Chinese Learning Chinese in Australia

Pinyin News reports that the frenzy of teaching Chinese in Australia is just a much hyped craze. 94% of high school students drop out of their Chinese classes before they graduate and 94% of those who didn't are ethical Chinese themselves. So, the Chinese language education in Australia is basically "a matter of Chinese teaching Chinese to Chinese".

Fourth Grade!

It was the last day of summer yesterday and we started our new "school year" with the fourth grade book. In the real school, my daughter had already become a fifth grader during summer.

The fourth-grade of our textbook looks just like the third-grade one. The lesson text seems to be a tiny bit longer, but not harder. There is one more reading material in the homework, making it four in total. One of them continued to be a review of a previous lesson text. But there is also a long one that was double the usual length. In addition, there is a new segment of making up phrases from characters.

We have to expect that the homework is going to take longer to finish. With her busy schedule, we are looking at having classes every other Sunday instead of every week.

Third Grade Done

It's been a while. But we finished the third-grade book this past weekend. We will take a few weeks off and then start the fourth-grade in mid-September.

Tadpoles Look for Their Mother

A nice feature in the third book of the third grade is that it added one more reading material as homework. But this extra piece is a repeat of a lesson learned in the second grade book. So it's a nice review session. Although my daughter had forgot most of what she learned last year, :) she was still able to get through these pieces without needing much help at all.

Here is her translation of one of such review pieces:

Tadpoles Look for Their Mother

There was a group of tadpoles; they had big heads, black bodies, and fine tails. They were swimming in a river.

They saw a little ducks following the mother duck in the pond and playing, so they swam over and yelled: “Mother duck, mother duck, we want to look for our mom, too!”

The mother duck said: “Your mother has a big mouth, so go ahead and find her!”

The tadpoles kept swimming and swimming, and then they saw a fish that swam by them. The tadpoles saw that the fish had a big mouth, so the yelled: “Mother! Mother!”

The fish smiled and said: “I’m not your mom; I am the fish’s mom. Your mom has a white stomach, so go ahead and find her.”

The tadpoles swam and swam for a few more days, and grew two back feet. A white swan swam by, and the tadpoles immediately yelled: “Mom! Mom!”

The white swan smiled and said:” I’m not your mom; I am the swan’s mom. Your mom has four legs, so go ahead and find her.

The tadpoles swam and swam for a few more days, and grew two front legs.

They saw a big turtle swimming, and the tadpoles saw that the turtle had four legs. The tadpoles quickly swam to the turtle and yelled: “Mom! Mom!” The turtle smiled and said: “I am not your mom; I am the small turtle’s mom. Your mom has green skin, and her head has two big eyes, so go ahead and find here.”

The tadpoles swam and swam for a few more days, and their tails began to shrink. They saw a frog on a lotus leaf, with a big mouth, green clothes, a white stomach, and two big eyes on her head. The tadpoles immediately swam over and yelled: “Mom! Mom!” The frog mom lowered her head and looked, smiled and said: “Good kids, you have grown into small frogs, come on over here!” Hearing their mom’s words, the small frogs hopped up, and hopped next to the big frog. They were very happy and yelled: “We finally found our mom! We finally found our mom!

The Chinese original:

小蝌蚪找妈妈

有一群小蝌蚪，大大的脑袋，黑黑的身子，细细的尾巴，在河里游来游去。

它们看见小鸭子跟着鸭妈妈在水里玩，就游上前去叫着：“鸭妈妈，鸭妈妈，我们也想找我们的妈妈！”

鸭妈妈说：“你们的妈妈又大大的嘴巴，你们到前面去找吧！”

小蝌蚪往前游呀游，有一条鱼从它们身边游过。小蝌蚪看见鱼有大大的嘴巴，就高声叫起来：“妈妈！妈妈！”

鱼笑笑说：“我不是你们的妈妈，我是小鱼的妈妈。你们的妈妈又白白的肚子，你们到前面去找吧！”

小蝌蚪往前游呀游，过了几天，长出了两条后腿，一只大白鹅游过来，小蝌蚪连忙大声叫：“妈妈！妈妈！”

大白鹅笑笑说：“我不是你们的妈妈，我是小鹅的妈妈。你们的妈妈有四条腿，你们到前面去找吧！”

小蝌蚪往前游呀游，过了几天，又长出了两条前腿。

它们看到一只大乌龟在前面游。小蝌蚪就快快追上前去，叫着：“妈妈！妈妈！”乌龟笑了笑说：“我不是你们的妈妈，我是小乌龟的妈妈。你们的妈妈的衣服是绿色的，头顶上有两只大眼睛，你们到前面去找吧。”

小蝌蚪到处游呀游，过了几天，尾巴变小了。它们看见荷叶上有一只大青蛙，大大的嘴巴，绿色的衣服，雪白的肚子，头顶上还有两只大眼睛。小蝌蚪连忙游了过去，叫着：“妈妈！妈妈！”青蛙妈妈低下头一看，笑着说：“好孩子，你们长成小青蛙了，快上来吧！”听了妈妈的话，小青蛙就往上一蹦，蹦到了大青蛙身边。它们高兴地叫着：“我们找到妈妈了！我们找到妈妈了！”

Starting on Book 3, Grade 3

Today we started on the 3rd and final book of the Grade 3 textbook. The text is a condescending lecture of the importance of not wasting time, which is not particularly interesting. With this new book, the load for homework is increased a little bit. There is one additional reading material per week. But the nice thing about it is that the additional reading material is actually a text that was in the Grade 2, so it's a nice review.

For hand-writing exercises, instead of writing and dictating short phrases, the homework now requires writing whole sentences, with one of the sentences to be dictated in class.

Book Two of the Third Grade is Done

It took quite a bit longer than I had expected, but we finally finished the Book Two of the 3rd grade today with a review class. My daughter had exciting soccer games in both yesterday and today, so she is tired by the time we had our class in the evening. We did not do a whole lot in our review.

nciku: A New Online Dictionary

There are certainly quite a few online dictionary and translation tools for Chinese language. But most of them did not solve the problem that one could only look up a Chinese character by its pinyin, which requires the knowledge of the character's pronunciation.

In a traditional Chinese dictionary, one could look up a character either by its pinyin (which is curiously ordered by the English alphabet) or by its radicals and strokes. The latter method is much more useful when encountering an unknown character while reading a book.

Through Pinyin News, I learned a new online dictionary which provides this most important feature: the nciku. It allows the search of characters by radicals, ordered by stroke counts just as a traditional dictionary.

What's more, it also allows one to "write" or draw a character with the mouse. As one draws the character, a table of potential matches are displayed and updated for selection.

The user interface seems to need a little bit of work, but it's a pretty nifty tool.

Community College Gets Into the Frenzy

In an apparent first for community colleges, the small College of Lake County is sending its students to China for a study-abroad program. The director of the program, Yu LiHua, was quoted as saying "China today is the most important, significant country in the world. You cannot avoid China today."

But interestingly enough, according the report, the courses these students have to take in China are to be taught in English. But these courses will cost only a fraction of that in the U.S.

The program is funded by a DOE grant (of $115,000) and a pledge ($275,000) by the college itself.

Frogs Should Not Talk

Another off week, another translation from my daughter:

The Frog Moves Away

A pair of big geese and a frog were best friends. Together they lived by a lake for a long time. They were so close to each other, they were like a family. One year, there wasn’t any rain, the lake slowly dried out. Soon, there will be no drinking water. The big geese want to fly to where there is water. But, they couldn’t leave the frog behind. What could they do? The frog couldn’t fly, so to bring the frog wasn’t very easy.

The frog was very smart and after thinking he said, “If you get a stick, both of you bite the two ends, I bite the middle and you fly, and then, can’t you bring me?”

The geese thought this idea was very good. They decided to start at once. So, the two geese bit the two ends of the stick, the frog bit the middle and they flew to the sky. When the people saw this, they were very confused. The people yelled, “Quick, come and see! Two big geese are carrying a frog and flying, what a great idea!”

The frog thought, this was my idea, why are they saying it was the geese’s idea?

They continued to fly, and more people saw them. Everybody yelled with surprise, “Quick, come and see! Two big geese are carrying a frog and flying, what a great idea!”

The frog thought, this was my idea! This time, the frog almost spoke out.

They flew and flew, and more and more people saw them. More people yelled with surprise, “Quick, come and see! Two big geese are carrying a frog and flying, what a great idea!” The frog couldn’t stand it anymore, “This was my… …” Right when he opened his mouth, he fell from the sky and died.

青蛙搬家

一对大雁和一只青蛙是最好的朋友。它们一起在湖边住了很久，亲热得就像是一家人。有一年，一直不下雨，湖水慢慢干了，眼看就要没水喝了。大雁想飞到有水的地方去，但是又舍不得把青蛙留下来。怎么办呢？青蛙不能飞，要带着青蛙走，这可不是一件容易的事。

青蛙非常聪明，它想了想就说：“用一根小棒子，你俩咬着两头，我咬着中间，你们一飞，不就可以把我带走了吗？”

大雁觉得这个主意很好，就决定立刻动身。就这样，两只大雁用嘴咬着小棒的两头，青蛙用嘴咬着小棒的中间，它们在天空里飞了起来。地上的人看见了，都很奇怪。人们喊着：“快来看哪，大雁带着青蛙飞，真有办法！”

青蛙心想：这是我想的办法呀，怎么说是大雁的办法呢？

它们继续往前飞，又有许多人看见了。大家都惊奇地喊着：“快来看哪，大雁带着青蛙飞，真有办法！”

青蛙心想：这是我想的办法呀！这一次，青蛙差一点说出了口。

它们飞啊飞，有更多更多的人看见了。更多的人在惊奇地喊道：“快来看哪，大雁带着青蛙飞，真有办法！”青蛙再也忍不住了：“这是我... ...”它刚一张嘴，就从天上掉下来，摔死了。

Gotta Learn To Share

This is our off-week, for my daughter to catch up on her homework. She had just produced another translation.

It's interesting to note that she had overlooked a subtle character difference and mistaken "middle of the river" (中间) for "river in China" (中国).

Hurting Oneself

A river in China had an island. On the island was a peach tree, and in the peach tree there were a lot of red peaches.

The fox thought about eating the peaches, but couldn’t cross the river. The monkey thought about eating the peaches, but couldn’t cross the river. The fox and the monkey decided to think of a plan together on how to cross the river. They used a lot effort, carried a log, and lay it down from the river bank to the island, and built a bridge.

But, the bridge was too narrow. The fox and monkey couldn’t cross at the same time. The fox said, “Let me cross first, then you can cross.” The monkey agreed.

Once the fox made it to the island, he turned around, purposely pushed the log off into the river. He laughed meanly and told the monkey, “Friend, please go back! I don’t want to share these peaches with you!”

The monkey heard this and was very angry, but he soon laughed and said, “Ha! Ha! You can eat the peaches, but you can never come back!”

The fox started worrying, and said to the monkey, “Monkey, we are good friends, please make a method to get me back!” The monkey didn’t say a word, and turned around and left.

自己害自己

河的中间有一个小岛，岛上长着一棵桃树，树上结满了红红的桃子。

狐狸想吃桃子，可是过不了河。猴子想吃桃子，也过不了河。狐狸和猴子决定一起想办法过河去。它们用了很大的力气，扛了一根木头来，从岸边架到小岛上，做成了一座桥。

但是，这桥太窄了，狐狸和猴子不能同时走。狐狸说：“让我先过去，你再过去吧。”猴子答应了。

谁知道狐狸到了岛上，一转身，就故意把木头推到河里去了。它哈哈大笑着对猴子说：“朋友，请回吧！我不想和你分这些桃子！”

猴子听了非常生气，可是它马上笑起来说：“哈哈，你能吃到桃子，但是，你永远回不来啦！”

狐狸这才着急起来，只好求猴子：“猴子，我们是好朋友，请你想个办法让我回去吧！”猴子连一句话也不说，转身走开了。

Another Afanti Story

Here is another story about the Smart Afanti, translated by my daughter:

Ā Fán Tí Borrows a Pot

Once upon a time there was a person who was an official. He was very rich. He had lots of money, but very selfish. He only wanted other people’s stuff, but wouldn’t help other people. He was never willing to lend his own stuff to other people. One day, Ā Fán Tí begged him for a long time and finally borrowed a pot from him. He promised to return it in 3 days.

The next day, Ā Fán Tí held a small pot. He happily visited the official’s house. He entered through the door and yelled, “Congratulations! Congratulations! Last night your big pot had a child!” That person unexpectedly got a free pot. He was very happy, so he told Ā Fán Tí, “Tomorrow, you do not need to return the big pot, let the pot stay at your house for a longer time. Let it have more children for me.”

Several days later, Ā Fán Tí came again. He told the person, “Not good! Yesterday, the big pot died! I am very sad for you.”

“Nonsense! How can pots die? You are a liar!”

“Oh, dear master, if there is birth, there is death. If the pot can give birth, why can’t the pot die?” Hearing what Ā Fán Tí said, the person was speechless.

The original Chinese:

阿凡提借锅

从前有一个做官的人，家里很富有。他虽然很有钱，但是非常小气。他只想要人家的东西，却不肯帮助别人。他家的东西，从来不愿意借给别人。有一天，阿凡提求了他很久，终于从他那里借到了一只锅子，说好第三天就还回来。

第二天，阿凡提拿着一只小锅子，喜气洋洋地来到了那家人家。他一进门就高声喊：“恭喜！恭喜！昨天晚上，您家的大锅生了孩子！”那人白白地得到一只锅子，很高兴，就对阿凡提说：“你明天不用还我那只大锅子了，就让它在你家里多留些日子，为我多生几只小锅子吧！”

过了几天，阿凡提又来了。他对那人说：“不好了！您家的大锅子昨天死了！我真替你难过。”

“胡说！锅子怎么可能会死？你骗人！”

“啊，亲爱的老爷，有生就有死。既然锅子会生孩子，那它为什么不会死呢？”听了阿凡提的话，那人什么话也说不上来了。

Another Firefox Addon for Reading Chinese

Another day, another Firefox addon. I learned from Google Operation System of the gTranslate extension that translates any text on a web page into another language just by selecting the text and right clicking the mouse. It's pretty cool. I installed and tested with English-Chinese and Chinese-English translations. It seems to work really well.

However, it does not seem to be able to detect the language of the original text, so one has to switch the translation setting every time when the direction of translation changes between the same two languages.

How did Human Come About in China

The reading materials in this third-grade book cover a lot of Chinese legends. Here is one about Nv Wa, who was the creator of human being. It tied in nicely with the a previous one about Pang Gu, who had created the world.

My daughter's translation:

Nü Wā Makes People

It is said that the sky and ground were separated by Pán Gǔ. The big mountains and rivers, forests and flowers, wind, clouds, rain, and snow on the world were also made by Pán Gǔ. But, there were no people at that time. Then, how did people appear?

Well, the people were made by the goddess Nü Wā who mended the sky. Nü Wā heard that Pán Gǔ separated the sky from the ground, and she wanted to look at the world herself. She came to the world, saw the world was very good, and liked it a lot. But, she looked and looked, and it seemed to her that it was missing something. She thought, let me help the world, and let the world become even better.

Nü Wā picked up a piece of yellow dirt from the ground, kneaded it with her hands, and made a little person. She carefully made a nose, eyes, and a mouth for the little person. After that, she placed the little person on the ground, and patted his shoulder. The little person hopped, jumped, and started to play. Just like that, Nü Wā made more of the people non-stop. One by one, the little people ran and yelled by Nü Wā’s feet. The world quickly became very noisy. Suddenly, Nü Wā thought, “If I make people one by one, it will be too slow. What method will make it faster?” She found a rope, dipped it into the yellow dirt, and swung it powerfully. As soon as the dirt dropped on the ground, the dirt became people. Nü Wā swung and swung, and made tons of little people. The little people slowly became big people, and the big people had a lot of kids. So, the world had more and more people.

The Chinese original:

女娲造人

传说天地是盘古打开的，世界上的高山大河、树木花草、风云雨雪也都是盘古变出来的。可是，那时候没有人。那么，人是怎么变出来的呢？

原来，人是补天的女神女娲造出来的。女娲听说盘古打开了天和地，就想亲眼看看这个世界。她来到世界上，看见世界是这么美好，心里非常喜欢。可是，她看来看去，好像总是觉得这世界上少了些什么。她想，让我来帮助这个世界，让它变得更加美好吧。

女娲从地上拿起一块黄土，用手一捏，就捏成了一个小人。她小心地捏出了小人的鼻子、眼睛、和嘴巴，然后再把小人放到地上，拍拍他的肩膀，小人就蹦蹦跳跳地玩起来了。就这样，女娲不停地捏泥人，一个又一个的小人在女娲脚边又跑又叫，世界一下子热闹起来了。忽然，女娲心想：“我这样一个一个地捏，实在太慢了，用什么办法，能让我做得快一些呢？”她找来一条绳子，沾上黄土，用力一甩，甩出去的泥点子一落地，一个一个都变成了小人。女娲甩呀甩呀，她造出了很多很多小人。小人慢慢长成了大人，大人又生了很多孩子。从此，世界上的人就越来越多了。

A Firefox Add-on for Reading Chinese

I learned from Virtual China that there is a add-on for Firefox called Chinesepera-kun which works as a mouse-over Chinese pop-up dictionary for reading online Chinese text. It is pretty cool and does a real good job in recognizing multi-character phrases and provide English translations for multiple options in characters and phrases.

Pinyin is 50 Years Old

Happy Anniversary!

My daughter was really surprised when she heard this. Something this fundamental to a language must have existed forever, or in her own words, "a hundred years"!

The Mountain Sun

We are having an unintentional two-week break. We didn't have class last Sunday as we went out skiing. It was also intended to be a one-week break so my daughter could catch up on her homework. But she has been under the weather this whole week and the Chinese New Year also got in the way in finishing the homework. So, we decided to skip another week in honor of the Chinese New Year!

Meanwhile, she finished translating another of her reading material piece from English to Chinese. She genuinely likes to do this, even though it's not part of her homework assignments. This is a rather long fairy tale and she did a great job:

Her translation:

Mountain Sun

Once upon a time, there were two brothers. The older brother was very rich. The younger brother was very poor. One afternoon, the younger brother was at work in the field. Suddenly, a big bird flew by him, and told him, “Young fellow, do you want to see Mountain Sun?” The younger brother said, “Of course!” “Good, you ride on my back, and I’ll take you there.”

The big bird carried the younger brother to Mountain Sun. The younger brother took a glance, and wow, there was gold everywhere! The big bird said, “Young fellow, you can get a few pieces of the gold, but not too much. The Sun will be back soon, so you can’t stay too long.” The younger brother got two small pieces of gold, and went back home on the big bird. Because of the pieces of gold, his life slowly became better.

The older brother found out about this, and came to his younger brother’s field. The big bird flew by again and asked him, “Young fellow, do you want to see Mountain Sun?” The older brother said, “Of course!” “Good, you ride on my back, and I’ll take you there.”

The big bird carried the older brother to Mountain Sun. The big bird said, “Young fellow, you can take a few pieces of gold, but not too much. The Sun will be back soon, so you can’t stay too long.” The older brother took out the bag he had prepared, and started filling the bag with gold. He kept filling, and filling. The big bird said, “We must go now! The sun will be here very soon!” The older brother pretended not to hear the big bird’s words, so he kept filling the bag. The big bird said again, “Hurry up and go! If you don’t go, then I will be going!” The older brother said, “Wait! I still don’t have enough yet!”

At that moment, the sun came back. The big bird flew away in a SWOOSH! Because the older brother couldn’t catch up with the big bird, he was burned to death by the Sun.

The Original:

太阳山

从前有兄弟俩，哥哥很富，弟弟却很穷。

有一天下午，弟弟正在地里忙着。忽然，一只大鸟飞到他身旁，对他说：“小伙子，你想不想到太阳山去看看？”弟弟说：“当然想啊！”“那好，你就骑在我身上，我来带你去。”

大鸟带着弟弟来到太阳山。弟弟一看，呀，满地都是金子！大鸟说：“小伙子，你可以拿几块金字回去，但是不要拿太多。太阳很快就要回来了，你不能在这里留太久。”弟弟拿了两小块金子，就骑着大鸟回家了。有了金子，他的日子慢慢好起来。

这件事被哥哥知道了，他来到弟弟的地里。大鸟又飞来了。它问哥哥：“小伙子，你想不想到太阳山去看看？”哥哥说：“当然想！”“那好，你就骑在我的身上，我来带你去。”

大鸟带着哥哥来到了太阳山。大鸟说：“小伙子，你可以拿几块金字回去，但是不要拿太多。太阳很快就要回来了，你不能在这里留太久。”哥哥拿出早已准备好的袋子，开始往里面装金子。装啊装啊，大鸟说：“我们得走了！太阳马上就要回来了！”哥哥好像没有听见大鸟的话，还在那里装。大鸟又催他说：“快走吧，你不走，我可要走啦！”哥哥说：“等等！我还没装够！”

这时候，太阳回来了。大鸟呼的一下就飞走了，哥哥因为赶不上大鸟，就被火热的太阳烧死了。

A More Flexible Schedule

Finding enough time to get her Chinese homework done during school week has always been a problem for my daughter. She has a very busy schedule which does not leave a whole lot of available time in evenings.

The textbook we are using has a strong emphasize in homework assignments. Even though we have eliminated some homework that appears to be not so helpful, the weekly assignment may require more than 5 hours in total to finish. She simply does not have that much time during the week, and I did not want her to cram everything during one weekend day either.

So, now we are trying a more flexible schedule. After last week's lesson, she still had some homework left uncompleted. We continued on with today's lesson, which is really the second half of one lesson in the book. She will spend this week doing today's homework assignment. Then, we may take a break next week in lessons so she could catch up with all that were left in homework.

Since most of the lessons in the textbook takes two weeks to complete, it is probably natural for us to use three weeks in this fashion. It will slow down our pace, but it is better than not completing the homework, some of which are actually very helpful exercises. Besides, going back to finish earlier homework assignments may be a good review session by itself!

A Little Riddle

My daughter is still fond at translating Chinese into English. It's not part of our homework assignment but she is doing it on her own. Here is a little riddle she just translated:

Wash hands, wash face, and take a bath,
Born to love blowing bubbles,
For other people, the more they wash, the cleaner they get,
For me though, the more I wash, the skinnier I get.

The original in Chinese:

洗手，洗脸，又洗澡，
生来就爱吹泡泡，
人家越洗越干净，
它呀，越洗越瘦小。

Notice that she switched the third person singular (它) into the first person singular in her translation. :)

Taking Notes

New year, new book. We started our first class of the year today, at the Lesson One of the 2nd Book of the third grade.

On her own initiative, my daughter brought a little notebook with me. She said she would like to start taking notes during the classes. As we went through the list of new characters for this lesson, she wrote each of them down in her note book, the pinyin, the character itself, and its meaning in English.

It's a nice way to break the dullness of going through new characters. It also reinforces her learning of them, as she was paying close attention when she had to write them down. As such, later in the class, we spent less time going through the character cards.