Should more Australian pupils be learning Mandarin?

Should more UK Australian pupils be learning Mandarin?

I was really inspired to see this news item about dedicated students learning Chinese in England. There wasn't anything really new or outstanding about a small group of  enthusiastic students learning Mandarin.  I am sure there may be a similar project in Oz, though I have never heard of one. 

It is a pity that the majority Australian parents and students do see language learning as important.  Still it is good to know that some people (like the students and teachers in the video) do see Chinese as important to the future.

What do you think?

Should more UK pupils be learning Mandarin?

让我们玩蛇和梯子吧。 Ràng wǒmen wán shé hé tīzi ba。

让我们玩蛇和梯子吧。 Ràng wǒmen wán shé hé tīzi ba。
走吧。 Zǒu ba。

Classical Chinese Story in which each syllable is pronounced "shi"

A story in which each syllable is pronounced "shi"

施氏食狮史

石室诗士施氏，嗜狮，誓食十狮。

氏时时适市视狮。

十时，适十狮适市。

是时，适施氏适市。

氏视是十狮，恃矢势，使是十狮逝世。

氏拾是十狮尸，适石室。

石室湿，氏使侍拭石室。

石室拭，氏始试食是十狮。

食时，始识是十狮，实十石狮尸。

试释是事。

« Shī Shì shí shī shǐ »

Shíshì shīshì Shī Shì, shì shī, shì shí shí shī.

Shì shíshí shì shì shì shī.

Shí shí, shì shí shī shì shì.

Shì shí, shì Shī Shì shì shì.

Shì shì shì shí shī, shì shǐ shì, shǐ shì shí shī shìshì.

Shì shí shì shí shī shī, shì shíshì.

Shíshì shī, Shì shǐ shì shì shíshì.

Shíshì shì, Shì shǐ shì shí shì shí shī.

Shí shí, shǐ shí shì shí shī, shí shí shí shī shī.

Shì shì shì shì.

« Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den »

In a stone den was a poet Shi, who was a lion addict, and had resolved to eat ten.

He often went to the market to look for lions.

At ten o'clock, ten lions had just arrived at the market.

At that time, Shi had just arrived at the market.

He saw those ten lions, and using his trusty arrows, caused the ten lions to die.

He brought the corpses of the ten lions to the stone den.

The stone den was damp. He asked his servants to wipe it.

After the stone den was wiped, he tried to eat those ten lions.

When he ate, he realized that these ten lions were in fact ten stone lion corpses.

Try to explain this matter.

Listen to the story

Why You Should Learn Chinese

Dreaming in Chinese: Mandarin Lessons in Life, Love, and Language

A two year old article from Time, yet it is still relevant today. The article is a question and answer interview about learning Mandarin and China.  It is worth reading.

  One book I will be adding to my reading list.

Q&A: Author Deborah Fallows on Learning Mandarin

Modern Mandarin Chinese Grammar: A Practical Guide (Modern Grammars)

Modern Mandarin Chinese Grammar: A Practical Guide (Modern Grammars)

As my Uni. exam approaches I am using this grammar book to study many of the new sentence patterns and structures. It is one of the many reference books that I use. I really find this book useful as a supplement to my set text book and Uni. resources.  

Difficult Chinese

Difficult Chinese

Three sites discussing the difficulty of learning Chinese. This is probably something I should not be reading right now. In one month I will have my CHIN201 exam.  My Uni. has switched to trimesters. One of the changes is that there is no 'study week', the semester ends and exams begin. So the pressure is on to 天天学中文。(study Chinese daily).

For the time being I shall not concern myself with how difficult learning Chinese is or is not.

How difficult is Chinese?

Why Chinese Is So Damn Hard
How difficult is it to learn Chinese?

Everything you need to know about China

I just saw this on My Chinese Notebook Blog. Thanks for this great find. It is such a good resource it is worth sharing here too.

Everything you need to know about China

The lost decade: learning Asian languages

An interesting and detailed article about the past 10 years of Asian Language Learning in Australia.  The article The lost decade: learning Asian languages goes into great detail about many of the problems of teaching and learning languages over the past decade.  While I was aware of the many of the reasons and problems of learning an Asian language, there was still much that I didn't know.  One of the best discussions on this topic I have read.

Radical Ideas

I recently read an article recently about the lack of connection Australia has with Asia and in particular China Minding our languages. The article states that our language learning progress is and has failed for a number of years now. At primary, secondary and tertiary level we have failed to learn Asian languages. The main reason is too few teachers and too few students willing to learn languages.

To address this problem the idea is to stop spending money on language learning in schools and universities and send students to live and learn in Asia. This plan would be government funded. The proposal is to send 10,000 students a year. This may address the deficit we currently have in Asian literacy.

This is indeed a radical idea. However, for me it seems like something that might work. It is better than the stagnation and lack of interest in Asian languages and culture we currently have from many in Australia.

A similar news article, We must invest to latch on to the Asian century, also states very clearly that we must engage with Asia by investing in training and teaching Australians in Asian languages. The article has many facts and figures about the decline of Asian languages in Australian education. Apparently we are at the lowest point in Asian literacy since 1970.   

An alternative and ambitious plan from the Victorian state government to reverse the decline in language learning sounds similar to what I have seen before. Grants for Teaching Languages outlines the offer $ 1 million in grants to schools to halt the decline of language learning in primary schools. I am keen to follow the progress of this plan. It would be good if other state governments also implemented similar grants.  

Reading this gives me some hope

Following on from my last post about the state of language learning in Australia, I was please to find this article Languages a growth area at UQ .  At least at UQ there is a significant growth in students learning languages. I am hoping that this will be the trend in the future and that this will also be the case in Australian high schools.  I wonder when and if this is going to happen?

Three weeks until my final exam

There are approximately three weeks before I will sit my final exam for Chinese.  It has been an very busy time over the past weeks. The pace of how much we have been required to learn seems to have been very fast indeed. Over the past weeks I have been trying to learn lists vocabulary in hanzi and pinyin. The units of study have been very unfamiliar.  The volume of new grammar terms and patterns has increased. I have remained motivated and worked on all this as best as I can, but I feel that I haven’t learned enough. Still I have three weeks to press on and learn as much as I can.

苹果手机

Just found this post today from Dim Sum

The Apple iPhone 4s was announced a couple of weeks ago. iPhones are very popular in China.

The hanzi and words for the iPhone is;

苹果手机 Píng​guǒ​ shǒu​jī


Breaking it down it becomes

苹果 Apple Píng​guǒ

手 Hand shǒu

机 Machine  ​jī

Thinking of a direct translations in this case is how I can remember the word and the hanzi and never forget.  This to me is a ready made mnemonic.

I want to buy an Apple Hand Machine. 我喜欢买一台苹果毛机。

Thanks again to Dim Sum for the original posting.

In Sync with feeds and emails

For some reason my formal Mandarin learning at UNE and some of my supplementary resources are somewhat synchronised. I subscribe to some feeds and emails that deliver daily Chinese words and phrases. For the past week or more these words and phrases align with the vocabulary of my texts. I find the feeds and emails help me to pick up a quick phrase or be able to practice a new word.

Here are some links to some of the subscriptions and feeds that I am currently getting;

MDBG Vocabulary Feeds All the HSK levels

About.com Daily Mandarin Lesson

Chinese Word of the Day

Chinese-Course.com has a daily sentence email 

You can subscribe to my blog Chinese Mandarin Learner

 

I also subscribe to other blogs and websites of language learners. While these learners are often at a very different level to mine, they are still very useful. Sometimes it is enough to know that others are on the same learning journey as myself. The other blogs inspire me to learn more.

Mandarin Tone Change Rules

This is the best explanation of Mandarin Tone Change Rules. I have struggled with this all year and now I finally found a clear and concise summary of tone changes.

On another page on the same site is a clear explanation of Mandarin Tones. It begins

"Tones are probably the biggest difficulty for anyone learning to speak Mandarin. As a learner, you have to go through a long process from total unawareness of tones to eventually mastering them (which will probably take years)."

I am relieved to hear that it takes such a long time to learn the tones as I thought I wasn't mastering this as well as I could. As I am learning Chinese via distance / online education, have no opportunity to speak with native speakers and am often time poor, I feel a bit better about not mastering the tones at this stage of my learning. Much appreciated East Asian Student.

Memrise Flash Cards

I am trying a new flash card website called Memrise It is a free online flash card program / system. The first time I used it I didn't like it much...but returning to it I have found it useful. To make your own card set is not as easy as it could be, but I persevered and ended up getting useful set for NPCR lesson 16. There are many wordlists already created for HSK and multiple Chinese text books. I prefered to use my own as I much prefer my pinyin with tone marks instead of numbers.

The learning methodology behind Memrise is that it uses memory techniques to optimise learning. It uses spaced repetition system. As well as this it has an interesting interface with a garden metaphor. So you plant seeds in a green house, plants in a garden and water plants. It is expressing the the growth of you memories. The idea is to experience the flash cards in a dynamic environment. The Memrise Blog explains all this in some detail.

Something I haven't explored in detail yet is the Mem Stream a page where you can make mnemonics and have them rated by other language learners. There is also a Leaderboard which has your ranking out of all the users for the day, week, month and alltime. At present I am 4102^nd....I was 6532^nd yesterday.

So I am going to persist with Memrise for a while to see if it helps me learn my vocabulary. I will of course also contine to use Quizlet ( I really like the tests that can be generated) and Hanlexon to make hanzi practice sheets and lists.  

Learning Chinese? Infographic

Just found a very interesting Infographic from the Asia Society

Take a look Asia Society Infographic  

Here is another What are the Hardest Languages to Learn?

I am not sure if I am inspired or overwhelmed about the comment on the bottom left corner of the above infographic.

Lastly  China vs. America in Education America Meet China Interesting facts with huge numbers. The graphics do a great job to present the information, but the numbers are incredible.


What do you think? Your comments and feedback are very welcome.

BBC Languages Chinese

The BBC website has an excellent and informative beginners Chinese language learning site. The pages would be very useful for beginners and travellers. The site contains two sections titled “An Introduction to Chinese” and “Chinese for beginners”. Within these sections you will find “A guide to Chinese – 10 Facts about the Chinese Language”, “Quick Fix – Essential Phrases”, “Real Chinese – Mini Guide” and similar pages. The site is very much like an on-line phrase book. There is a lot of attractive multimedia; pictures, animations and audio. If you are looking for a quick introduction to Chinese or need Chinese for your travels this is a good place to start. Have a look at BBC Languages Chinese.




BBC Languages Chinese

Make your own customised Hanzi Worksheets

I have been using Hanlexon Chinese to generate my custom hanzi practice sheets.  I like to do this when I need to focus on specific core vocabulary. Halexon will let you include stroke order and pinyin as a guide on the practice sheet. You can also make lists, print out flashcards, make online flashcards.  I find Hanlexon Chinese very useful for my hanzi writing practice.

How do you say Bali (the tropical island in Indonesia) in Mandarin？

Here is something that came up during the weekend Intensive school I recently attended.  

How do you say Bali (the tropical island in Indonesia) in Mandarin？

This was important because bālí 巴黎 is how to write / say Paris (capital of France).

The answer is bālí dǎo 巴厘岛, Bali Island.

Most important when booking flights with Chinese travel agents. 

现在我喜欢旅行去巴厘岛。

再见 Jonathan