Teaching characters to beginning students
Hello,
What is the best way to teach beginning students Chinese characters, along with Pinyin, tones and every other aspect of the language? Are they supposed to learn all the characters in each lesson? If not, what few characters should be taught? Any ideas and suggestion are very welcome!
Thank you for your time.
JR
Dear JR,
I start the first year learners with PinYin for a couple of weeks, then move on to Lesson 1 on the book. PinYin is a tool - that aids the learning of vocabulary. We perfect it as we go. I focus on all four skills from the get-go, i.e. listening, speaking reading and writing.
Because language learning is accumulative, and the next lessons are designed to build on the vocabulary already learned in the previous lessons, I think it is important to not skip any words from the list.
I know that may sound a bit daunting, but it does get easier, for both the students and the teacher, as you enter the second semester. The return is tremendously worthwhile.
As Laurel pointed out, this series was originally designed for college students. I adopted it for high school and deliberately take the time to solidify the learner's foundation by completing each Level 1 book in 2 semesters; and Level 2 in 2 years.
Good luck on your endeavor! Enjoy your year!
Joanne
I don't expect students to write all the characters from the start. I start off with at least 3 weeks of oral practice where the students learn to talk not to read Pinyin. After they have heard and said the words and sentences many times, I elicit from them the spelling, correcting as needed. I give them lab work to do on the tones and spelling. To introduce characters, I start with about 35 radicals that are also stand-alone words. Students learn the words and meaning. They practice writing them. I even make sentences withthe radicals and explain that this is really classical Chinese but they get the idea. After these first 3 weeks, we open the book.
I expect the students to read all the characters, but only to write some of the most important. For example they do not need to write gonchengshi (engineer), but they need to read it. The benefits of this delayed introduction to reading and writing are supported by research. See Performed Culture--an approach to East Asian Language Pedagogy by Matthew Christensen and Paul Warnick, page 41 among others
I agree that limiting the students to "critical" words is very important as well as recognition of less used character; however, in writing the characters it seems that my left-handed students tend to make more errors. Is there anyway to effectively train left-handed students
I start my class with a set of four-character cheng yu every day. During the process, I would talk about the story, meaning, how to write the characters and brainstorming on the meaning of it during the 10 minute process. Kids seem to enjoy it a lot. The only problem is that it usually sparks a lot of discussion and not a lot of Chinese is being used. I'm thinking about moving it to the end of class in order to solve this problem. Hope this helps.
Hi Joanne,
Did you mean that you complete Level 1 Part 1 in a year, and then Level 1 Part 2 in another year? I can only complete Introduction to Lesson 6 in the first year (so pretty much 2 books in 3 years.) I think it's too slow but have difficulty moving faster. We just started the Chinese program in 2008 and I'd like stuents to take as much time they need to lay a solid foundation. This year I try to teach listening and speaking first, and reading and writing later (For example, students are now learning dialogue and grammar in L6 and characters in L3.) The problem is IC is "integrated" (as its name shows) and it's a bit hard to separate as a lot of exercises on WB are in Chinese characters. I need to spend quite a few time rewriting the exercise into a mixture of pinyin and characters they have learned. One of the reasons we move so slowly is because I ask students to complete CB and WB and it takes lots of time. The purpose of practice writing is to facilitate the learning of reading and I didn't test writing as much in the exam.
Hi Trudy, if you don't expect students to write all the characters, do you skip the writing part of WB or do you do something else?
I think reducing the amount of writing (both CB and WB) will save a lot of time and help us move faster and I know some teachers completely skip the hand-writing and use typing instead. But I'm not sure I want to do the same. I think writing (characters and paragraph) is an important part of learning Chinese and don't want stduents to reply on computer or don't know how to write sentences. (If they only know some critical characters, then can't write a sentence or paragraph, can they?)
I'd appreciate any advice or feedback. Thanks.
Naichi
Hi Naichi,
It's been a while since I logged onto this discussion. I apologize for the delayed response.
Q:Did you mean that you complete Level 1 Part 1 in a year, and then Level 1 Part 2 in another year? I can only complete Introduction to Lesson 6 in the first year (so pretty much 2 books in 3 years.) I think it's too slow but have difficulty moving faster. ...
A:Yes. The following schedule is what I did, each with additional supplementary. These are all year-long courses.
Chinese 1: non-IC. Something for the beginners to 'test the water'. I've tried NiHao, TianTianZhongWen, ChineseMadeEasy, etc.
Chinese 2: L1P1
Chinese 3: L1P2
Chinese 4: L2P1 (the first half of the older version of L2)
AP Chinese: L2P2 (the second half of the older version of L2)
Q: This year I try to teach listening and speaking first, and reading and writing later (For example, students are now learning dialogue and grammar in L6 and characters in L3.) The problem is IC is "integrated" (as its name shows) and it's a bit hard to separate as a lot of exercises on WB are in Chinese characters. I need to spend quite a few time rewriting the exercise into a mixture of pinyin and characters they have learned.
A: I personally do not subscribe to the listen-speak-first-read-write-later strategy. I do integrate the four skills.
Q: One of the reasons we move so slowly is because I ask students to complete CB and WB and it takes lots of time. The purpose of practice writing is to facilitate the learning of reading and I didn't test writing as much in the exam.
A: I don't use the character book. We never miss a page on the textbook and the WB. All my tests and exams include all 4 skills. Does your class meet everyday? I have one 50-min class everyday. Perhaps that makes the difference??
Q. I think reducing the amount of writing (both CB and WB) will save a lot of time and help us move faster and I know some teachers completely skip the hand-writing and use typing instead. But I'm not sure I want to do the same.
A: Trust your instinct!! There is no short-cut to learning a foreign language, especially Chinese. My students all start writing, by hand, from the first week! They all naturally 'play around' with typing whenever there is a project that requires them to create something online from the first semester. By the end of the second semester, the mindful students already master the typing. AND everyone's hand-writing are at the near-native 3rd grader's.
Q: I think writing (characters and paragraph) is an important part of learning Chinese and don't want stduents to reply on computer or don't know how to write sentences.
A: Trust your instinct, again!! You are completely right! And typing is merely a tool to produce what they know how to produce...only faster. Typing cannot replace hand-writing, same with English! It is for convenience. We don't see kindergartens abandon the idea of teaching kids to write in English in English-speaking countries. Why do we think abandoning writing Chinese will make it easier to learn Chinese?
Q: (If they only know some critical characters, then can't write a sentence or paragraph, can they?)
A: Not only that! Skipping characters per chapter creates a snowball effect that makes the subsequent learning MUCH more harder. It's just an illusion that does not help in the long run.
Having said all that... I must also say that after using IC for 7 years, I am experimenting other textbooks this year. I still follow the same principles as described above. Don't get me wrong, IC is a GREAT series, and it was really originally designed with the college students in mind; my high school students found it difficult to see the connection to their lives.
~Joanne
J.