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.)