Chinese Rhyme Contest

After working in this new private school for about 3 weeks, I finally did something I think it's fun and inspiring for the students-- we had our 1st Chinese rhyme contest.

Contestants: 17 7th graders
Level: Beginning
Textbook: Huanyin Volume 1, Part 1
Class hours required: 2 hours & 10 mins (one regular 50-min class, one 80-min long block class hour)
Materials: Youtube video clip on Smartboard, peer review sheet


I chose 5 short rhymes on Huanyin workbook; one of them is the famous "Two Tigers" (liang3zhi1 lao3hu3)

Step 1 Warm Up:
I first let the students watch a video clip on youtube. With its vivid illustration and the famous tune of French "Bruder Jackob", students could understand and sing along with "Liang3 Zhi1 Lao3hu3" after a few times.

Step 2 Practicing:
Read out loud: Go through each rhyme without explaining the meaning too much, since this is just a practice for them to work on pin-yin sounds and 4 tones. I randomly assigned each individual to read out loud for each short phrase first, then correct their pronunciation.

Step 3 Strengthening:
Repeat after me: Then I asked all students to repeat after me for each single rhyme, and I gave them 5 mins choose their favorite one to practice on their own. I also let the students listen to the on-line audio clips for a different accent and speed, so they can get used to different Chinese speakers.

After these steps, most students should have listened to the same rhyme for about 3~10 times (depends on how much they have really listened into their minds...)


Step 4 Preparation time: I gave the student a weekend, and the following Monday to prepare for the contest. They can also listen to the on-line audio clips provided by the publisher at home.

Contest:
On the day of the contest, each student drew a lot (chou1 qian1)to decide the order of their performance. I also give each students 2 peer review sheets (see image), so they can grade each others' works (which the students love a LOT). I suggested them not to abuse their power of being a judge, and encouraged them to give decent & honest comments to their fellow classmates.

During the contest, each student came up to the front of the class, bring (or not) their own rhyme sheet, and chant (or sing) it out loud, starting with a brief self-introduction, ending with a thank you and bow.

The result if fun.
Overall, most students gave away pretty positive comments to other students. For example: "I can tell you have prepared a lot for this..."; "I think you need to practice more on xxx..."; "You seem to lack of confidence...."; "Don't slouch when you're on stage..."; "You forgot to bow...."....many amazing comments.

3 students held the same 3rd place. The students held the 2nd and the 1st place were only 0.2 point away... very intense competition.

Remarks:
I also taped some students' performances with their prior permission. And I played it on Smartboard at the beginning of the next class. Some of them felt as if they were famous now, some felt a bit embarrassed. Very diverse and mixed emotions toward public performance. But, by doing this, they get to see how good they were to speak a foreign language in public, and proved their confidence to be filmed--which, needs a lot of courage for 13-year-old girls.

Radicals 部首 bu(4)shou(3)

When I was teaching ESL, I discovered a very common and fundamental problem among many ESL learners--spelling & pronunciations；many ESL learners don't have the concept of "phonics" and "spelling rules" in American English. Either no teachers had ever taught them these concepts, or the teachers tried to (and had to) finish all 45 "K.K. spelling symbols" within one week right after the English beginners just being taught 26 alphabets (or phonics).

The result? Big confusion! The ESL learners would never get to spell a word properly when they hear it, or pronounce a word when they see it.

How about in Mandarin Chinese learning? "Pin-Yin" spelling rules and the concept of "radicals" are the basic tools for any CFL (Chinese as a Foreign Language)learners to acquire Chinese characters.

However, when my cousin T asked me to tutor her for her advanced Chinese homework in college the other day, I was surprised to learn that she doesn't have some basic concepts of radicals even after learning Mandarin for 3 years (and she just returned from China after being an exchanged student there for 1 year, not mention using the radicals to look up a word in the dictionary). Cousin T was totally surprised to know that there are actually some easy and fun ways to remember characters!

Anyways, if you're going to teach or learn Mandarin, I highly recommend you to teach/learn the 214 radicals (yeah, I know it sounds a lot... but it definitely helps! Learn at least 50 of them) right from the beginning. What I like to do is, when I start teaching the initials (consonants in English) of Pin-Yin, I'll use the radicals as the example words for these sounds (or you can use words that are going to show up in the first 3 lessons as examples):

• t: 土 tu(3) earth, soil, ground, dirt.

土tu(3) is the radical for "在" (preposition: in, on, at) ,"地"(ground), "坐"(to sit) that students are going to learn soon in the beginning level.

• r: 人ren(2) a person.

人ren(2) is the radical for "你"（you)，"他"(male he/him/his)，"休" (to rest)， which all contains some "human" actions.

• k: 口 kou(3) mouth, opening, sounding

口(3) is the radical for “呢”"吗“(both question markers), "吃”(eat)

Or you can simply google "Chinese radicals", you can find all the info you need.

One interesting thing happened in my tutoring class yesterday. When my student P was learning a new word "消炎药" in the "Going to a Doctor" lesson, after he saw the pin-yin, he first pronounced the word correctly, then I asked him not to peek at the English meaning, tried to make a wild guess first.

He located the first character with a vertial "water" radical on the left, the 2nd character with 2 "fire" radicals, then the 3rd character has a "herbal, grass,plant" radical on the top... So, he guessed this must be some kind of "antibiotics", because it looks like some sort of "herbs" you can use as the "water" to put out 2 big "fire" in your body?

Bingo!

The beauty of radicals...

It might seem hideously slow at the beginning when you try to incorporate radicals into teaching each word (sure I'll skip some tricky words without even mention their radicals in the beginning level). Well, just like any English speakers who want to achieve a higher level of proficiency or enter the "spelling bee" contests, you have to take Latin lessons to learn all those prefix, suffix and etymology; so does in learning Chinese.

Textbooks

I sent out a WISH LIST to my supervisor after talking to her last Wednesday:

Chinese Textbooks for 08-09

• Intro of Chinese -- 6th Grade
  
  Ni Hao : Revised Simplified Edition, Volume 1 - With CD
  Author: Shumang / Fredlein, Paul
  Publisher: Cheng & Tsui Co.


• Chinese A--7th Grade
  Huanying, Volume 1 –Full year Textbook (paperback) + free audio downloads
  Author: Jiaying Howard, Lanting Xu
  Publisher: Cheng & Tsui Co. $59.95
  Workbook: Huanying, Volume 1, Part 1 $19.95


• Chinese 1 -- 9th & 11th Grade
  Huanying, Volume 1 -part 1+2, Textbook (paperback) + free audio downloads
  Author: Jiaying Howard, Lanting Xu
  Publisher: Cheng & Tsui Co. $59.95
  Huanying, Volume 1, Part 1 –Workbook $19.95
  

I also requested the ordering of 2 Teacher’s Books, price TBA.

By the way, I recommended the students to do some light reading as a supplementary material:
Title: China: Empire of Living Symbols (Paperback)
Author: Cecilia Lindqvist
Edition: 08
Publisher: Da Capo Press (May 5, 2008)
Price: $25.00

You can easily get the paperback copy form amazon.com now. I just got my paperback copy 3 days ago (the hardcover one is like $100, very expensive), and love it!! The chair said we probably can get a few, and put it in our library for students' reference.

Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language

One of my tutoring students e-mailed me this new book info that will be published by Cheng & Tsui this June. I guess there will be more and more books like this for teachers to be published in the future.

I like what the editor said in the introduction (as in purple text)of the book regarding "Who" may become a Chinese Language Teacher in the U.S.:

Needless to say, the task of finding and training qualified teachers is not an easy one.

First. many of the native Chinese-speaking candidates may not have the needed subject matter expertise, or an understanding of the common themes and trends that join all foreign lang. teachers... In short, they are not participants in the specialized conversation that goes on regularly between teachers of Chinese.

I totally agree with the editor. Even as a native Chinese speaker, and had always got good grades in Chinese classes, I sometimes "forget" about a lot of things in the language itself. Not to mention some Chinese native speakers who use the language only in a daily conversational setting.

2ndly, (which, to me, is the most important factor for a Chinese program in U.S. mainstream school to survive and thrive) many of these native speakers are coming from Chinese-speaking countries that have educational systems which differ greatly from that of America, thus creating a wide disparity as to how education is viewed, valued and carried out.

Without an understanding of one's teaching context, environment, and particular school culture, Chinese language programs run the risk of failing because they not matched to the goals, needs, and desires of a particular setting, or because they have not taken into account the makeup of the various students whom they are trying to serve.

I guess this is the biggest challenge (or fear) for me after I accepted the job offer, and going to serve a private school community this school year. Knowing the students body and the students' family backgrounds will be a good starting point.

As I mentioned to my supervisor during the interviews, I have to remind myself all the time when it comes to curriculum design or lesson plan plotting that Chinese is only a subject that belongs to a foreign language genre. It's not English, Math or Science. Therefore, the teachers of CFL can not expect their students to dedicate all their time and energy on this least important subject.

CLTA-SC Workshop (Integrated Chinese, 3rd edition)

Went to Pasadena City College for the CLTA-SC (Chinese Language Teacher Associate-Southern California) workshop yesterday afternoon. The association invited 2 authors of "Integrated Chinese" to present the 3rd edition of IC that is gonna publish this summer. They also invite a "Live ABC" sales representative to demo a set of interactive Chinese learning CD-Rums, which reminded me about ESL learning a lot. But, I'll definitely get them for my students if the budget allows me to do so.

I think the best part of this workshop for me is getting out there to see what kind of people are devoting themselves to this field. Of course most of the attendants are current Chinese teachers in different levels (K-12 @ public/private American schools, Heritage Chinese schools, community colleges, universities). I'll say 95% are native Chinese speakers. I only saw about 3 Caucasian, 2 African American teachers. And among these 95% Chinese speakers, I guess 1/3 of them are from Taiwan, 2/3 are from Mainland (only based on their make-up, outfits, behaviors and some overheard Chinese accents). Interesting enough.

Anyway, after attending this workshop, I finally have more faith in myself. It's overall not that different from ESL teaching. Just different subject, but same teaching theories, teaching philosophy plus tons of patiences+loving care for this job.

Leap Year 闰年 run(4) nian(2)

Today is February 29th, which makes it a leap year this 2008.

When I watched Channel 5, KTLA morning news, their anchor challenge question today is:
What's the official name for leap year? The answer is -- Intercalary year.

"Intercalary" is an adjective, which means being inserted, put in between.

The funny thing is when all the anchors had no clue at all about the answer, they tried to guess through all the answers. When they read the answer D. "intercalary", they said, "Mm... I don't know what this word means, must be a "Canadian" term...". Haha. That's a good excuse to get away with it...

This incident this morning also reminded me that there're so many "terms" between "Mainland" Mandarin Chinese and "Taiwanese" Mandarin Chinese. Languages are constantly evolving into different forms and meanings. And we also have to consider the regional variations. One dictionary (Liang'an Xiandai Hanyu Changyong cidian) I purchased about 2 years ago comes very handy when I have to look up words for its different written forms (traditional & simplified) and usages.