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.

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！”

The Stanford Textbook is Here!

The textbook from Stanford Chinese School arrived last night. It has been merely a week since I actually dropped a check in the mail for them, so that is pretty quick. I ordered the second-grade textbook (Books 4, 5, and 6 according to their web site). It actually comes in as a single book, plus three student exercise booklets (two to alternate for odd/even weeks, another one for summer break) and a CD-ROM.

The books are professionally produced, with paper, printing, and binding all in very high quality. Leafing through the pages quickly, I found it to be even more impressive than the samples on the web showed. Here are some quick notes.

What I liked:

1. The emphasize on reading is apparent. The lesson text and reading materials are much longer and with much more substance. They are mostly stories of various interest.
2. Although they tend to be long, there are many, many repetitions (by design) of the same or similar wordings, phrases, and sentence structures throughout the stories. It should make the reading easier as the student progresses.
3. The illustration of grammar usages, the isolation of certain words, phrases, and sentence structures are excellent. (Somehow it reminds me the books I used to crank when I was preparing to take the TOEFL and GRE exams.)
4. Although there seems to be too much homework (four times a week), the assignment is mostly on reading. It does not seem to be too hard or time-consuming.
5. As part of exercising in recognizing characters, most of the homework involves playing a "scramble"-like game: reconstructing the text with a set of loose character cards. The CD-ROM contains a similar exercise. This could be a very fun way for the students to learn characters.
   

What I didn't like:

1. The lessons and readings are way too dominated by fables and ancient stories. While interesting, it lacks variety for an entire year's material.
   
2. It lacks dialogs and conversations that pertain to daily life situations.
3. I would have preferred to have three separate books instead of a single, thick one, as the textbook.
4. There is no teacher's guide. Not even a recommended schedule. From the homework booklets one could deduce that it is supposed to take two weeks for one lesson.
5. For the first lesson (that I have looked at), the homework booklets imply the lesson is taught in two parts, but the CD-ROM homework covers the entire lesson even in the first exercise.
   
6. Something odd: the entire textbook (and homework) does not teach or use Pinyin, as promised. But the homework for summer break contains many Pinyin exercises. An oversight?

Overall, I liked it, a lot. More importantly though, my daughter liked it too. When I showed her the book and how it is designed, she got really, really excited: "I can't wait to get this started!" Well, for that, we shall see. :)

An Example of Awkward Chinese

While looking through my daughter's current Chinese textbook, I noticed this lesson. Here is the text of the entire lesson:

放学了，爸爸在车上告诉我：“下午有一个小朋友来我们家。”我问：“他是谁？”爸爸说：“是云云。”云云是我的好朋友，我听了，真开心。

Literally:

When my school is over, Dad tells me in the car: "A little friend come to our house this afternoon." I ask: "Who is he?" Dad says: "Is Yunyun." Yunyun is my good friend, I hear that, very glad.

(The English version is intentionally awkward.)

In such a simple and short passage, there are one error and two bad ambiguities:

1. Error: There should be a period instead of comma after the sentence 云云是我的好朋友.It's quite a common mistake in Chinese writing to over-use comma through an entire paragraph without periods. But to have that in a textbook is unforgivable.
2. Ambiguity: There is no tense in “下午有一个小朋友来我们家。”. Chinese is not a precise language and tense is very often not enforced. The reader is supposed to deduct the proper tense from context. But here, the ambiguity is quite bad. Within the previous context of Dad telling "me", it seems that Yunyun had already come to our house in the afternoon. Within the later context of "me" being happy, Yunyun is yet to come.
3. Ambiguity: 他 or 她? he or she? The usage of 他 (he) is not explained. In fact, a more natural dialog would be something like "谁来过?"/"谁会来?"("Who came?"/"Who is coming?") or quite simply "谁?" ("Who?").
   

It's not difficult to correct or avoid these simple problems. But having them present in the lesson shows a certain carelessness in the authors of this textbook.

Judging Textbooks by Their Covers

One of the nice things about home-schooling is the flexibility of choosing textbooks on our own, or going without a set textbook at all.

In more recent years, It has become fashionable to learn the Chinese language in the US. Therefore, a wide variety of textbooks targeting the North America market have become available. These could range from the Office of Chinese Language Council International (Hanban) to a free wikibook.

However, it is rather difficult to evaluate these books. Most of the online sellers do not provide adequate samples of their books. When they do provide the text itself, they are shown without the context of any teaching methodology. In a way, we are forced to judge the books by their covers.

Most of these textbooks are compiled and produced from inside China. Although they all claim to aim at the North American audience, their content still has very little, if any at all, relevance of children's life here. This is understandable since their authors, while language experts in China, generally lack life experience here.

The textbook currently being used in my daughter's Chinese school is just such an example. It is one of the earliest and arguably the most widely used in America, published by China's Jinan University in 1997. My daughter found the book uninteresting, which I totally agree. When I look through her second-grade textbook, I found:

• The main text tends to be very simple and naive, even for a second grade book (which is most likely used by a third-grader here), and therefore "uninteresting". There are no stories.
  
• In many occasions the text is awkward, far from the way how a normal kid would talk. Even the dialogs feel like "forced". (This is actually a common problem in Chinese writings, from literature to popular movie/TV dialogs.)
• Pretty much all text characters have their Pinyin printed directly on top of them. This may be helpful for students to learn how to pronounce the characters in the beginning, but it is actually detrimental for them to learn the characters. When they read the text, they tend to read the Pinyin, not the characters.

There is actually another Chinese school in our neighborhood which was established more recently from a split from the older Denver Chinese school. They use a newer textbook called Standard Chinese (标准中文). From this link we can see all the teaching text in this book, but nothing else. The text looks only marginally better than the book we have.

Among the available textbooks, one that is created here in the US stands out as the most interesting. It's author, Dr. Ma Liping, had taught elementary school in China in the past but has then lived and studied in the US, including earning a Ph.D. in curriculum design from Stanford. She had founded the Stanford Chinese School in 1994 and used her own experimental textbook there ever since. Her methodology emphasizes reading and learning Chinese characters through reading. She would postpone learning Pinyin to a later stage so the students are not distracted from learning the characters at the beginning.

The table of content for her second grade textbook seems to show that they have a lot of stories to read, although it's hard to tell if they have anything more closely related to children's lives here at all. There is only one sample available, a variation of the famed fox and crow story. It is certainly an interesting story. The reading material associated with this lesson are not too bad either.

What's most impressive, however, is the way this textbook isolates and illustrates what it calls "grammar point" after the lesson. One of the most difficult and confusing things about Chinese is that the same character can have entirely different meanings at different context and this sample "grammar point" does a pretty good job in showing and teaching them. (It even uses a little English at that!)

The Stanford Chinese School web site also has some articles indicating the textbook is gaining popularity in other Chinese schools. They also point out that many schools have suffered from various difficulties in the attempts to adopt them.

I also have my own doubts. While emphasizing reading, this textbook seems to assume that the students already possess sufficient oral communication skills in Chinese, perhaps from their family environment. That would not be true for my daughter, who so far speaks English exclusively at home. It is also not clear how they teach pronunciation without using Pinyin. (My daughter has already learned Pinyin, or its concept, so this may be a moot point for us.)

But it does seem to be worthwhile to invest $65 for a closer look at one-year's worth of textbook. So off goes a check. We should know more soon enough.

What Kids Need to Learn in Chinese Language -- in China

I was looking for some measuring sticks on learning Chinese when I found that a new Curriculum Standard for Chinese is being implemented in China in the last few years. The standard spells out the goals of Chinese language education during the 9-year (K-9) compulsory education period.

The goals are a mixture of political and cultural aptitudes, general reading and writing skills, and some quantified measurements. These are further divided into four periods: Grades 1-2, 3-4, 5-6, and 7-9. Although my daughter is currently in the 3rd grade, her Chinese level would probably fall into the first period, i.e., for Grades 1-2.

According to the Standard, the goals for Grades 1-2 are:

• Learning the Chinese characters:

1. Able to enjoy learning characters
2. Able to recognize 1600 to 1800 commonly-used characters; able to write 800 to 1000 of them
3. Knowing the basic strokes, writing with the correct stroke order and spacing; able to appreciate the beauty of a character's shape
   
4. Having a good posture and habit while writing; writing neatly
   
5. Complete the learning of Pinyin: able to correctly pronounce the initials, finals, and tones; able to write them correctly
6. Able to pronounce new characters by their Pinyin, able to look up new characters in a dictionary by their Pinyin and/or strokes
   

• Reading

1. Able to enjoy reading
2. Able to read correctly and smoothly with the standard Mandarin
3. Able to read silently, without the help of voice or finger tracing
4. Able to read with the help of pictures
5. Able to understand phrases with the help of their context
6. Able to read simple fairy tales, fables, and stories
7. Able to read children's poems and other simple poems, enjoy the beauty of language
   
8. Knowing the common punctuations and their usage in different expressions
9. Able to recite 50 poems or proses, read more than 50,000 character's worth of books outside of the classroom
10. Love books and take good care of books
    

• Writing

1. Interested in writing sentences and writing down one's own words, imaginations and feelings
2. Enjoy using new words when writing sentences
3. Able to use punctuations correctly