A few reasons why I chose to use 'Huangying" to be the textbook for the next school year (I'm NOT working for the publisher, just simply express why I like this book):
- It's full-color printed!! Who wouldn't love colors? Compare to most textbooks that are only black & white, this textbook is like carnival!
- It puts traditional & simplified characters side by side in the vocabulary chart. That will be a great comparison for students to understand the origins of many characters. We have to admit that many simplified characters has lost its beauty and the meaning of its original forms.
- It is designed for the middle/high school students specifically in North America. In other words, the content is more engaging to students' daily life (than IC is more related to college life). I'm happy to find out that in the unit for exchanging personal info, they don't talk about address anymore. Indeed, we hardly give away our "physical" address to a new friend. Instead, we exchange e-mail address; that's more practical and easier to comprehend for young students (And of course, telling address in Chinese is difficult also... Just think about all the translations from English to Chinese, and the totally reverse word order...).
- It adds a lot of cultural facts, stories, beautiful pictures of food for the learners. Even I will want to read these interesting stuff first when I open the book.
- It has a small column of "classroom language" in the end of each unit. Which is easier for the teacher to gradually encourage students using more Chinese in class.
I've received the on-line sample copy of Volume 1, Part 1, Unite 1 from the publisher. And that's what I've observed so far. My supervisor has already orders the books last week. Hopefully I can get the teacher's book copy before the new semester begins. I heard them not only provide class activity ideas, but even the quiz/test templates in the teacher's book... Can't wait to read it!!
7 comments:
Hi, CT. I teach Mandarin in a high school in Des Moines, IA. I am currently in a quandary about which textbook to order for next year. I currently use Cynthia Ning's "Communicating in Chinese" for which I have created a massive amount of supplementary materials over the years. However, the series is beginning to show its age and is in serious need of a revision.
I have my choices narrowed down to these three texts: Easy Steps to Chinese; Integrated Chinese (3rd Ed.); and Huanying.
What put you decision to choose "Huanying" over the top?
Hi, rd in dm:
Aside from above 5 reasons regarding why I chose "Huan Ying" as the textbook, I guess the most important thing you have to do when it comes to choosing the textbook is -- understand what are the needs for your target audience.
For me, my audience are:
1. My 6th~12th GRADERS, who are mostly from non-Chinese speaking, non-Chinese background family. I was lucky enough to meet them twice during my teaching demos, so I know what their learning styles are like. By the way, Chinese would only be 1 of the 4 foreign languages they can choose at school (this is more like a marketing theory here... haha). I also have to take the school year schedule into account for my actual teaching hours.
So, I try to keep the textbook less complicated and much more fun for my teen-students. Therefore, the more college-oriented IC(Integrated Chinese) was out of my option.
2. My SUPERVISOR & PRINCIPAL: They both gave me a very specific goal of what they want the Chinese program to achieve: let the students have fun while learning. Not only we would cover the academic aspect of the Chinese language, but we'd cover a lot of Chinese culture v.s. American culture comparisons.
3. PARENTS: For which, I haven't had the chance to communicate with them yet. However, from my past teaching experiences, I'd (try my best to) persuade parents to focus on this brief 2-year Chinese language learning experience on building up a solid foundation of Mandarin. In the future, if the students want to persue a deeper understanding of Chinese language, they'll have no problem at all to pick it up anytime. For now, if they can order food in a Chinese restaurent, greet Chinese people without problem, introduce themselves, show off some Chinese cultural aspects while watching "Kong Fu Panda", chant some Chinese twisters... That would be good enough (just some examples of how parents would expect their children's performance of a foreign language).
Anyway, just my opinions on this textbook. Hope you'll find it useful.
CT, Thanks for your detailed response.
I have a similar audience with some important differences. My students are 9th-12th also with few if any heritage learners; likewise, I compete for students with the Japanese, Spanish, French, Italian, and German programs. However, I offer five levels of Chinese and have a few students interested in taking the AP Chinese and International Baccalaureate exams. As you know, these exams require a fairly high level of Chinese.
Huanying professes to be based on the standards for high school Chinese. I love the idea behind the 5 Cs approach to the standards. I attended a Pre-AP workshop in Taiwan a couple of summers ago where we prepared lessons using these standards. It was a very rewarding experience. The book’s authors also emphasize the three Ps: presentation, practice, and performance which I firmly believe in. I really would like to see these books in their entirety, especially the workbook and teacher book.
I also agree with your assessment of Integrated Chinese. I would further add that, in the past at least, it tended to be very grammar heavy and technical. I wasn’t sure it was appropriate even for college students in that respect. However, I did like its workbook and I did write a 300-page glossary for it as well as numerous supplementary materials. I see the new 3rd edition is out and I am interested in seeing if they have corrected some of these problems.
After all this discussion, I think I might stick with Communicating in Chinese for one more year until these books are out and I can have time to thoroughly review them. Thanks for being a sounding board. By the way, there is a companion set of teacher books to CIC that are available for free download from Yale University Press. They offer wonderful activities for listening and speaking (book 1) as well as reading and writing (book 2) that can be made applicable to whatever textbook one is using.
TEACHER'S ACTIVITY BOOK FOR LISTENING AND SPEAKING (202 pages)
http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/pdf/CICListeningSpeakingActivity.pdf
TEACHER'S ACTIVITY BOOK FOR READING AND WRITING (251 pages)
http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/pdf/TeachersAcitivityReadingandWriting.pdf
Good luck with your school year. I will be interested to hear how things go with your new textbook.
Wow, RD, you must be a terrific teacher!
This will be my very first year of teaching Mandarin in a private school. So, I expect my life to be hectic, and plan to learn a lot from other more experienced language teachers.
Thanks for the useful info also.
Let's keep in touch!
Hi, I am deciding which textbook to order for next year at my new school. I have the sample copy of Huying, could you please share what you feel about using Huanying?
Thanks,
Weiwei
Hi CT,
It's great to know that you started teaching Chinese in a private school. Not been able to get a job is annoying.
Like you, I also work at a private school in St. Louis, MO (middle of no where) and teach middle school students who are 97% white people and 3% African American.
It is my first year of teaching. My class meets every 5 days (this school is on a trimesters schedule not the common two semesters). Nihao was the textbook for their first year. I did not choose the book and continued what was taught mid-term when I started teaching.
What I like about Nihao is that (1) the amount of vocab is reasonable for beginners (2) topics are self-centered and extended to family (3) it comes with audio CD (4) comics and culture aspects in the book (5) supplementary material of games incorporated with text materials (6)diverse activities and practice in the workbook. (7) sentence pattern drills. However, what I don't like about Nihao is (a) traditional Chinese textbook layout, black and white outlooks (b) lack of situational conversation practices (c) some vocabs are created for Australians since it's published there (d) very little of songs, tone twisters prepared for teachers and etc.
It has crossed my mind to use Huanying with all these pros you mentioned earlier. Perhaps I will start using it in two years but meanwhile refers to it as a reference book.
UBD seems kind of hot in my school lately. You probably know it already. UBD means understanding by design, an approach which you may be familiar with but don't know the tech term. In other words, teachers figure out the lesson key objectives first, and then design backwardly how to teach them.
One question I have kept asking either myself or others: what makes one a good teacher? Even though "good" is vague concept but it includes all kinds of positive features you can think of. My answer and most people I asked would be "the passion/attitude of a teacher".
Hi CT,
It seems that you have been using Huanying for 3 years. Could you please share your reflections with me about this textbook? I teach 9-12th graders in VA.
Thanks, CT!
Cherry
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