The instructor’s monthly notes
We have completed level 1 of 《小羊上山》 this month with some supplements of a few other story books. I would like to say that they are ready to take more challenges since they have reached two major milestones in learning Chinese: First, they are willing to write new characters on the blackboard and their understanding on basic strokes and stroke orders have improved significantly. Secondly, they demonstrated their skills of applying the words and concepts we learned from the stories in their daily life expressions. After we learned a few examples of using the measure word “颗”and “条”, they came up with good examples such as “一颗葡萄、一颗草莓”、“一条蛇”. What we have completed in the past twenty lessons were the individual dots, and now they started to connect those dots! That is what we try to achieve: the language they are learning is not just single characters or textbook language. It is alive and they see the connections between the language, the culture, and their daily life!
A conclusion of August 2023 sessions
While we continue reviewing 《小羊上山》 level one via games and reading aloud activities, we have added a few lessons about some common measure words via a story called 《我和我们》. At the end of August, we started 《小羊上山》 level two.
The students demonstrated their awareness and understanding of some basic radicals when we introduce new characters in the stories. They found many new characters in the story 《我和我们》 shared the same radical “木, and they predicted the meanings of “奶” and “爷”based on their knowledge of “妈” and “爸. When they saw some characters that have a lot more strokes, they started to say:” hey, I know this part and that part.” Learning new characters starts to bring them the feeling of achievement instead of feeling puzzled and frustrated.
Culture was integrated in learning reading and writing as well. When we learned to talk about locations and existence of items, we used pictures from 《西游记》, 《红楼梦》, and a few well-know Chinese ink paintings. I would like to highlight one moment in our class last week: when we learned the character “床”, I showed them a picture of an ancient Chinese bed, and immediately, a student pointed out that it was a bed that is displayed in the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. At this moment, the character became a 3-D item in a museum from a 2-D stranger on the paper. When more dots are connected into lines and webs in this way, learning Chinese language is far beyond the language itself, and that is the ultimate goal we try to reach.
Chinese characters board game:
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