 |
 |
Hi Chris
I teach secondary classes (four levels) back
to back half an hour per class once a week and manage to keep some interest and
progress in Chinese - eventually they twig that they have to do a lot at home/independently
as we don’t have the luxury of lots of lessons a week.
Alongside first lessons in greetings and
getting tongue round basic words and tricky new sounds (zh x z c etc) I teach
radicals – they are easier to write, I teach the main ones , its meaning,
its sound (relevant later when decoding and guessing /sounding out new
characters) ) and its ‘squished up version’ which means that when
you start writing the greetings out in characters it is not just a jumble of
strokes. Then move on to family and same - they can spot the ‘parts’
it’s a blend of Shaz Lawrence’s approach to code cracking and
getting some useful language in early on.
I teach AQA ELC right from the start - it’s
a bit annoying to teach ‘to’ an exam but it gets the basics covered,
trains them to actually learn radicals/ characters (for some of them it’s
the first time they cant do something without some effort! - a new experience!)
and in 2 plus terms you can work towards some ability in all four skills. Food
early on is good though its annoying that AQA does not vary its vocab for the Chinese
exam so its still a bit heavy on hamburgers/ sandwiches and lemon juice and
chips most of which are ‘loaned’ words.
Third term year I start FCSE so that’s
tenses and more vocab across three topics for the second year - again ‘to’
a test but then when they have got the hang of tenses and more vocab jinbu 1 is
zipped through in a term (already done lots of it and great for them to have NO
pinyin in the workbooks) and on to jinbu 2 in third year.
Hope that helps
From:
Sent: 02 February 2016 03:20
To:
[log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Success approaches to
teaching beginners Mandarin
Hi Chris
Depending on the age
of the students I suggest you have a look at the Routledge Course in Modern
Mandarin Chinese – it’s a bit dry but it sensibly
concentrates on pinyin for the first 6 units and a heavy focus on listening
with structure drill being delivered as audio with the requirement to
manipulate language orally. It’s a university course really and I am an
adult but I think it’s basic approach is very sound, and that’s
after using a wide range of Japanese, Spanish and Mandarin textbooks in both
learning and teaching scenarios.
Personally I think
'first steps' are too character based and therefore make reading far too stodgy
an exercise in decoding. Being able to sound words out quickly and
smoothly is critical.
Hope that insight
helps
Duncan Gray
From: Christopher
Pye <[log in to unmask]>
Reply-To:
Date: Tuesday, February 2, 2016 at
10:44 AM
To: "[log in to unmask]"
<[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Success approaches to
teaching beginners Mandarin
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
Disclaimer
Harrow
International School Hong Kong ('the School' or 'Harrow Hong Kong') does not
accept responsibility for email contents. This email (and any attachments) are
confidential, legally privileged and/or protected by copyright. This email is
intended only for the addressee or the person responsible for delivering it to
the addressee.
If you
have mistakenly received this email please notify the sender by replying by
email or telephone immediately +852 2824 9099 and then delete this email (and
any attachments) from your system. You should not disclose the contents of this
email (and any attachments) to any other person and no copies should be made.