There are quite a few online language tools such as Babel Fish and Google. But they are no help if you happen upon a character that you don't know how to pronounce. Or if you, like me, need to find the exact Pinyin of a character for teaching purposes.
That is where Adso would come handy. I found this nice little site today, where you can input Chinese characters and phrases and it will provide their Pinyin and English translation right away. It seems to be a very decent job.
Now, most Chinese inputting method use Pinyin itself, so it would be really hard to input things without knowing the Pinyin first! But if you have the characters handy in a web page or document, you can just copy and paste them onto the site.
The site promises to do a lot more than this, such as textbooks, reading materials, and news in Chinese. But those features lag far behind the handy pinyin/translation tool. The site navigation also needs some work. But through some digging, I find they also have other projects, such as Chinese flash cards, online dictionary, and a Firefox plugin. I will have to find out more about those later.
Thursday, March 1, 2007
Sunday, February 25, 2007
Still Going Strong
We took last week off for the Chinese New Year. After a review session sandwiched between too off weeks, it felt that we were starting a new semester/quarter as we restarted this morning. But we had a great class. It went on smoothly for two hours with only one short break in the middle. My daughter kept her concentration throughout without interruption.
For each class, I always start with reading the lesson text for her. I have been noticing that she is able to understand more and more from my reading. Today, she was able to tell me pretty much the entire story, sans some minor details, right after she had heard it for the first time. It is very encouraging.
For each class, I always start with reading the lesson text for her. I have been noticing that she is able to understand more and more from my reading. Today, she was able to tell me pretty much the entire story, sans some minor details, right after she had heard it for the first time. It is very encouraging.
Sunday, February 11, 2007
A Mid-term Review
Up till now, we have had four weeks of classes, covering the first two lessons, which is the first half of the Book One. Since this week falls in between our ski holiday last week and the Chinese New Year next week, I decided to use today's class as a mid-term review.
First I asked my daughter to read the texts of both lessons, using my copy of the textbook so she did not have the pinyin I had marked on her copy. She did the reading excellently, essentially knowing all the characters in them. She told me that she started to memorize most of the texts by now, even though that was never a requirement. It came naturally from the repetitions in the homework assignments. She still has problems in managing the tones in sentences, which is expected to be a slow process to correct.
Then we checked the characters individually, using the cards provided by the textbook. The two lessons have 60 "new" characters, a number surprised my daughter. With the characters isolated, she successfully recognized 53 of them. Of the seven, she remembered 3 or 4 on the second round as well. This is a remarkable progress in one-month's worth of classes!
We did not do too much more after that. We caught up a few things we had skipped over during our early classes and assigned some optional reading and CD-ROM homework. It was a good review session.
First I asked my daughter to read the texts of both lessons, using my copy of the textbook so she did not have the pinyin I had marked on her copy. She did the reading excellently, essentially knowing all the characters in them. She told me that she started to memorize most of the texts by now, even though that was never a requirement. It came naturally from the repetitions in the homework assignments. She still has problems in managing the tones in sentences, which is expected to be a slow process to correct.
Then we checked the characters individually, using the cards provided by the textbook. The two lessons have 60 "new" characters, a number surprised my daughter. With the characters isolated, she successfully recognized 53 of them. Of the seven, she remembered 3 or 4 on the second round as well. This is a remarkable progress in one-month's worth of classes!
We did not do too much more after that. We caught up a few things we had skipped over during our early classes and assigned some optional reading and CD-ROM homework. It was a good review session.
Saturday, February 3, 2007
No Class This Week
It's the Superbowl Sunday, so naturally we will just DVR the game and go skiing! I am not sure if my daughter is more excited about going skiing or getting to skip the Chinese class for a week. Maybe both?
Sunday, January 21, 2007
More Snow
Another Sunday, another snow storm. The local Chinese school was cancelled again. My daughter thought it was not fair for her to continue having classes at home while other kids got the day free. My aching back was just telling me that a little bit global warming would be a good thing now.
We are cruising along, starting with the second lesson today. I tried to have three breaks during our class. It might be a bit too much (or too frequent). By the time she came back after the last break, she was not in the mode for class any more. We had to skip the reading material part and call it for a day. Maybe less but longer breaks would work a little better.
We are cruising along, starting with the second lesson today. I tried to have three breaks during our class. It might be a bit too much (or too frequent). By the time she came back after the last break, she was not in the mode for class any more. We had to skip the reading material part and call it for a day. Maybe less but longer breaks would work a little better.
Sunday, January 14, 2007
School on a Snow Day
The snow just doesn't stop falling here in Denver and it's bone-chilling cold outside. So much so that our local Chinese school canceled their classes today. Wimps.
But we are warm and cozy inside our own house, so our class went on scheduled. We continued to finish our first lesson as scheduled by our textbook, much in the same way as our first class last week.
My daughter did a fantastic job with her homework from the first week. The assignment has four installments, supposed to be done in four weekdays. Each installment has two readings, one simple character writing, two character card review/games, and a CD-ROM assignment. They are not very hard per se, but it does take time to finish them all. She did not do it strictly in the an installment per day manner but nonetheless she finished them all. It's a great job!
The homework has also helped her quite significantly. Since most of them are repetitive reading and character learning drills, she got to know her lesson text very well. When she "left" our first class, she could only barely read the lesson text. But she read it quite fluently when she "came back" today. It's very encouraging.
Besides, she said it was kind of fun doing them. It was much better than what she used to have to do for the Chinese school.
As for the lesson itself, I am still amazed on the pace we are having in keeping with the one-lesson-two-weeks schedule. I did skim over a little bit on a few things, including the lengthy reading material. I did not require her to learn to read them all. I read and explained them during our class and told her to simply read silently and try to comprehend them during her homework time. Since we are on a fast pace, I am thinking that maybe we will take a break after a couple of lessons and revisit these reading material a little bit more.
Of course, as we keep going forward, it will be interesting to see what happens when the novelty starts to wear off.
But we are warm and cozy inside our own house, so our class went on scheduled. We continued to finish our first lesson as scheduled by our textbook, much in the same way as our first class last week.
My daughter did a fantastic job with her homework from the first week. The assignment has four installments, supposed to be done in four weekdays. Each installment has two readings, one simple character writing, two character card review/games, and a CD-ROM assignment. They are not very hard per se, but it does take time to finish them all. She did not do it strictly in the an installment per day manner but nonetheless she finished them all. It's a great job!
The homework has also helped her quite significantly. Since most of them are repetitive reading and character learning drills, she got to know her lesson text very well. When she "left" our first class, she could only barely read the lesson text. But she read it quite fluently when she "came back" today. It's very encouraging.
Besides, she said it was kind of fun doing them. It was much better than what she used to have to do for the Chinese school.
As for the lesson itself, I am still amazed on the pace we are having in keeping with the one-lesson-two-weeks schedule. I did skim over a little bit on a few things, including the lengthy reading material. I did not require her to learn to read them all. I read and explained them during our class and told her to simply read silently and try to comprehend them during her homework time. Since we are on a fast pace, I am thinking that maybe we will take a break after a couple of lessons and revisit these reading material a little bit more.
Of course, as we keep going forward, it will be interesting to see what happens when the novelty starts to wear off.
Sunday, January 7, 2007
Our First Class!
We officially opened our home school this morning at 10:30. There was no fanfare we just went right into our first lesson.
Our textbook is the Stanford Chinese school one reviewed earlier. I had worried about whether there was too much material to cover in the two weeks per lesson schedule. But to my pleasant surprise, we covered half of the lesson without rushing in our two-hour class session! Looks like we will be able to follow the schedule forward, which would be a fairly fast pace.
The first lesson's main text is a simplified monkeys-fetching-moon-out-of-water story, apparently originated from Tibet. The text is quite short. Before the class, I had marked my daughter's copy with Pinyin on some of the characters, as I knew she would have difficulty without them. We started with my reading and then explaining the story. Then She read after me line by line, with frequent repeats to correct some pronunciations. We did this three or four times and then took a five-minute break.
After the first break, we reviewed new characters with the flashcards supplied by the textbook. Then we went over some new phrases. I had her doing the writing exercises in the book and then went over the "grammar points". A couple of the grammar points were a little hard to explain clearly. She also got tired and frustrated when I asked her to read after me on the sample sentences. So we took another break.
By now it was about half an hour before our finish time. I read a version of the tadpole-looking-for-mommy story which was included as this week's reading material. This story is actually more than five times in length than the lesson text. But it is made up with same structures with a lot of repetition. My daughter was actually able to comprehend much of the story just from my reading it. (In comparison, she did not get much from listening to the monkeys story for the first time.)
After going through the reading material, we returned to the main text, and did one more "follow-me" reading. Then I explained the homework structure from the textbook, which includes a CD-ROM. With that, we concluded our first lesson. We were about five minutes early.
It was a good class. Although she did get frustrated in the middle of it, she said later she had a good time too. She felt that this was a lot better than going to Chinese school and also she learned more this way. It made a huge difference now that she understood everything since almost all of my instructions were in English.
I also realized that home-schooling is a lot more intensive than regular school. Since she is the only student present, she is the target of attention and focus all the time. In the future, I may need to find ways to "leave her alone" a little bit more and/or having more frequent breaks.
Our textbook is the Stanford Chinese school one reviewed earlier. I had worried about whether there was too much material to cover in the two weeks per lesson schedule. But to my pleasant surprise, we covered half of the lesson without rushing in our two-hour class session! Looks like we will be able to follow the schedule forward, which would be a fairly fast pace.
The first lesson's main text is a simplified monkeys-fetching-moon-out-of-water story, apparently originated from Tibet. The text is quite short. Before the class, I had marked my daughter's copy with Pinyin on some of the characters, as I knew she would have difficulty without them. We started with my reading and then explaining the story. Then She read after me line by line, with frequent repeats to correct some pronunciations. We did this three or four times and then took a five-minute break.
After the first break, we reviewed new characters with the flashcards supplied by the textbook. Then we went over some new phrases. I had her doing the writing exercises in the book and then went over the "grammar points". A couple of the grammar points were a little hard to explain clearly. She also got tired and frustrated when I asked her to read after me on the sample sentences. So we took another break.
By now it was about half an hour before our finish time. I read a version of the tadpole-looking-for-mommy story which was included as this week's reading material. This story is actually more than five times in length than the lesson text. But it is made up with same structures with a lot of repetition. My daughter was actually able to comprehend much of the story just from my reading it. (In comparison, she did not get much from listening to the monkeys story for the first time.)
After going through the reading material, we returned to the main text, and did one more "follow-me" reading. Then I explained the homework structure from the textbook, which includes a CD-ROM. With that, we concluded our first lesson. We were about five minutes early.
It was a good class. Although she did get frustrated in the middle of it, she said later she had a good time too. She felt that this was a lot better than going to Chinese school and also she learned more this way. It made a huge difference now that she understood everything since almost all of my instructions were in English.
I also realized that home-schooling is a lot more intensive than regular school. Since she is the only student present, she is the target of attention and focus all the time. In the future, I may need to find ways to "leave her alone" a little bit more and/or having more frequent breaks.
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