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Classroom learning for Mandarin | ||
Tags: Class Learning | Mandarin | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| AveDR Newbie Dominican Republic Joined 4513 days ago 2 posts - 2 votes Speaks: English Studies: German, Mandarin | Message 1 of 9 19 July 2012 at 12:42am | IP Logged |
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I'm being offered a course in Mandarin and I would like to know what is your experience
in learning Mandarin in a classroom? What should I expect? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Snowflake Senior Member United States Joined 5960 days ago 1032 posts - 1233 votes  Studies: Mandarin | Message 2 of 9 19 July 2012 at 12:55am | IP Logged |
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University class? Local Chinese school? Something else? Any information on number of students and their prior Mandarin learning background? What is the official description of the course? Its' goals? Anything on the background of the instructor? Edited by Snowflake on 19 July 2012 at 1:19am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| AveDR Newbie Dominican Republic Joined 4513 days ago 2 posts - 2 votes Speaks: English Studies: German, Mandarin | Message 3 of 9 19 July 2012 at 2:28am | IP Logged |
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My university offers language courses in German, Korean, English, Italian, Japanese,
Mandarin and Portuguese. The goal of the course is to teach Mandarin in 10 lessons of 3 months each. The instructor comes from the PRC. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| tibbles Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5192 days ago 245 posts - 422 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Korean | Message 4 of 9 19 July 2012 at 6:35am | IP Logged |
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Classroom learning can't hurt in the beginning. This is when you and students should be drilling the pronunciation out loud: bo1 bo2 bo3 bo4, po1 po2 po3 po4, etc.
2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| viedums Hexaglot Senior Member Thailand Joined 4667 days ago 327 posts - 528 votes Speaks: Latvian, English*, German, Mandarin, Thai, French Studies: Vietnamese | Message 5 of 9 19 July 2012 at 8:03am | IP Logged |
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As tibbles says, this should be very useful for pronunciation. In my intro Chinese class the teacher would read out dialogs line by line, then read down the list of vocabulary words and have us repeat. Then we would try to use them in simple sentences. It's mechanical and boring, but essential for getting the tones.
How effective the class is can also depend on size. Too large and you won't be getting feedback on your efforts to produce tones, which might be a problem. Edited by viedums on 19 July 2012 at 8:05am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| jsg Diglot Newbie Canada Joined 4508 days ago 30 posts - 59 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin Studies: French | Message 6 of 9 27 July 2012 at 11:17pm | IP Logged |
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I would highly recommend the FSI course. It will give you all the fun of a classroom without having to get up and go there. Also it is free. It comes with texts, workbooks, and a huge amount of audio.
http://fsi-language-courses.org/Content.php?page=Chinese If you use the firefox addon 'download them all' getting everything at once it quite easy. Finally, I have to really urge you to at least download the 6 Pronunciation and Romanization tapes. They will give you quite a solid grounding in the sounds and tones of Mandarin. The 2 Classroom Expressions tapes wouldn't hurt either. The FSI course uses pinyin as the focus is speaking. If you want to learn the characters I would point you in the direction of Remembering Traditional Hanzi: Book 1 and 2 both can be ordered from Amazon for about 25 USD ea. You can order this series for traditional characters as well if that is what intersts you. Edited by jsg on 27 July 2012 at 11:59pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| drp9341 Pentaglot Senior Member United States Joined 4913 days ago 115 posts - 217 votes Speaks: Italian, English*, Spanish, Portuguese, French Studies: Japanese | Message 7 of 9 12 August 2012 at 10:25pm | IP Logged |
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I took a semester of Chinese, got an A and learned nothing but,
Wo de mingzi shi Ni hao Etc etc. I learned everything through Assimil, tutors, and chinese friends But thats cause my teacher was the nicest lady ever hahaha 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5382 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 8 of 9 13 August 2012 at 7:14pm | IP Logged |
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My experience in learning Mandarin in university is essentially that it was very hard
because half the class tends to have some Chinese background (either passive understanding as 2nd generation Chinese or knowledge of another dialect, including passive understanding or familiarity with characters, sounds and tones), so the pace was fast and challenging. Many of these kids were either doing it because they thought it'd be an easy class or because their active knowledge was not solid enough to fit at a higher level, but it made the class a lot more challenging. Be ready. I'd suggest you get yourself acquainted with the sounds and tones of Mandarin right away. It takes a while for the brain to get used to, so get a headstart. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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