Dear Victoria,
Thank you very much for your reply. I got it. It is very helpful.
Many thanks again
Wenju
Mandarin Teacher
From: Mandarin Chinese Teaching [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Victoria Allen
Sent: 04 February 2016 08:50
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: AQA GCSE Mandarin sound file in 2011
Dear Wen Ju,
If you login to the AQA website, you can access them under 'Secure key Materials', but you will need to set up an account if you don't already have one.
Best wishes,
Victoria
V K Allen
Head of Oriental Languages/Confucius Classroom Manager
Torquay Boys' Grammar School
Shiphay Manor Drive
Torquay TQ2 7EL
01803 615501
________________________________
Date: Thu, 4 Feb 2016 08:24:19 +0000
From: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
Subject: AQA GCSE Mandarin sound file in 2011
To: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
Good morning, everyone!
Does anyone have the AQA GCSE Mandarin listening test sound file for 2011 to share, please?
On the AQA website, they only have 2012-2014 year.
Many thanks in advance
Wen Ju
Mandarin teacher
From: Mandarin Chinese Teaching [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Christopher Pye
Sent: 04 February 2016 03:10
To: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Success approaches to teaching beginners Mandarin
Dear all,
Many thanks for your responses, although each and every one is a reminder of the typo I made in the subject field!
Regarding the language and the order that it's taught, @HelenHuang, traditional textbooks failing to get the highest frequency, most functional language taught right away is something that courses are only now beginning to address. In MFL there are two approaches/courses which I think have the right idea.
The first is the Michel Thomas method<http://www.michelthomasforschools.co.uk/> - c'est possible / es posible in French and Spanish, which are adapted versions of the adult courses, which is mainly based on building oracy skills and explicitly explaining grammar structures in an easily digestible and memorable fashion, and introducing vocabulary using hacks to help draw parallels between English and the TL. I've used the adult courses with Y9-10 beginners to great effect, they really help students nail the structures and patterns of these languages, but I think I'm not the only teacher to find that you need to supplement the course with lots of thematic vocabulary. It has the potential to be very student-led, rather than teacher-led.
The second approach is the AIM method<http://www.aimlanguagelearning.com/> which also looks at building oracy, but focuses on implicit teaching of structures and patterns using very paired-down, simplified language, gestures and familiar stories to introduce high frequency words and structures completely in the target language. This approach seems a lot more fun and enjoyable, particularly for younger kids as there are loads of stories, songs, dances(!) and such which go with the courses, however I have two reservations about the Mandarin courses. Firstly, they only have two courses so far, although I'm sure more are on the way and, secondly, I'm not sure at what stage in the courses character recognition and writing are introduced. Oh, it also seems very a teacher-led approach.
I'm not saying either is better than the other, or without their faults, although I reckon they both significantly improve on traditional textbooks.
The reason I asked for all of your take on at which stage to introduce reading and writing of Hanzi is that, at least with AIM, it mirrors the way we learn our mother tongue - first oracy, then literacy - and I'd be concerned that kids learning Chinese for two hours a week or less might get quickly overwhelmed by having to deal with different pronunciations and writing.
My gut instinct would be to go with developing speaking first, introduce character recognition gradually after a few months and the worry about writing once the students are functionally fluent, maybe using an app like Skritter<http://www.skritter.cn>, which was what accelerated my character writing, to quickly shed through how to write characters they should recognise.
@SimonRisoe @ JohnBald - Would love to read some evidence regarding best practice for introducing writing.
As an MFL teacher, I'm always taken aback by the idea that after so long we still haven't quite cracked the foolproof method to teach kids languages. The most effective methods and resources for language learning available (I'm thinking about any number of excellent podcasts, sites like DuoLingo, Memrise, Lang-8, Fluent-U, any number of language exchange sites, all seem to be aimed at the motivated individual learner rather than guiding students through a fixed course.
Maybe as teachers our jobs will eventually become more a role of facilitating students through their own, self-directed, learning journeys rather than transmitting our knowledge of language to them in a relatively rigid order. I know we do that already, but too often MFL courses seem to be running along the same train tracks of thematic vocabulary - first introductions, then family, then pets, then colours... - and there seems to be little empirical, reliable evidence as to whether this is really effective at getting kids to learn, remember and use language effectively. We just seem to be making incremental improvements on traditional methodology because that's the way we learned. By contrast, there's loads of evidence available on the best way to teach literacy, typing, musical instruments, business management. I could be looking in the wrong places though, it's been a while since my PGCE! It just seems to me that if there was proven, reliable way to teach languages we'd all be doing it that way.
One final suggestion/observation - using a ListServe email for discussion seems to present a number of problems, first of which is keeping track of different threads which can be confusing and clog up inboxes. Is there a bulletin board, forum, Google group where these issues can be discussed in a more user-friendly way?
Cheers,
Chris
On 3 February 2016 at 04:05, Chunliangreenfield <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:
On 2 February 2016 at 12:04, Helen Huang <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:
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
On 2 February 2016 at 02:44, Christopher Pye <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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?
Thanks in advance for your thoughts and advice.
Chris
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