summercomfort (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
summercomfort) wrote2009-02-11 11:23 pm
summercomfort) wrote2009-02-11 11:23 pm
Teaching Jono Chinese
Teaching Jono Chinese has been an interesting experience.
First of all, Jono comes with the unique skill-set of Japanese. Which means he's familiar and comfortable with kanji. It also means that pronunciation is harder for him when he can't link it to a Japanese onyomi.
So basically, I needed to teach Jono:
- "grammar"
- pronunciation
- simplified characters
Some successful strategies:
Flashcards color-coded by tone.
- Since Jono is very color-oriented, we decided to write the different kanji in different colors not by grammatical function, but by tone.
- We practice the cards as such: We each get dealt 6-10 cards. Jono picks one (J1) and I make sentence with it. I pick one (S1) and he makes sentence with both S1 and J1. Then he picks another one (J2), and I make a sentence with both J2 and S1. It allows for good repetition, plus we have fun coming up with devious combos like "earwax" and "pencil"
The idea of the prosody and the Chinese inclination to create paired words. (无 肺病 牛 becomes 无肺 病牛). I'd generally teach the standard two-character word, and then point out which one is just "filler". (ex: 老虎 颜色 椅子)
Chinese walks. At first we'd just sit around and learn Chinese, but those tended to drag on until both of us were tired and grouchy. Instead, we now go on a walk after dinner, wherein we learn Chinese during the walk. Juggling flashcards is sometimes cumbersome, but overall it is invigorating *and* keeps the lessons short.
"Repeat after me". In order to practice listening and pronunciation, I would say sentences at a normal talking pace, and Jono would have to replicate it. Comprehension is not required. It's interesting to see which parts he stumbles over. If I'm well-prepared/clever, I try to start with a basic sentence (这里有草) and keep adding onto the sentence until it's more complicated. (我的右边有绿色的草) This process also practices sentence structure and teaches words.
Telling stories. Telling children's stories that have strong vocabulary repetition, such as "小猴子下山" and "猴子捞月". Yay for familiarity with Chinese textbook!
Teaching basic sentence structure. Chinese grammar is kinda sketchy, so instead we focus more on sets like if...so...; or Since...therefore...
Challenges:
- Pronunciation
---> Distinguishing between zh/j, ch/q, sh/x. Chinese people don't have this problem because they're followed by mutually exclusive vowels. (jqx can only be directly followed by i or ü, zhchsh can only be directly followed by a,o,e,u). Instead, I, as a southerner, often get s/sh, c/ch, and z/zh confused because they follow the same vowel set. This is complicated by the fact that jqx (palatal-alveolar?) and zhchsh (retroflex?) are sets of sounds not usually found in English.
---> In Chinese, tones are more important than vowels are more important than consonants in distinguishing the word. So you can mess up a bit on the consonants, but you'd get weird looks if you get the tone wrong. Not so in English. And tones are completely weird, and have weird tendencies. I'm not even talking about the "third tone before third tone becomes second tone." More like the 子 in 饺子 is high, but the 子 in non-third-tone words are neutral. WTF, man?
---> The e and the a. Who knew they're such hard sounds to figure out? It doesn't help that jie is "ji-eh" and "zhe" is "zh-uh", and jia is "ji-ah", but jian is "ji-en" while zhan is "zh-an". Totally used different ways. Sometimes you have to pretend you're from Boston, sometimes you're suddenly from Mobile.
- Grammar
---> Chinese grammar is screwy and hard to explain. I recently bought a grammar book, which will hopefully help? At least now I know the difference between 了, 着 and 过.
- Vocabulary acquisition
---> I started with the bare-bones nouns and verbs, and jumped straight to conjunctions and sentence structure words. Now we're going back and filling in the noun/verbs, but it's a lot of words to learn, and flash cards aren't the most helpful for that. More sentence practice games are required.
First of all, Jono comes with the unique skill-set of Japanese. Which means he's familiar and comfortable with kanji. It also means that pronunciation is harder for him when he can't link it to a Japanese onyomi.
So basically, I needed to teach Jono:
- "grammar"
- pronunciation
- simplified characters
Some successful strategies:
Flashcards color-coded by tone.
- Since Jono is very color-oriented, we decided to write the different kanji in different colors not by grammatical function, but by tone.
- We practice the cards as such: We each get dealt 6-10 cards. Jono picks one (J1) and I make sentence with it. I pick one (S1) and he makes sentence with both S1 and J1. Then he picks another one (J2), and I make a sentence with both J2 and S1. It allows for good repetition, plus we have fun coming up with devious combos like "earwax" and "pencil"
The idea of the prosody and the Chinese inclination to create paired words. (无 肺病 牛 becomes 无肺 病牛). I'd generally teach the standard two-character word, and then point out which one is just "filler". (ex: 老虎 颜色 椅子)
Chinese walks. At first we'd just sit around and learn Chinese, but those tended to drag on until both of us were tired and grouchy. Instead, we now go on a walk after dinner, wherein we learn Chinese during the walk. Juggling flashcards is sometimes cumbersome, but overall it is invigorating *and* keeps the lessons short.
"Repeat after me". In order to practice listening and pronunciation, I would say sentences at a normal talking pace, and Jono would have to replicate it. Comprehension is not required. It's interesting to see which parts he stumbles over. If I'm well-prepared/clever, I try to start with a basic sentence (这里有草) and keep adding onto the sentence until it's more complicated. (我的右边有绿色的草) This process also practices sentence structure and teaches words.
Telling stories. Telling children's stories that have strong vocabulary repetition, such as "小猴子下山" and "猴子捞月". Yay for familiarity with Chinese textbook!
Teaching basic sentence structure. Chinese grammar is kinda sketchy, so instead we focus more on sets like if...so...; or Since...therefore...
Challenges:
- Pronunciation
---> Distinguishing between zh/j, ch/q, sh/x. Chinese people don't have this problem because they're followed by mutually exclusive vowels. (jqx can only be directly followed by i or ü, zhchsh can only be directly followed by a,o,e,u). Instead, I, as a southerner, often get s/sh, c/ch, and z/zh confused because they follow the same vowel set. This is complicated by the fact that jqx (palatal-alveolar?) and zhchsh (retroflex?) are sets of sounds not usually found in English.
---> In Chinese, tones are more important than vowels are more important than consonants in distinguishing the word. So you can mess up a bit on the consonants, but you'd get weird looks if you get the tone wrong. Not so in English. And tones are completely weird, and have weird tendencies. I'm not even talking about the "third tone before third tone becomes second tone." More like the 子 in 饺子 is high, but the 子 in non-third-tone words are neutral. WTF, man?
---> The e and the a. Who knew they're such hard sounds to figure out? It doesn't help that jie is "ji-eh" and "zhe" is "zh-uh", and jia is "ji-ah", but jian is "ji-en" while zhan is "zh-an". Totally used different ways. Sometimes you have to pretend you're from Boston, sometimes you're suddenly from Mobile.
- Grammar
---> Chinese grammar is screwy and hard to explain. I recently bought a grammar book, which will hopefully help? At least now I know the difference between 了, 着 and 过.
- Vocabulary acquisition
---> I started with the bare-bones nouns and verbs, and jumped straight to conjunctions and sentence structure words. Now we're going back and filling in the noun/verbs, but it's a lot of words to learn, and flash cards aren't the most helpful for that. More sentence practice games are required.
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