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.