I just spent a couple of hours helping my 6 year-old daughter with her homework. Yes, I said, a couple of hours. The kids get that much homework here.
I’ve also been looking through her Mandarin textbook and there’s some good stuff inside it. Lots of little rhymes and stuff. (Why are there so many rhymes about lou bo - carrots?) I believe we can use some of them in our lessons.
Many years ago when I first decided to learn Mandarin I decided that classroom lessons were not for me. I tried them and they were not pleasant. (There was, unfortunately, no ChinesePod at the time.) My solution was to buy a bunch of kids books. They had pictures (don’t laugh) and some of them had cassettes. The ones I found most useful were the ones that were used in first and second grade schools here, not so much because of the language input, but because they had history, stories and cultural input. Reading these was like killing several birds eith one stone. You were getting to know what the kids were learning (an insight in itself), what the culture deemed important, as well as the language itself.
Anyway, I’ll try to select some cool stories from the textbooks and re-tell them right here on ChinesePod so that we too can kill several birds, etc.
Ken Carroll 凯恩
I was thinking of getting a chinese novel probably something I’ve already read in English. Never thought of children’s books, that might be worth a try first.
Novels are tough - I mean really tough. Kids’s books are much more useful because the input is manageable. They usually have tapes and pictures - these are important aids to comprehension. I’d recommend them.
Next week we’re going to use some simple nursery rhymes - rhymes that all the kids know - in the lessons.
Do you know if joyo.com will do UK delivery?
Sorry, don’t know about that one, Bazza. Don’t worry, we’ll start to get some stuff online for you.
Cool CSI in Chinese.
http://www.joyo.com/movie/deta.....owse%2Easp
If my calculations are correct that’s about £7 GBP, I think I’m buying my DVDs in the wrong country.
Hey Ken, that would be great if you could get some of those kids books going. When I was in China I bought two or three — should have got more. You’re right, they’re a great way to pick up Chinese. The ones I was reading were quite weird actually. Surprisingly abrupt and violent! I got a good laugh.