Great to see the discussion on Primary Mandarin getting going again!
We're enjoying Marcus's materials at our school in the West Midlands,
where we are doing lunchtime clubs at present. The online materials
are motivating and give the students plenty of opportunity to hear the
sounds of Mandarin outside of class.
On the pronunciation issue, when
teaching Mandarin to Reception - Y4 at my first school I found that
very young children had no problem in repeating the sounds of
Mandarin. They were happy to get their tongues around xi and shi by
pretending to be trains, loved learning new songs and even had heated
debates between siblings as they went home and compared notes on what
they had been learning.
More recently, I have found the numbers tongue
twister very helpful for sorting out the English propensity for
pronouncing "shi" as "she" (四是四，十是十 etc). Having learnt the numbers 1
- 20 early on, the rhyme can be presented in characters as a little
code to crack. Who can be first in the class to work out the
meaning?
The beauty of the tongue twister is that it encourages
multiple repetition of the sounds in question, plus the added challenge
of making the tonal patterns really clear. Add in the challenge of an
appointment to perform it for an assembly soon after and you should
have those give-away "shi" sounds nailed! You could also get them to
produce flashcards with characters and meaning on, so they can hold
them up and "teach" the school/parents/whoever.
Kind regards,
Helen
Lewis
----Original Message----
From: [log in to unmask]
Date:
01/01/2014 12:29
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Subj:
Re: Scheme of work for initial Mandarin in a Primary School
Juan is
right. Actually I am doing a research and part of questions are
regarding to this issue-what should start first, Pinyin, characters or
oral
words? And I am trying to answer the question by seeking views
from
Mandarin teachers and pupils. I have chatted with a few teachers
and
pupils, and found the similar views as Juan mentioned. Some pupils
think
Pinyin is helpful to correct their own pronunciations later on
after
they've already learned how to say it orally. Pinyin is just like
a
'written record' that they can refer to afterwards. Also, some
teachers
mentioned that younger pupils (especially the primary pupils)
can pick up
the correct sound very quickly just by learning a Chinese
song. Of course,
theoretically it is related to the 'radical period for
second language
acquisition' that younger learners before 12 are very
good at learning
foreign languages, particularly the pronunciation.
The same as Juan, I also agree with Patrick's view on introducing the
characters from the very beginning. Some pupils I interviewed shared
the
same opinion, the reason for this is not only because, as Juan
said, it
would be a completely new thing for English speakers and it's
fun for them
to draw it, but also, with the consideration of the
characteristics of
Chinese- the lack of connection between the sound
and characters, I think
it would be better for pupils to get in touch
with characters from the
beginning, to build up the links of characters
and the sound. Otherwise,
they would face a huge burden of matching the
characters and the sound they
know later on, which is also a repetitive
job to do.
As a Ph.D student, I am very happy to discuss this with
Juan, Patrick,
Theresa, all of you here. I am lack of practical
teaching experience and
would like to hear more from the experienced
teachers like you. I am very
keen to do some basic work, to build up
the relationship between the
general SLA theories, most of which are
from research of Alphabetic
languages, and the unique characteristics
of Chinese languages. I hope I
can achieve my goal in my Ph.D thesis.
And Juan, it's so coincident that I am another Juan.
Best wishes and
Happy New Year!
Juan
PhD Research Student
Institute of Education
University of Warwick
Coventry, UK
On 1 January 2014 11:34, juan
cole <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Theresa is right - younger
learners (including Y7) are very good at
> "reproducing" foreign
sounds. For instance, when teaching si 四, zi 紫, if
> you teach them the
pronunciation without the pinyin, they get the sounds
> perfectly, but
as soon as you show them the pinyin, they are confused. But
> not all
pinyin symbols are "baddies" - a lot of them are helpful for
> non-
native learners. Perhaps, we should accept "the natural confusion and
> difficulties" from English learners of Mandarin on "unusual sounds",
but in
> the meantime spend time to reinforce the correct pronunciation
(for
> instance, q). It may take a while, but the students soon learn
to correct
> themselves. When I started learning English as a Chinese
native speaker, I
> encountered the similar difficulties when
pronouncing V and R correctly.
> Remembering the difference and the
practice make nearly perfect!
>
> Patrick, I agree with you on
introducing the characters from early on, so
> that learners may
acknowledge the difference between English and Chinese
> language.
Many younger learners view Chinese characters as symbols to
> "draw",
as opposed to letters to "write", so looking for "pictures" in
>
characters may be a way to make learning fun.
>
> Best wishes
>
> Juan
>
>
> On Tue, Dec 31, 2013 at 10:54 AM, Theresa Munford
<[log in to unmask]
> > wrote:
>
>> As well as Marcus', the
Chinese staffroom had good primary schemes of
>> work on their site:
>> http://www.thechinesestaffroom.com/>>
>> I think primary age kids
'get' the pronunication much faster than older
>> ones without having
to analyse it, I'm always in awe of how they gets
>> sounds (eg the 'u'
sounds) so perfectly, especially from songs (of which
>> there's loads
out there -- my favourites were from the Hip Hop Chinese
>> series.)
>>
>> Theresa
>> St. Greg's, Bath
>>
>>
>> ------------------------------
>> Date: Tue, 31 Dec 2013 10:10:10 +0000
>> From: [log in to unmask]
COM
>> Subject: Scheme of work for initial Mandarin in a Primary School
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>>
>>
>> I am going to
be teaching some initial Mandarin to every class in a
>> Primary school
from this term. The classes are short 15-20 minute lessons
>> that I
will be teaching as a 'language sandwich' (n English, then in
>>
Chinese - in character - then finishing in English). The English-
language
>> part will be mainly 'culture-related', teaching about
China, and so that
>> children can ask questions. The Chinese bit will
be completely in Chinese.
>>
>> Does anyone have any good suggestions
for a Scheme of Work to indicate
>> what is useful to cover and in what
logical order? I'd like to build up
>> some usable language for
greetings, objects, number, family members - so
>> that each part
builds on the one before if possible. I'd also like to make
>> it fun,
so that children are encouraged to continue with Mandarin Chinese
>>
later
>>
>> One thing I am very concerned to do is to give a good model
of
>> pronunciation without focusing too much on pinyin (because I
think this can
>> misdirect English learners of Mandarin). Any ideas
for how to do this - and
>> for how and when to introduce pinyin -
would be greatly appreciated.
>>
>> Thank you,
>>
>> Patrick Gillard
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Patrick Gillard
>> +44(0)1394386884
>> +44(0)
7698169446
>> skype: patrickjgillard
>>
>
>
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