Learning Mandarin

 Good afternoon. In today's class, we started with a review of the pinyin, revisiting previously learned phonetics. Following that, we’ve learned three new finals: "an," "en," and "in." After completing the pinyin exercises, we revisited the ten characters introduced in last class, engaging in word formation exercises to strengthen vocabulary. After that, we proceeded to cover the remaining content of Unit7, introducing six new Chinese characters: 家 (jiā), 她 (tā), 你 (nǐ), 就 (jiù), 像 (xiàng), and 好 (hǎo). We focused on both the pronunciation and meanings of these characters. Additionally, we practiced sentence pattern "pronoun + 是 + noun" and used word substitutions to create new sentences. Students were also paired up to engage in dialogues, referring to the text on page 40 of the textbook. It was delightful to see the active participation of each student during this interactive session. Towards the end of the class, we studied the text ...

  Good afternoon! Today, we started by reciting all the Pinyin we have learned so far and then learned the pronunciation and writing of the compound vowels ie, üe, er, and the whole syllables “ye”, “ yue”. We also did phonetic reading exercises. I suggest when reviewing the writing of Chinese characters, students can also think about the Pinyin of the characters and how to pronounce them. Currently, we have completed the study of all initial consonants, and we will soon finish learning some final vowels. If a character contains a final vowel that we have not yet learned, students can think about its initial consonant first. After completing this Pinyin exercise, we studied a nursery rhyme from unit 7. We learned the pronunciation and meanings of ten characters (学、生、我、是、爱、老、师、同、文、校). Then, we practiced writing these characters together and conducted word formation exercises. In this unit, students need to master the correct writing of the "斜钩slanting hook" (the fifth stroke of...

  Dear parents and students, Today we started by quickly reviewing characters and pinyin. After that, we spent about an hour completing the second unit check. After we finished the test, we practiced the dialogues and did some additional character writing practice. The test results will be sent to your email individually by Friday. For students who were absent today, please have parents assist in printing the test papers and spend one hour completing the written part, then take photos of the completed papers and send them to me via email by Friday. The oral test will be conducted during the next class.   I have attached the test paper and answers to this email.    For this week, please do the following practice: 1. Redo the written part of the test. 2. Please download attached “Character Writing Practice”, write six characters for five time per day. 3. Review the pronunciation of pinyin based on the pinyin textbook. Review two units each day.   In our next class...

Dear parents and students, Good afternoon. During today’s class, we reviewed the pronunciation and writing of the initials and vowels in Pinyin. We also practised the four tones, integrating them into reading and pronunciation exercises along with the combination of initials and finals. Additionally, we briefly reviewed the content from Unit 1 to Unit 3, with a particular focus on the pronunciation, meanings, and writing of the characters introduced in Units 4 to 6. We also revisited the texts from these three units. In our upcoming class on January 13th, we will conduct a unit test focusing on Units 4, 5, and 6. The test will cover short and simple Mandarin dialogues, character writing, character recognition, Pinyin and four tones writing and recognition. I encourage students to practise and review the material thoroughly. The characters we are expected to be able to write from memory at this stage include: Unit 1: 一、二、三、四、五、六、七、八、九、十、百 Unit 2: 人、头、目、口、耳、手、足、大、小、多、少 Unit 3: 日、月、山、石、田、...