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Dear Chris
I’m very surprised to find out that you’ve already spotted the problem of the most frequent words and what are in the textbooks. This is what I found as well. For long run, I tend to believe students should learn the most frequent words first to quickly get on reading more meaning texts.
I’d follow these topics in textbooks, but carefully choose the most frequents words, short sentences to begin with. Over time, students would cover all topics, and their knowledge in each topic grow.
As to writing, I agree with the other teachers, I think writing can be delayed a bit. After all, lots of students find it much harder writing Chinese than English. It might put them off learning Chinese if they have to do writing straight away. But when I introduce reading, I also show pupils how to write stroke by stroke , just to give them some ideas what Chinese writings are like. Also, this is one of the 40 ways to reinforce their memories.
When I introduce a new subject, I group listening and reading together (input), then speaking and writing (output). Some Chinese characters are pictograph like this http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XODk3MjQ5NTY4.html?from=s1.8-1-1.2
So reading Mandarin is an easy part for my pupils.
Hope it helps.
Helen Huang
ChrisThanks in advance for your thoughts and advice.Do any of you teach using the AIM methodology and, if so, have you found it to be more or less successful at producing confident speakers than other methods?At what stage is it recommended to teach students to write Hanzi? I've attended courses where the course leader has raised doubts about the value of teaching handwriting Hanzi as they argued time could be better spent develping other, more valuable, skills. Is it more effective to delay the introduction of reading Hanzi or do you dive right in from day 1? How about handwriting vs typing?Do the above textbooks make for an effective framework for a beginners course or would it be more advisable to adapt an adult, independent learner's approach and tackle the 100/300/500/1000 most frequent words with a view to building critical verbal fluency rather than working through arbitrary textbook topics? I ask as quite often in French/Spanish textbooks, I've found real high value, functional language - such as modal verbs and object pronouns - gets jettisoned or at least delayed until much later in favour of working through topics such as animals and physical descriptions.I'm familiar the Easy Steps To Chinese and My Chinese Classroom textbooks, and I know Pearson's JinBu textbooks are analogous to their French/Spanish counterparts.Dear All,I'm a Spanish and French teacher aiming to start teaching beginners Chinese. I wanted canvas your expertise on what you've found to be the most successful approaches to teaching beginners Mandarin with secondary students.
However, I want to know if you've encountered significant problems with these materials and if you've found a more effective, alternative approach to course design for beginner learners.
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