 2007
Pangu: the Chinese Legend/Myth
One of the biggest differences or improvements in our Grade 3 textbook in comparison of the Grade 2 one is that it consists a variety of legends, myths, fables, and other stories. Most of them are Chinese and some of them were translated from foreign sources.
The third lesson of the textbook has two reading materials, one is a simplified version of the legend of Pangu (盘古开天地) and another is a fable of drawing snakes with feet (画蛇添足). My daughter read the reading the first one as part of her homework last night. Even though she could read the text fairly well by herself, she needed substantial help to understand the story. But she enjoyed the story a great deal. Because of the story itself, she probably spent quite a bit more time on it than she usually spent in reading material assignments.
The third lesson of the textbook has two reading materials, one is a simplified version of the legend of Pangu (盘古开天地) and another is a fable of drawing snakes with feet (画蛇添足). My daughter read the reading the first one as part of her homework last night. Even though she could read the text fairly well by herself, she needed substantial help to understand the story. But she enjoyed the story a great deal. Because of the story itself, she probably spent quite a bit more time on it than she usually spent in reading material assignments.
Thursday, October 11, 2007
3rd Grade!
This past Sunday we started our first lesson of the 3rd grade book. Due to the unique design of this textbook series, the start of the 3rd grade is when they finally teach pinyin. The book plans to have four lessons in four weeks to cover the entire pinyin content, while also teaching some new characters. This suits us really well.
My daughter has learned pinyin several years ago when she was still attending our local Chinese school. Although her pronunciation still has much room to improve, she is remarkably well in knowing the pinyin system itself. So we really don't need to spend much time on it other than reviewing and having fun with some of the tongue-twisters designed to improve pronunciations.
This also looks to be four easy weeks, not only in the lessons but also in the homework load. As pinyin being the current focus, the homework is temporarily without character-dictation and sentence-making tasks, two of the more difficult ones for my daughter.
Things should be back to "normal" after the initial four weeks. :)
My daughter has learned pinyin several years ago when she was still attending our local Chinese school. Although her pronunciation still has much room to improve, she is remarkably well in knowing the pinyin system itself. So we really don't need to spend much time on it other than reviewing and having fun with some of the tongue-twisters designed to improve pronunciations.
This also looks to be four easy weeks, not only in the lessons but also in the homework load. As pinyin being the current focus, the homework is temporarily without character-dictation and sentence-making tasks, two of the more difficult ones for my daughter.
Things should be back to "normal" after the initial four weeks. :)
Monday, October 1, 2007
Grade Promotion, Finally!
It took quite a bit longer than we originally thought, but we finally finished the last lesson and review for the Book 3 or the 2nd grade. Next week, we will start our 3rd grade classes!
My daughter did pretty well in our last review class, during which we went through all the character cards and lesson texts of the Book 3. She was able to read all the lessons without the help of Pinyin and only had a little bit of hiccups when she was unsure of pronunciation of certain characters. Of the 136 new characters in this book, she was able to recognize over 100 of them, without any help of context.
In the meantime, the original excitement when we started with this 2nd grade textbook is wearing off dramatically. We have since settled into a routine of how the class progresses and my daughter is getting tired and sick of it.
For the lesson text, I usually start by reading the text myself for her. Then she reads after me sentence-by-sentence for a couple of times, which gives me opportunities to correct or refine some of the pronunciation problems. We will then finish by hearing her reading it all by herself for once. She felt that this process is a bit too long and tedious. We probably need to change the routine as we start our 3rd grade to keep her fresh and more interested.
The other big complain she has is when we go through the grammar rules in the book. When I explain the lesson, I usually already touch on most of the grammar points. The systematic illustration of the grammar after the lesson text seems to be boring for her. We usually go by them quickly and I am not sure how much attention she was paying for them anyway.
Curiously, the 3rd grade textbook seems to have little to nothing in the grammar teaching. The textbook is made up almost entirely with the lesson text and reading materials alone. It seems that it is designed to emphasize reading and reading. My daughter was happy when she saw that. I guess we will just have to teach grammar based on what we are reading.
My daughter did pretty well in our last review class, during which we went through all the character cards and lesson texts of the Book 3. She was able to read all the lessons without the help of Pinyin and only had a little bit of hiccups when she was unsure of pronunciation of certain characters. Of the 136 new characters in this book, she was able to recognize over 100 of them, without any help of context.
In the meantime, the original excitement when we started with this 2nd grade textbook is wearing off dramatically. We have since settled into a routine of how the class progresses and my daughter is getting tired and sick of it.
For the lesson text, I usually start by reading the text myself for her. Then she reads after me sentence-by-sentence for a couple of times, which gives me opportunities to correct or refine some of the pronunciation problems. We will then finish by hearing her reading it all by herself for once. She felt that this process is a bit too long and tedious. We probably need to change the routine as we start our 3rd grade to keep her fresh and more interested.
The other big complain she has is when we go through the grammar rules in the book. When I explain the lesson, I usually already touch on most of the grammar points. The systematic illustration of the grammar after the lesson text seems to be boring for her. We usually go by them quickly and I am not sure how much attention she was paying for them anyway.
Curiously, the 3rd grade textbook seems to have little to nothing in the grammar teaching. The textbook is made up almost entirely with the lesson text and reading materials alone. It seems that it is designed to emphasize reading and reading. My daughter was happy when she saw that. I guess we will just have to teach grammar based on what we are reading.
Sunday, August 26, 2007
Resuming Classes
When we took a mini break for our Chinese school in late July, my daughter was busy with her fourth-grade school and swimming. Her summer swimming season ended in early August. That was when we had actually resumed the Chinese school also.
During the last few weeks, however, she has had plenty of homework from school, which took up quite a bit of her evening time at home. We were forced to adapt a much slower pace with the Chinese schooling, in which we cover a weekly lesson in two weeks instead of one. This allows her more time to finish the Chinese homework before we start a new lesson. We figure that it is better to do this way instead of trying to maintain a schedule and rush the lessons.
She is now in the middle of three-week "off-track" where she has no school and therefore no school homework. But on the other hand, her Fall soccer season has just got started. We will see if we can get back to the regular schedule.
During the last few weeks, however, she has had plenty of homework from school, which took up quite a bit of her evening time at home. We were forced to adapt a much slower pace with the Chinese schooling, in which we cover a weekly lesson in two weeks instead of one. This allows her more time to finish the Chinese homework before we start a new lesson. We figure that it is better to do this way instead of trying to maintain a schedule and rush the lessons.
She is now in the middle of three-week "off-track" where she has no school and therefore no school homework. But on the other hand, her Fall soccer season has just got started. We will see if we can get back to the regular schedule.
Monday, July 16, 2007
A Mini Summer Break
We had thought that we could just continue on through the summer with our classes, but the dog days are not that easy to handle. With the hot weather and my daughter's swimming meet and other activities, she is pretty worn out on Sundays. The last couple of classes we had were not as smooth as we had hoped. With a camping trip coming up next weekend, we decided to take a mini-break for a couple of weeks and then resume by the end of the month.
Taking a break is a fairly significant schedule relief for my daughter. It's not just that she doesn't have to have a class on Sunday. It's also that she doesn't have to worry about Chinese home work for a couple of weeks. With her new school year (4th grade!) already started (school homework!) and her swimming going full-steam, it is a nice break indeed.
Taking a break is a fairly significant schedule relief for my daughter. It's not just that she doesn't have to have a class on Sunday. It's also that she doesn't have to worry about Chinese home work for a couple of weeks. With her new school year (4th grade!) already started (school homework!) and her swimming going full-steam, it is a nice break indeed.
Sunday, July 1, 2007
New Goals
We started working on the third, and last book in the 2nd grade textbook today. The book follows the existing scheme without much significant change. But we are adding a couple more requirements:
The second goal is tied to the sentence-making homework exercises. She should be able to get out of simple-sentence mode and make sentences with more structure and clauses.
The third goal is actually the exact same goal we had last time, which we did not achieve. Hopefully, we will be able to do a better job this time around.
- For each lesson, there are two sets of characters that the students are supposed to memorize and be able to write during a dictation quiz in the class. One set is from the lesson at hand, and another set is a list of commonly-used characters, which tends to be easier. This requirement had been there since Book Two. But back then, I only required my daughter to learn only the second set. She only had to write the first set during homework but not having to memorize them. She did an excellent job in handing the one set of characters and did not make any mistakes in quizzes. So, now, both sets of characters will be required.
- For the homework that asks students to write down sentences using phrases, we now require the sentence to be at least 8 characters long. This is to make sure that she is not making sentences that are too simple. Originally I had wanted a 10-character minimum, but she protested and bargained it down to 8.
- We will start having instructions in Chinese more and more. The goal is that she will be able to understand most Chinese instructions. But we will do it such that she will be able to understand everything. Whenever she has difficulty, English will be used to explain.
- Learning Characters: She should be able to recognize at least 300 characters out of the most-frequently-used 500.
- Sentences: She will be able to make compound sentences in Chinese in regularity.
- Talking: She should start to speak Chinese in some simply, daily conversations. She may be able to speak comprehensible Chinese mixed with English words where her Chinese vocabulary is lacking.
The second goal is tied to the sentence-making homework exercises. She should be able to get out of simple-sentence mode and make sentences with more structure and clauses.
The third goal is actually the exact same goal we had last time, which we did not achieve. Hopefully, we will be able to do a better job this time around.
Sunday, June 17, 2007
6-Month Goal Check
We took last weekend off to go rafting and hiking. Today, we had a review class where my daughter read the lessons we have learned in Book 2. She did fairly well.
It's mid-June and almost 6 months since we started our home school. So, it's a perfect time to revisit the goals we set back in January. Back then, we thought that we would have achieved three goals in six months:
202! Just two characters above our preset goal! So, check that one up!!
As she was working through the list, I could easily see that she had missed a few characters she had recently learned, partly due to the missing context and partly due to her mood. Anyhow, I also felt that she had learned quite a few more characters that were not in the 500 most-frequently-used list at all. But we were happy that we achieved the goal, even just so barely.
The second goal was not as easy to measure. But through her reading of the lessons and reading materials in the book, I felt that her pronunciation had indeed improved a great deal. She is much more aware of the tones in Chinese sentences and is developing a nice tempo in her reading. Obviously, however, we still got a lot of work to do in this area.
Unfortunately, we had to chalk up the #3 goal as a miss. With the emphasize in character recognition and reading for the past half year, we did not do much in the daily conversation area. As a result, she is still not speaking Chinese at all, other than a few phrases here and there. It's something we will have to work on going forward.
It's mid-June and almost 6 months since we started our home school. So, it's a perfect time to revisit the goals we set back in January. Back then, we thought that we would have achieved three goals in six months:
- Learning Characters: She should be able to recognize at least 200 characters out of the most-frequently-used 500.
- Pronunciation: She should have a marked, recognizable improvement in her pronunciations.
- Talking: She should start to speak Chinese in some simply, daily conversations. She may be able to speak comprehensible Chinese mixed with English words where her Chinese vocabulary is lacking.
202! Just two characters above our preset goal! So, check that one up!!
As she was working through the list, I could easily see that she had missed a few characters she had recently learned, partly due to the missing context and partly due to her mood. Anyhow, I also felt that she had learned quite a few more characters that were not in the 500 most-frequently-used list at all. But we were happy that we achieved the goal, even just so barely.
The second goal was not as easy to measure. But through her reading of the lessons and reading materials in the book, I felt that her pronunciation had indeed improved a great deal. She is much more aware of the tones in Chinese sentences and is developing a nice tempo in her reading. Obviously, however, we still got a lot of work to do in this area.
Unfortunately, we had to chalk up the #3 goal as a miss. With the emphasize in character recognition and reading for the past half year, we did not do much in the daily conversation area. As a result, she is still not speaking Chinese at all, other than a few phrases here and there. It's something we will have to work on going forward.
Monday, June 4, 2007
Book Two is Completed
We did not even take a break during the Memorial holiday last weekend. With these two weeks, we finished the last lesson in the Book Two. So now we are 2/3 of way to finish the 2nd grade book. Today, I sent in another check to the Stanford Chinese School for a copy of their 3rd grade book. We need to get prepared.
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
After Sleepover
We had a bit short class this past Sunday. My daughter had her best friend coming over for a sleep over Saturday night, which of course left her pretty tired. But we went through the lesson okay. But we had to cut it short when we reached the reading material. She promised to study the reading materials with her Mom while doing the homework.
The reading materials at the end of each lesson might not be supposed to be part of the class anyway. But to assist her learning, I had always included them. Usually I read and explain them for her and then have her read after me for once. This makes it easier for her to do the homework, which requires her to read them for a grade from the parents (Mom). We will see how she does this week without the class.
My daughter's best friend used to be her classmate in the local Chinese school. They were in 2nd grade in the school and should be in 3rd grade in the Fall. But since the school is going to switch to the textbook we are using for 2nd grade and below only, her parents had decided to have her repeat the 2nd grade next year. We heard that she is not alone. There are other kids who will do the same.
Even though her best friend has better abilities in Chinese language and can understand the lecture (in Chinese), she still did not like the school at all. Just like my daughter, the only thing they liked about the school were the break time!
Since we are not taking summer break this year, we will be using the 3rd grade book by Fall. This means, of course, my daughter will be one-year ahead of some of her peers. How exciting!
The reading materials at the end of each lesson might not be supposed to be part of the class anyway. But to assist her learning, I had always included them. Usually I read and explain them for her and then have her read after me for once. This makes it easier for her to do the homework, which requires her to read them for a grade from the parents (Mom). We will see how she does this week without the class.
My daughter's best friend used to be her classmate in the local Chinese school. They were in 2nd grade in the school and should be in 3rd grade in the Fall. But since the school is going to switch to the textbook we are using for 2nd grade and below only, her parents had decided to have her repeat the 2nd grade next year. We heard that she is not alone. There are other kids who will do the same.
Even though her best friend has better abilities in Chinese language and can understand the lecture (in Chinese), she still did not like the school at all. Just like my daughter, the only thing they liked about the school were the break time!
Since we are not taking summer break this year, we will be using the 3rd grade book by Fall. This means, of course, my daughter will be one-year ahead of some of her peers. How exciting!
Saturday, May 12, 2007
No Class This Weekend
This is a busy weekend for us. My daughter's spring soccer season came to an end. we had the season finale game in the morning and a team party in the afternoon.
Tomorrow is Mother's Day. We will go to see the musical, Pirates of Penzance. My daughter is doing the same musical in her school and very excited about it. It's nice to get to see a professional production of the same show while she is doing her school production.
It's always a great advantage of home schooling that we can take a weekend off when we need to. On the other hand, we have also decided to not having any long summer breaks like the local schools do. We will continue on with our classes throughout summer as usual, taking occasional breaks when we need to.
With the pace we are doing, we could catch up with her grade level within another year. That is, by the time she starts 5th grade in her regular school, next year in the Fall, we could be starting the 5th grade Chinese textbook as well. This prospect is already having my daughter excited. Hopefully it will keep her motivated as a nice goal to achieve.
Tomorrow is Mother's Day. We will go to see the musical, Pirates of Penzance. My daughter is doing the same musical in her school and very excited about it. It's nice to get to see a professional production of the same show while she is doing her school production.
It's always a great advantage of home schooling that we can take a weekend off when we need to. On the other hand, we have also decided to not having any long summer breaks like the local schools do. We will continue on with our classes throughout summer as usual, taking occasional breaks when we need to.
With the pace we are doing, we could catch up with her grade level within another year. That is, by the time she starts 5th grade in her regular school, next year in the Fall, we could be starting the 5th grade Chinese textbook as well. This prospect is already having my daughter excited. Hopefully it will keep her motivated as a nice goal to achieve.
Monday, April 30, 2007
A New Game in Homework
There is something new in the homework in the Book 2. In the CD-ROM portion, there is a new character recognition game. The computer will present the new characters for the lesson three at a time, and ask the student to identify one by its pronunciation. It's working really well so far. My daughter likes to do it a lot. And it does help, greatly.
As we progress, the new characters are getting more and more complicated and confusing. In this week's lesson alone, we had two new characters that basically mean the same thing and make up the phrase "swing/rock" (摇摆). It's very hard for a beginner to tell these two characters apart. We also have relatively uncommon characters in 冠 and 啄.
The first time she tried the game with this week's homework, she only got 65% correct. But the second time is already much better, 85%. I am sure she will learn all the characters by the time she finishes the entire homework set. In fact, for every class we have had, she pretty much remembered all the new characters she learned in the previous week.
In fact, the textbook we are using is gradually gaining momentum. There are chatters in online forums that more and more Chinese schools in the US are starting to adopt it. Just this week, our local Chinese school announced that they will also start using it for their classes of second grade and below. (It's probably too difficult to switch textbooks for higher grades.)
As we progress, the new characters are getting more and more complicated and confusing. In this week's lesson alone, we had two new characters that basically mean the same thing and make up the phrase "swing/rock" (摇摆). It's very hard for a beginner to tell these two characters apart. We also have relatively uncommon characters in 冠 and 啄.
The first time she tried the game with this week's homework, she only got 65% correct. But the second time is already much better, 85%. I am sure she will learn all the characters by the time she finishes the entire homework set. In fact, for every class we have had, she pretty much remembered all the new characters she learned in the previous week.
In fact, the textbook we are using is gradually gaining momentum. There are chatters in online forums that more and more Chinese schools in the US are starting to adopt it. Just this week, our local Chinese school announced that they will also start using it for their classes of second grade and below. (It's probably too difficult to switch textbooks for higher grades.)
Monday, April 23, 2007
Strange Lesson
We had a relatively short class yesterday. We were onto the second lesson in Book 2, which was a strange one. For one thing, it broke the one lesson for two weeks routine we had so far and was designed to be a lesson for only one week. That was okay. But, the lesson was three very simple puzzles with the answers to the puzzles in the titles. The text for the puzzle was both uninteresting and not making much sense.
For its ultra-short text, it did manage to contain the normal amount of new characters, however.
I was very disappointed with the lesson selection of this one. It was an odd exception to the generally good texts we had in this book. Fortunately, the reading material for this class was decent. Even my daughter wished that they had reversed the selections.
For its ultra-short text, it did manage to contain the normal amount of new characters, however.
I was very disappointed with the lesson selection of this one. It was an odd exception to the generally good texts we had in this book. Fortunately, the reading material for this class was decent. Even my daughter wished that they had reversed the selections.
Monday, April 16, 2007
Goal!!!!!!
My daughter scored the winning goal in her soccer match yesterday. It was the first win for our team so far, three games into the season. She is happy and excited. I am more proud than ever, both as Dad and as coach.
Of course this has nothing to do with Chinese schooling. Except that we did have our usual class in the afternoon and then mowed the lawn together. What a perfect Sunday!
Of course this has nothing to do with Chinese schooling. Except that we did have our usual class in the afternoon and then mowed the lawn together. What a perfect Sunday!
Monday, April 9, 2007
On With Book Two
Yesterday was the Easter Sunday and it was snowing, so it was perfect for us to keep on with our Chinese school at home!
We moved on to the Book 2 of our second-grade textbook. Our first lesson is about a seed sprouting in the Spring. Perfect for our season, despite of the snow. For some reason, it felt that the lesson text actually got a little easier. Maybe the emphasize was shifted a little bit more to the reading materials.
The homework assignment now asks the students to read the reading material to their parents for a grade. We have never done it before. So far I only required my daughter to read them on her own, without any checking. We will see how this goes.
The homework also includes a set of known characters for the students to study so that they could write them from memory in a dictation quiz when they come back to class. The first set was quite trivial, just numbers. It could get harder as we go along.
We are continuing with our homework reduction scheme. We are ditching the "white card" scramble game entirely and only require her to do the reading assignments twice instead of four times.
We moved on to the Book 2 of our second-grade textbook. Our first lesson is about a seed sprouting in the Spring. Perfect for our season, despite of the snow. For some reason, it felt that the lesson text actually got a little easier. Maybe the emphasize was shifted a little bit more to the reading materials.
The homework assignment now asks the students to read the reading material to their parents for a grade. We have never done it before. So far I only required my daughter to read them on her own, without any checking. We will see how this goes.
The homework also includes a set of known characters for the students to study so that they could write them from memory in a dictation quiz when they come back to class. The first set was quite trivial, just numbers. It could get harder as we go along.
We are continuing with our homework reduction scheme. We are ditching the "white card" scramble game entirely and only require her to do the reading assignments twice instead of four times.
Monday, April 2, 2007
We Have Completed Book One
We had a review session yesterday, and with that, we completed the Book One of our second-grade textbook. That is, we are one-third done for the year, as there are three books for a grade.
During the review session, I had my daughter reading the text of all four lessons, without the help of Pinyin. I had expected some hiccups in the first couple of lessons, which were learned two months ago. But she surprised and impressed me by reading all lessons quite smoothly. There were only a handful of characters she had difficulty with. She had also improved in managing the tones in sentences.
For the four lessons in Book One, there are 118 "new" characters to learn. It was quite a pile to put all these character cards together and took a while to go through them one by one. Without context, it was a little more difficult to recognize some of these characters. But she was able to do so for all by 29 of them!
For this week's homework, I asked her to record her own readings of the four lessons into a digital voice recorder. Maybe we could save them as archives as we progress.
During the review session, I had my daughter reading the text of all four lessons, without the help of Pinyin. I had expected some hiccups in the first couple of lessons, which were learned two months ago. But she surprised and impressed me by reading all lessons quite smoothly. There were only a handful of characters she had difficulty with. She had also improved in managing the tones in sentences.
For the four lessons in Book One, there are 118 "new" characters to learn. It was quite a pile to put all these character cards together and took a while to go through them one by one. Without context, it was a little more difficult to recognize some of these characters. But she was able to do so for all by 29 of them!
For this week's homework, I asked her to record her own readings of the four lessons into a digital voice recorder. Maybe we could save them as archives as we progress.
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
Learning Chinese and Piano
When my daughter complains about her extra-curriculum work load, which she does occasionally but thankfully not too often, piano and Chinese are always the two main targets. Why can't they be as fun as the other activities, like soccer and swimming?
One reason I had been pondering about is that it really may be in the teaching philosophy. In youth sports, kids gather for practice sessions, which becomes more and more frequent as their skill levels increase. But they are never required to do "homework" on their own. The few kids who really love a certain sport would gladly do extras on their own, but not at the request of their coaches.
That is certainly not the case as in piano, where a teacher can require the kids to practice every day, on their own. Is that the only way to learn the skill?
I am experimenting in cutting back homework in our Chinese learning.
Incidentally, a new study published in New York Times today is getting some attention. It claims that learning piano early could help people master a tonal language like Chinese, and even perhaps vice versa:
One reason I had been pondering about is that it really may be in the teaching philosophy. In youth sports, kids gather for practice sessions, which becomes more and more frequent as their skill levels increase. But they are never required to do "homework" on their own. The few kids who really love a certain sport would gladly do extras on their own, but not at the request of their coaches.
That is certainly not the case as in piano, where a teacher can require the kids to practice every day, on their own. Is that the only way to learn the skill?
I am experimenting in cutting back homework in our Chinese learning.
Incidentally, a new study published in New York Times today is getting some attention. It claims that learning piano early could help people master a tonal language like Chinese, and even perhaps vice versa:
Mandarin speakers have been shown to have a more complex encoding of pitch patterns in their brains than English speakers do. This is presumably because in Mandarin and other Asian languages, pitch plays a central role. A single-syllable word can have several meanings depending on how it is intoned.
For this study, the researchers looked at 20 non-Chinese speaking volunteers, half with no musical background and half who had studied an instrument for at least six years.
As they were shown a movie, the volunteers also heard an audiotape of the Mandarin word “mi” in three of its meanings: squint, bewilder and rice. The researchers recorded activity in their brain stems to see how well they were processing the sounds.
Those with a music background showed much more brain activity in response to the Chinese sounds.
The lead author of the study, Patrick C. M. Wong, said it might work both ways. It appears that native speakers of tonal languages may do better at learning instruments, Dr. Wong said.
Sunday, March 18, 2007
Sick Day
My daughter is under the weather today so we skip the week. It's nice to be able to do that thanks to the flexibility of home schooling.
Monday, March 12, 2007
Homework Reduction
My daughter has been acting up, or at least trying to, lately. Her main rebellion case is her Chinese homework and piano practice assignments. Can't blame her much on that. Her piano teacher requires practicing five days a week, at least half an hour each.
We are at the last lesson in the Book 1 of our Chinese text book. For book one, the homework assignment is four times a week. Depending how she handles it, each sitting could take anywhere between 20 to 40 minutes. She has been doing a great job finishing all of them so far, until last week, which I allowed her to skip some of them after a few minor episodes of parenting struggles.
Spring is also around us. We are coming into a two-week span that her swimming and soccer overlap, during which she has swimming classes on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and soccer practices on Tuesday and Thursday. (She will stop swimming after the two weeks and resume after the soccer season.) I am not sure if I could get any extra homework done if I got that kind of schedule myself!
So, something has to be done with the Chinese homework. The homework we have are seven parts:
I thought that the no. 6 is probably the most time-consuming and least-productive task of them all, especially that she is already doing a similar thing on CD-ROM. So, I dropped that from her assignment altogether. She could still play it at her leisure time, I suggested.
For the others, I require to finish all four settings for Nos 1, 2, and 7, the items she has been enjoying. and do the No. 3, 4, and 5 at least twice, preferably three times. This will reduce the homework time probably almost in half. She is happy about the arrangement. We will see how she works it out this couple of weeks.
The homework assignment structure will change slightly once we start Book 2. So, we will have to revisit this issue in the near future.
We are at the last lesson in the Book 1 of our Chinese text book. For book one, the homework assignment is four times a week. Depending how she handles it, each sitting could take anywhere between 20 to 40 minutes. She has been doing a great job finishing all of them so far, until last week, which I allowed her to skip some of them after a few minor episodes of parenting struggles.
Spring is also around us. We are coming into a two-week span that her swimming and soccer overlap, during which she has swimming classes on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and soccer practices on Tuesday and Thursday. (She will stop swimming after the two weeks and resume after the soccer season.) I am not sure if I could get any extra homework done if I got that kind of schedule myself!
So, something has to be done with the Chinese homework. The homework we have are seven parts:
- CD-ROM (listen to the lesson on computer and play a character-scramble game)
- Character writing (two characters at a time, writing 8 times each),
- Read lesson aloud
- Read reading materials (did not require her to read aloud)
- Recognize Chinese characters with cards
- Play a character scramble game with cards
- Write a sentence using given phrases (This is only done once the whole week)
I thought that the no. 6 is probably the most time-consuming and least-productive task of them all, especially that she is already doing a similar thing on CD-ROM. So, I dropped that from her assignment altogether. She could still play it at her leisure time, I suggested.
For the others, I require to finish all four settings for Nos 1, 2, and 7, the items she has been enjoying. and do the No. 3, 4, and 5 at least twice, preferably three times. This will reduce the homework time probably almost in half. She is happy about the arrangement. We will see how she works it out this couple of weeks.
The homework assignment structure will change slightly once we start Book 2. So, we will have to revisit this issue in the near future.
Saturday, March 3, 2007
School Today, Ski Tomorrow
We plan to go ski tomorrow, so we had our class today, on a Saturday, instead. My daughter did a good job in finishing last week's homework yesterday. She had to rush it because of the schedule change. But ski is a powerful incentive too. :)
It turns out that we had a fairly short class, a little over an hour. We went through the lesson fairly quickly and skipped the explanation of the reading material all together. She claimed that she understood everything in the reading material already. It was an easy piece and her comprehension was indeed improving. So, why not cut the class short.
It turns out that we had a fairly short class, a little over an hour. We went through the lesson fairly quickly and skipped the explanation of the reading material all together. She claimed that she understood everything in the reading material already. It was an easy piece and her comprehension was indeed improving. So, why not cut the class short.
Friday, March 2, 2007
ChinesePod
ChinesePod is a nice podcast site helping English-speaking people learning daily conversational Chinese. The daily MP3 segment is a little over 10 minutes long, centered in a brief situational dialog. They have five different levels of lessons.
I played a "newbie" level lesson to my daughter. She found it interesting. But there is no question that the lessons are aimed at grownups. During the "newbie" lesson at least, the teachers spent a lot of time talking in English. But they explain the Chinese context and tones fairly well.
The other shortcoming of this site is that only the daily podcast itself is free. To access all other materials, including transcripts, you have to register and pay (after a week-long free trial period).
I played a "newbie" level lesson to my daughter. She found it interesting. But there is no question that the lessons are aimed at grownups. During the "newbie" lesson at least, the teachers spent a lot of time talking in English. But they explain the Chinese context and tones fairly well.
The other shortcoming of this site is that only the daily podcast itself is free. To access all other materials, including transcripts, you have to register and pay (after a week-long free trial period).
Thursday, March 1, 2007
Adso: A Nice On-line Tool for Chinese Language
There are quite a few online language tools such as Babel Fish and Google. But they are no help if you happen upon a character that you don't know how to pronounce. Or if you, like me, need to find the exact Pinyin of a character for teaching purposes.
That is where Adso would come handy. I found this nice little site today, where you can input Chinese characters and phrases and it will provide their Pinyin and English translation right away. It seems to be a very decent job.
Now, most Chinese inputting method use Pinyin itself, so it would be really hard to input things without knowing the Pinyin first! But if you have the characters handy in a web page or document, you can just copy and paste them onto the site.
The site promises to do a lot more than this, such as textbooks, reading materials, and news in Chinese. But those features lag far behind the handy pinyin/translation tool. The site navigation also needs some work. But through some digging, I find they also have other projects, such as Chinese flash cards, online dictionary, and a Firefox plugin. I will have to find out more about those later.
That is where Adso would come handy. I found this nice little site today, where you can input Chinese characters and phrases and it will provide their Pinyin and English translation right away. It seems to be a very decent job.
Now, most Chinese inputting method use Pinyin itself, so it would be really hard to input things without knowing the Pinyin first! But if you have the characters handy in a web page or document, you can just copy and paste them onto the site.
The site promises to do a lot more than this, such as textbooks, reading materials, and news in Chinese. But those features lag far behind the handy pinyin/translation tool. The site navigation also needs some work. But through some digging, I find they also have other projects, such as Chinese flash cards, online dictionary, and a Firefox plugin. I will have to find out more about those later.
Sunday, February 25, 2007
Still Going Strong
We took last week off for the Chinese New Year. After a review session sandwiched between too off weeks, it felt that we were starting a new semester/quarter as we restarted this morning. But we had a great class. It went on smoothly for two hours with only one short break in the middle. My daughter kept her concentration throughout without interruption.
For each class, I always start with reading the lesson text for her. I have been noticing that she is able to understand more and more from my reading. Today, she was able to tell me pretty much the entire story, sans some minor details, right after she had heard it for the first time. It is very encouraging.
For each class, I always start with reading the lesson text for her. I have been noticing that she is able to understand more and more from my reading. Today, she was able to tell me pretty much the entire story, sans some minor details, right after she had heard it for the first time. It is very encouraging.
Sunday, February 11, 2007
A Mid-term Review
Up till now, we have had four weeks of classes, covering the first two lessons, which is the first half of the Book One. Since this week falls in between our ski holiday last week and the Chinese New Year next week, I decided to use today's class as a mid-term review.
First I asked my daughter to read the texts of both lessons, using my copy of the textbook so she did not have the pinyin I had marked on her copy. She did the reading excellently, essentially knowing all the characters in them. She told me that she started to memorize most of the texts by now, even though that was never a requirement. It came naturally from the repetitions in the homework assignments. She still has problems in managing the tones in sentences, which is expected to be a slow process to correct.
Then we checked the characters individually, using the cards provided by the textbook. The two lessons have 60 "new" characters, a number surprised my daughter. With the characters isolated, she successfully recognized 53 of them. Of the seven, she remembered 3 or 4 on the second round as well. This is a remarkable progress in one-month's worth of classes!
We did not do too much more after that. We caught up a few things we had skipped over during our early classes and assigned some optional reading and CD-ROM homework. It was a good review session.
First I asked my daughter to read the texts of both lessons, using my copy of the textbook so she did not have the pinyin I had marked on her copy. She did the reading excellently, essentially knowing all the characters in them. She told me that she started to memorize most of the texts by now, even though that was never a requirement. It came naturally from the repetitions in the homework assignments. She still has problems in managing the tones in sentences, which is expected to be a slow process to correct.
Then we checked the characters individually, using the cards provided by the textbook. The two lessons have 60 "new" characters, a number surprised my daughter. With the characters isolated, she successfully recognized 53 of them. Of the seven, she remembered 3 or 4 on the second round as well. This is a remarkable progress in one-month's worth of classes!
We did not do too much more after that. We caught up a few things we had skipped over during our early classes and assigned some optional reading and CD-ROM homework. It was a good review session.
Saturday, February 3, 2007
No Class This Week
It's the Superbowl Sunday, so naturally we will just DVR the game and go skiing! I am not sure if my daughter is more excited about going skiing or getting to skip the Chinese class for a week. Maybe both?
Sunday, January 21, 2007
More Snow
Another Sunday, another snow storm. The local Chinese school was cancelled again. My daughter thought it was not fair for her to continue having classes at home while other kids got the day free. My aching back was just telling me that a little bit global warming would be a good thing now.
We are cruising along, starting with the second lesson today. I tried to have three breaks during our class. It might be a bit too much (or too frequent). By the time she came back after the last break, she was not in the mode for class any more. We had to skip the reading material part and call it for a day. Maybe less but longer breaks would work a little better.
We are cruising along, starting with the second lesson today. I tried to have three breaks during our class. It might be a bit too much (or too frequent). By the time she came back after the last break, she was not in the mode for class any more. We had to skip the reading material part and call it for a day. Maybe less but longer breaks would work a little better.
Sunday, January 14, 2007
School on a Snow Day
The snow just doesn't stop falling here in Denver and it's bone-chilling cold outside. So much so that our local Chinese school canceled their classes today. Wimps.
But we are warm and cozy inside our own house, so our class went on scheduled. We continued to finish our first lesson as scheduled by our textbook, much in the same way as our first class last week.
My daughter did a fantastic job with her homework from the first week. The assignment has four installments, supposed to be done in four weekdays. Each installment has two readings, one simple character writing, two character card review/games, and a CD-ROM assignment. They are not very hard per se, but it does take time to finish them all. She did not do it strictly in the an installment per day manner but nonetheless she finished them all. It's a great job!
The homework has also helped her quite significantly. Since most of them are repetitive reading and character learning drills, she got to know her lesson text very well. When she "left" our first class, she could only barely read the lesson text. But she read it quite fluently when she "came back" today. It's very encouraging.
Besides, she said it was kind of fun doing them. It was much better than what she used to have to do for the Chinese school.
As for the lesson itself, I am still amazed on the pace we are having in keeping with the one-lesson-two-weeks schedule. I did skim over a little bit on a few things, including the lengthy reading material. I did not require her to learn to read them all. I read and explained them during our class and told her to simply read silently and try to comprehend them during her homework time. Since we are on a fast pace, I am thinking that maybe we will take a break after a couple of lessons and revisit these reading material a little bit more.
Of course, as we keep going forward, it will be interesting to see what happens when the novelty starts to wear off.
But we are warm and cozy inside our own house, so our class went on scheduled. We continued to finish our first lesson as scheduled by our textbook, much in the same way as our first class last week.
My daughter did a fantastic job with her homework from the first week. The assignment has four installments, supposed to be done in four weekdays. Each installment has two readings, one simple character writing, two character card review/games, and a CD-ROM assignment. They are not very hard per se, but it does take time to finish them all. She did not do it strictly in the an installment per day manner but nonetheless she finished them all. It's a great job!
The homework has also helped her quite significantly. Since most of them are repetitive reading and character learning drills, she got to know her lesson text very well. When she "left" our first class, she could only barely read the lesson text. But she read it quite fluently when she "came back" today. It's very encouraging.
Besides, she said it was kind of fun doing them. It was much better than what she used to have to do for the Chinese school.
As for the lesson itself, I am still amazed on the pace we are having in keeping with the one-lesson-two-weeks schedule. I did skim over a little bit on a few things, including the lengthy reading material. I did not require her to learn to read them all. I read and explained them during our class and told her to simply read silently and try to comprehend them during her homework time. Since we are on a fast pace, I am thinking that maybe we will take a break after a couple of lessons and revisit these reading material a little bit more.
Of course, as we keep going forward, it will be interesting to see what happens when the novelty starts to wear off.
Sunday, January 7, 2007
Our First Class!
We officially opened our home school this morning at 10:30. There was no fanfare we just went right into our first lesson.
Our textbook is the Stanford Chinese school one reviewed earlier. I had worried about whether there was too much material to cover in the two weeks per lesson schedule. But to my pleasant surprise, we covered half of the lesson without rushing in our two-hour class session! Looks like we will be able to follow the schedule forward, which would be a fairly fast pace.
The first lesson's main text is a simplified monkeys-fetching-moon-out-of-water story, apparently originated from Tibet. The text is quite short. Before the class, I had marked my daughter's copy with Pinyin on some of the characters, as I knew she would have difficulty without them. We started with my reading and then explaining the story. Then She read after me line by line, with frequent repeats to correct some pronunciations. We did this three or four times and then took a five-minute break.
After the first break, we reviewed new characters with the flashcards supplied by the textbook. Then we went over some new phrases. I had her doing the writing exercises in the book and then went over the "grammar points". A couple of the grammar points were a little hard to explain clearly. She also got tired and frustrated when I asked her to read after me on the sample sentences. So we took another break.
By now it was about half an hour before our finish time. I read a version of the tadpole-looking-for-mommy story which was included as this week's reading material. This story is actually more than five times in length than the lesson text. But it is made up with same structures with a lot of repetition. My daughter was actually able to comprehend much of the story just from my reading it. (In comparison, she did not get much from listening to the monkeys story for the first time.)
After going through the reading material, we returned to the main text, and did one more "follow-me" reading. Then I explained the homework structure from the textbook, which includes a CD-ROM. With that, we concluded our first lesson. We were about five minutes early.
It was a good class. Although she did get frustrated in the middle of it, she said later she had a good time too. She felt that this was a lot better than going to Chinese school and also she learned more this way. It made a huge difference now that she understood everything since almost all of my instructions were in English.
I also realized that home-schooling is a lot more intensive than regular school. Since she is the only student present, she is the target of attention and focus all the time. In the future, I may need to find ways to "leave her alone" a little bit more and/or having more frequent breaks.
Our textbook is the Stanford Chinese school one reviewed earlier. I had worried about whether there was too much material to cover in the two weeks per lesson schedule. But to my pleasant surprise, we covered half of the lesson without rushing in our two-hour class session! Looks like we will be able to follow the schedule forward, which would be a fairly fast pace.
The first lesson's main text is a simplified monkeys-fetching-moon-out-of-water story, apparently originated from Tibet. The text is quite short. Before the class, I had marked my daughter's copy with Pinyin on some of the characters, as I knew she would have difficulty without them. We started with my reading and then explaining the story. Then She read after me line by line, with frequent repeats to correct some pronunciations. We did this three or four times and then took a five-minute break.
After the first break, we reviewed new characters with the flashcards supplied by the textbook. Then we went over some new phrases. I had her doing the writing exercises in the book and then went over the "grammar points". A couple of the grammar points were a little hard to explain clearly. She also got tired and frustrated when I asked her to read after me on the sample sentences. So we took another break.
By now it was about half an hour before our finish time. I read a version of the tadpole-looking-for-mommy story which was included as this week's reading material. This story is actually more than five times in length than the lesson text. But it is made up with same structures with a lot of repetition. My daughter was actually able to comprehend much of the story just from my reading it. (In comparison, she did not get much from listening to the monkeys story for the first time.)
After going through the reading material, we returned to the main text, and did one more "follow-me" reading. Then I explained the homework structure from the textbook, which includes a CD-ROM. With that, we concluded our first lesson. We were about five minutes early.
It was a good class. Although she did get frustrated in the middle of it, she said later she had a good time too. She felt that this was a lot better than going to Chinese school and also she learned more this way. It made a huge difference now that she understood everything since almost all of my instructions were in English.
I also realized that home-schooling is a lot more intensive than regular school. Since she is the only student present, she is the target of attention and focus all the time. In the future, I may need to find ways to "leave her alone" a little bit more and/or having more frequent breaks.
Saturday, January 6, 2007
Speaking of Tones in Chinese
Friday, January 5, 2007
It's Two Days before Our Classes
Finally, our home schooling will officially start this Sunday. It will be exciting, or interesting, or both. Before we start, I talked with my daughter on a few issues, mostly our goals and ground rules.
Goals
I would like to set a few goals that we can check our progress against in a later time. These will be goals for both of us. It is not a trivial task since I have no reference to base upon and language skills are usually hard to measure. To start it off, I decided just to have a near-term, namely six-month goals:
Start talking in Chinese may be the hardest of them all, as it involves both language skills and mental confidence, as well as willingness.
What are not in the goals are other basic language skills such as writing of characters, constructing sentences, and phrases. These will of course remain the essential parts of our lessons and exercises. But I decided to leave them out of goals for now so we have a better focus.
Rules
We agreed on two basic rules:
I had thought of making a calendar for our school year or semester or quarter. But I am still not sure what our weekly pace should be. We will be mainly using the Standford textbook, which covers a lesson every two weeks. I thought two weeks may not be enough from where we are starting. But I am not sure whether to spend three or four weeks in one lesson.
So, we don't have a school calendar yet. We will reevaluate that after we go through a couple of lessons and see how we are doing by that point. The biggest advantage of home-schooling is the flexibility, right?
Goals
I would like to set a few goals that we can check our progress against in a later time. These will be goals for both of us. It is not a trivial task since I have no reference to base upon and language skills are usually hard to measure. To start it off, I decided just to have a near-term, namely six-month goals:
- Learning Characters: She should be able to recognize at least 200 characters out of the most-frequently-used 500.
- Pronunciation: She should have a marked, recognizable improvement in her pronunciations.
- Talking: She should start to speak Chinese in some simply, daily conversations. She may be able to speak comprehensible Chinese mixed with English words where her Chinese vocabulary is lacking.
Start talking in Chinese may be the hardest of them all, as it involves both language skills and mental confidence, as well as willingness.
What are not in the goals are other basic language skills such as writing of characters, constructing sentences, and phrases. These will of course remain the essential parts of our lessons and exercises. But I decided to leave them out of goals for now so we have a better focus.
Rules
We agreed on two basic rules:
- We will have a two-hour class session (with breaks) every week, mostly on Sundays. During the class period, all her regular school rules apply. She should behave just as she does in her school classes.
- We will have weekly homework assignments and she is expected to finish them before the next class. She probably will be doing her homework with her Mom so that she has a different learning environment than our classes.
I had thought of making a calendar for our school year or semester or quarter. But I am still not sure what our weekly pace should be. We will be mainly using the Standford textbook, which covers a lesson every two weeks. I thought two weeks may not be enough from where we are starting. But I am not sure whether to spend three or four weeks in one lesson.
So, we don't have a school calendar yet. We will reevaluate that after we go through a couple of lessons and see how we are doing by that point. The biggest advantage of home-schooling is the flexibility, right?
Thursday, January 4, 2007
Are We Good or Are We Weird?
In the Peter Rabbit play, Cottontail has a very simple line "We are always good", which I translated as "我们总是乖的". Whenever my daughter is reading this line, she would sound a lot more like "我们总是怪的". I told her that would mean "We are always weird". We had a great laugh about it.
The characters 乖 and 怪 sound basically the same, except for their tones. The first is a flat (first) tone and the other is a dropping (fourth) tone in Pinyin. When I teach my daughter how to pronounce the words individually, she does it correctly. But when we read that sentence, she just could not get it right.
Then I realized that this is a common pronunciation problem for people who speak English, which is an intonation language. In English, words do not have tones on their own and their tones can change according to their placement in a sentence and the sentence itself. Typically, the tone is rising toward the end of a question ("Are we good?") but falling toward the end of a statement ("We are good."). When an English speaker reads a sentence in Chinese, a tonal language, he/she would still intuitively change the tone in the same way. Therefore we have the incorrect pronunciations.
To confirm this, I had my daughter reading a few different sentences in Chinese:
Once we identified the source of the problem, I explained to her what was going on. It made sense to her too. She would pay more attention to this later. But It will take quite a while to correct, as habits carried over from native tongue are always hard to fight against. But it's okay, we are still having great laughs with her proclamation that we are always weird!
The characters 乖 and 怪 sound basically the same, except for their tones. The first is a flat (first) tone and the other is a dropping (fourth) tone in Pinyin. When I teach my daughter how to pronounce the words individually, she does it correctly. But when we read that sentence, she just could not get it right.
Then I realized that this is a common pronunciation problem for people who speak English, which is an intonation language. In English, words do not have tones on their own and their tones can change according to their placement in a sentence and the sentence itself. Typically, the tone is rising toward the end of a question ("Are we good?") but falling toward the end of a statement ("We are good."). When an English speaker reads a sentence in Chinese, a tonal language, he/she would still intuitively change the tone in the same way. Therefore we have the incorrect pronunciations.
To confirm this, I had my daughter reading a few different sentences in Chinese:
- "乖孩子."("Good kid."). This is a statement, but the word 乖 is at the beginning of the sentence where the tone tends to be flat. She indeed did well with it.
- "我们乖吗?"("Are we good?"). This is a question, with 乖 near the end. Again, she did very well with it.
- "我们总是乖的". Back to our original statement sentence. She reverted back to mispronounce it!
Once we identified the source of the problem, I explained to her what was going on. It made sense to her too. She would pay more attention to this later. But It will take quite a while to correct, as habits carried over from native tongue are always hard to fight against. But it's okay, we are still having great laughs with her proclamation that we are always weird!
Wednesday, January 3, 2007
Peter Rabbit for the Holiday
I have been thinking a lot about how to get my daughter to work on some materials that are close to her own life in Chinese. The Stanford Chinese text book, although very good, also lacks in this aspect. I think kids need to learn dialogs in life-like context before or along with studying story-like textbooks.
During the holidays, I did one experiment. Before the winter break, my daughter had participated in a KidStage production of Peter Rabbit show in her school. She was very enthusiastic about the whole project. Within weeks of receiving the script, she had memorized all her own (Cottontail) lines and most of other characters' lines. The show, although a very small production, was a fun experience for all the kids involved.
I found the dialogs in this script to be simple, concise, and cheerful. So I spent some time to translate them into Chinese and see if my daughter would also enjoy learning them in Chinese.
It did not go well at the beginning. Although she was very curious and enthusiastic about it, she was quickly discouraged by most of the characters she could not recognize, pronounce, or remember. So she decided not to do it again. "It is just not helping!" she said.
After a couple of days, I suddenly realized what the problem might be. After translating the script, I simply typed up the Chinese characters and printed them out. I did not include any Pinyin for the characters she did not know. Even though the lines are very simple, she could not remember the pronunciation of all characters and therefore she could not continue to read her lines.
So I went back to the script and asked her to identify the characters she did not know. Then I hand-marked the Pinyin for them. Hooray! Now she can read her lines. She is happy again. We did a few scenes together with her reading her (Cottontail's) lines and me reading everybody else's. Although she can not memorize her lines and have to rely on Pinyin frequently, she is getting used to the pronunciation of a lot of words she hasn't learned yet.
The best thing yet, I didn't have to always ask her to do this. She was asking me to do it with her! Because it is fun.
We will continue to use this script and have her learn more characters' lines. I believe she can learn a lot of new characters and dialogs this way.
This experiment also cast more doubt I had with the no-Pinyin philosophy for earlier grades of the Stanford Chinese textbook. While we will use the textbook when we officially start our home schooling this weekend, I think I will have to supply some Pinyin to help my daughter with the text.
During the holidays, I did one experiment. Before the winter break, my daughter had participated in a KidStage production of Peter Rabbit show in her school. She was very enthusiastic about the whole project. Within weeks of receiving the script, she had memorized all her own (Cottontail) lines and most of other characters' lines. The show, although a very small production, was a fun experience for all the kids involved.
I found the dialogs in this script to be simple, concise, and cheerful. So I spent some time to translate them into Chinese and see if my daughter would also enjoy learning them in Chinese.
It did not go well at the beginning. Although she was very curious and enthusiastic about it, she was quickly discouraged by most of the characters she could not recognize, pronounce, or remember. So she decided not to do it again. "It is just not helping!" she said.
After a couple of days, I suddenly realized what the problem might be. After translating the script, I simply typed up the Chinese characters and printed them out. I did not include any Pinyin for the characters she did not know. Even though the lines are very simple, she could not remember the pronunciation of all characters and therefore she could not continue to read her lines.
So I went back to the script and asked her to identify the characters she did not know. Then I hand-marked the Pinyin for them. Hooray! Now she can read her lines. She is happy again. We did a few scenes together with her reading her (Cottontail's) lines and me reading everybody else's. Although she can not memorize her lines and have to rely on Pinyin frequently, she is getting used to the pronunciation of a lot of words she hasn't learned yet.
The best thing yet, I didn't have to always ask her to do this. She was asking me to do it with her! Because it is fun.
We will continue to use this script and have her learn more characters' lines. I believe she can learn a lot of new characters and dialogs this way.
This experiment also cast more doubt I had with the no-Pinyin philosophy for earlier grades of the Stanford Chinese textbook. While we will use the textbook when we officially start our home schooling this weekend, I think I will have to supply some Pinyin to help my daughter with the text.
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