菜鸟 (càiniǎo) is the ChinesePod name given to the “Newbie” lessons. But what does it mean? Well, it means just that… “newbie.”
The word 菜鸟 is made up of the characters 菜 (cài), meaning “vegetable” or “dish,” and 鸟 (niǎo), meaning “bird.” This doesn’t seem to make much sense. That’s because the word came from 闽南话 […]
Archive for the 'About the Chinese language' Category
What is 菜鸟?
Published by December 11th, 2006 in Uncategorized and About the Chinese language. 7 CommentsChinese cliches
Published by November 19th, 2006 in Learning Chinese and About the Chinese language. 18 Comments The visual cli-Che
I missed a very important event recently, National Cliche Day in the US. As we all know, English has enough cliches to choke a horse, but at the end of the day (ok, enough of that) how about Chinese?
The term ‘cliche’ is not a grammatical one. It simply refers to an overused […]
‘Mandarin lessons pave the road to riches’
Published by September 25th, 2006 in Uncategorized, Learning Chinese and About the Chinese language. 11 CommentsThis article makes very clear how there is a big need for Mandarin teachers in the US.
Ken Carroll
From the SW Radio Africa Zimbabwe ‘Students slam Chinese language institute at UZ as a waste’. Ouch.
Ken Carroll
Hank’s Language Podcast Survey
Published by September 1st, 2006 in About the Chinese language and Teaching Chinese as a Second Language (TCSL). 5 CommentsHank Horkoff has a Language Podcast Survey over at his (highly recommended) Network Sense blog. The survey doesn’t include English provision, but it still puts things into perspective to my mind.
There isn’t yet a mass awareness of what this medium can do. Podcasting as a teaching/learning tool is a new thing with limited number […]
Writing lessons
Published by August 12th, 2006 in About the Chinese language and Teaching Chinese as a Second Language (TCSL). 17 CommentsI worked with my daughter today on her Chinese writing homework. She’s 7 years old and like any good student in China she studies during her summer holidays.
I believe that writing is the single biggest obstacle that school kids face in China. This is because writing Chinese involves so much more than writing English. Every […]
Quote of the week
Published by July 24th, 2006 in Learning Chinese and About the Chinese language. 3 CommentsHere is Lantian, at his iconoclastic best:
I firmly believe that all the exercises in a classroom are a diversion, a deception, a crutch to the actual development of the language in one’s brain. Whatever it takes to think a thought and use the target language to express that thought is going to build the language. […]
Cultural attitudes to teaching and learning
Published by July 24th, 2006 in About the Chinese language and Teaching Chinese as a Second Language (TCSL). 13 CommentsA couple of days ago we held another training session for the teachers’ network. These sessions introduce local Mandarin teachers (in this case, about 20 of them) to ChinesePod and offer some basic orientation towards how to teach Mandarin to the lao wai, using ChinesePod. The training emphasizes the importance of speaking practice and how […]
One man’s story of learning Japanese in China
Published by July 23rd, 2006 in Learning Chinese and About the Chinese language. 11 CommentsOur friend, fellow Shanghai resident, and blogger, John Biesnecker, has decided to take Japanese classes. He signed up at a local language school for 100 hours of instruction. (His wife did the same, I believe.) The tuition was reasonable, so this wasn’t a huge financial risk. However, learning a new language is a real […]
A couple of interesting tech-related articles.
Microsoft plans an imminent attack upon Apple’s iPod dominance in the portable music player market. Their new gadget will be called “Zune”(bad start, if you ask me) and I’m guessing it will have some useful new features. If you are one of the early purchasers of this new gadget, […]
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