Social Mandarin Excellent Website

Recently I found an interesting Chinese learning website.  Social Mandarin 

Social_汉语

The site's aims are;

Social Mandarin is a social bookmarking site that aims to collect and bring together the best Mandarin learning resources online. In doing so, it enables other learners to share the same resources with each other. An online Mandarin resource, can be anything from a music video to a word list. It is defined, by how you learned Mandarin from it. So as long you can let us in on how you learned something from it, you can post it here. So join in!

It certainly does all this and more. There are four main content sections, Beginner, Elementary,  Intermediate and Advanced.

Other divisions of the site include;

1. Speaking
2. Vocabulary
3. Learning Tools
4. Culture
5. Writing
6. Listening
7. Reading
8. Grammar
9. Pinyin
10. Characters
11. Music
12. Film
13. Art
14. Other
15. General

The site certainly includes every sort of content a Chinese learner could need. There seems to be something for everyone on Social Mandarin. 

How to talk about "movies" in Chinese 电影 diànyǐng

How to talk about "movies" in Chinese - photo and dicussion of 电影 diànyǐng

Found this great post about how to talk about films in Chinese. Why is great?  Because it is about my level of Chinese.  I think it is the first time I have read something outside of my study / course materials and have understood the meaning of everything and can answer all the questions. I was able to do this with easy and quickly. So I must be making some progress in my studies.

电影院 diàn yǐng yuàn

Study more Chinese is a great site for;

• Learning Chinese at all levels
• Connecting with other learners
• Chinese Resources
• Seeking help and information about Chinese 
• Chinese Grammar
• Links to resources
• Discussions
• Blogging within the Study More Chinese site

Study More Chinese

10000 Chinese Language Teachers

Meanwhile in Thailand...

This is an amazing project. What an initiative by the Thai and Chinese education authorities. This is a great opportunity for two different cultures to understand each other and strengthen ties (no pun intended). Through language and culture education strong bonds and relationships can be made.

It would be good if the Australian Government took some initiative and forged a similar plan with China. Alas Australian education does not put much value in language and culture education. Australia education often lacks initiative and foresight, as we continue to do almost nothing to improve language education. In 2011 there was a slightly similar project called Australia-China BRIDGE Project which sponsored relation ships between 48 schools and 48 teachers. Unfortunately the funding for such projects has ended.

To reciprocate Thailand will send 500 - 1000 Thai language teachers to China as part of the Sino-Thai educational and cultural exchange plan. Currently, China supports Chinese language education in Thailand by sending 1200 Chinese language teachers to Thailand annually.

"Thailand asked Chinese educational institutes to send 10,000 Chinese language instructors for Thai learners as parts of a Sino-Thai educational and cultural exchange plan."

Thailand Chinese New Year 2011

Thailand requests 10,000 Chinese language teachers from China

10,000 Chinese teachers on the way

China, Thailand To Exchange Teachers

Unemployed American Airline Workers Should Learn Chinese

This is bound to cause some controversy with airline workers in America. This is a controversial idea from an article in Forbes.

"Unemployed American Airline Workers Should Learn Chinese"

"To the hundreds of young and unattached American Airlines workers threatened with lay offs: consider taking some classes in basic Mandarin Chinese."


Unemployed American Airline Workers Should Learn Chinese 

Language lessons languish in Aussie schools

An Australian Broadcasting Corporation report about the current state and decline in    Asian languages in Australian schools. It highlights our former Prime Ministers goal for Asian language learning and makes comparisons to the current apathy and lack of interest in language.
 
I really wonder how much longer schools in Australia are going to ignore Asian languages. The report makes some very astute observations; lack of investment in Asian languages, now more students study Latin than Chinese, our nation is stubbornly monolingual, SE Asian history was not is is not taught in schools, education departments are unable to stream Chinese students into appropriate classes, there is a growth in private schools teaching Mandarin, Australians remain disinterested in our Asian neighbours.

We seem to be going down the very same path as schools in England.  There schools are seeing rapid declines in French and German Lack of languages in schools concerns unis

A very brief report that says it all. Watch the report or read the transcript here
Language lessons languish in Aussie schools

Study More Chinese

Visit Study More Chinese

Free Resource - Read Chinese!

Found this free resource for learning Chinese.

"Funded by the U.S. Department of Education, these Read Chinese! materials were developed to provide online e-learning reading lessons aimed at beginning and intermediate students of the language."

Read Chinese!

Chinese Picture Dictionary

Here is a great resource for visual learners. A Chinese Picture Dictionary. Lots of categories with the word in English, hanzi, pinyin and an audio to listen to for correct pronunciation. I found it very useful. There are 52 catagories from Airplane to Weather. Fast to load and quick and easy to look up. An excellent multimedia resource for learning Chinese.

The about page has this information

 “The Chinese Picture Dictionary is a multimedia courseware that aims to expand the vocabulary of beginning-level Chinese language students.  The Chinese Picture Dictionary presents several hundred pictures based on familiar settings of daily life. ..Each picture is presented in an individual page, along with buttons students can click to view the depicted vocabulary word written in Chinese script, view the pronunciation spelled out in Pinyin romanization, and  view a sample sentence using the word.  In addition, students can listen to native speakers of the language pronounce the word. 

The Chinese Picture Dictionary originated from the fact that pictures have long been favored by language teachers as a learning tool.  Because of their visual nature, they can say far more than words, and avoid the unnecessary use of translation.  The thematic presentation of 20 pictures together aims to help Chinese language students to streamline their learning and knowledge of new vocabulary in an effective way.”

Tatoeba Project

I found this site by accident. It is an interesting site where the aim is to collect sentences translated into several languages. Tatoeba in Japanese means “for example”. According to the Stats page there are now 94 languages. There are 1097953 sentences in total. English has over 200000 sentences and Chinese Mandarin has 32000. The search engine for the site is excellent. For my learning I am able to search in Chinese and English simultaneously. I can filter, add to favourites, add to lists and find random sentences. There is an excellent forum and discussion in many languages. It is possible to join the site, contribute and stay informed on the translations. The sentences seem to moderated by native speakers so there is validity and authenticity for the project. You can even adopt “orphan” sentences. I found this very useful to supplement my course textbook. So I think the Tatoeba Project is an excellent learning / teaching community.  

Tatoeba Project Example