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:

Nobody Can Fool Me

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.

The original Chinese is:

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。

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?

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.

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.

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.

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. :)

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.