Tuesday, June 30, 2015

Lesson on 27 June 2015 - Interview in Mandarin

Date : 27 June 2015
Attendance : Meraldo, Andrea, Manveer, Juan, Wen, CK & Cynthia 

We had a pretty intensive intermediate class learning mandarin for business purposes. Thanks Meraldo for the super good venue with all the facilities we needed. The learning materials is shared by Meraldo. For the benefit of those who were absent. I attached the following reading script and also the notes which I organized (it was on the whiteboard). If you have any questions, please feel free to ask! 














Thursday, June 18, 2015

Lesson on 13 June 2015

Date : 13 June 2015
Attendance : Ewan, Manveer 

Our previous classes has been more on conversational as most of us wants to learn how to speak in mandarin instead of reading and writing. It has been good fun but I start to realise that we start questioning if this word which has the same pronounciation is the same as the other.

 Eg is 七 (Qī - first tone)the same as (Qì - forth tone). Both words sounds similar because it is pronounced as 'qi' but with different tones. Both look totally different and have totally different meaning.

This is the light bulb moment that i thought perhaps i should now introduce simple chinese character as a starting point. My previous Mandarin Language Teacher in primary school was very strict, but his teaching method was awesome. It encourages us to think and relate, by breaking down and visualising every chinese word to the core. I would love to share this with my friends who are passionate in learning mandarin. We start by having few simple words such as 人,and then evolving into 大,太,天。Other words I introduced last week are 气 (which Ewan has asked me if it was the same as the number 7 in mandarin - 七)and another interesting simple character is 口.

We also learned how to write chinese character stroke by stroke. Many times we thought it was pretty tough to write Chinese characters which looks like complicated piece of art/ calligraphy, but when we break it down and write it stroke by stroke, it is actually pretty easy and fun. I jotted down some of the notes that I remember and post it here for reference.

As much as I would like to go into detail on what i taught on last saturday, I thought it is best to keep it short here, lest you would be bored by me rumbling away. Below are the notes that i organized, scanned and post it here for future reference. I still think that live classes and self initiated practices after class is the best way to improve.

I enjoyed teaching, and I hope you enjoyed and benefited my humble class too.



If you have any questions, feel free to post a question here or ask me during our regular session!

Till we meet again.

Cynthia

My friends who were also my students..

2013  
The classes started with Juan, who was from Spain. We had classes every weekend in The Reading Room. Juan has a considerably good level of mandarin. He is able to construct short sentences in Mandarin and it was encouraging to see foreigners now learning mandarin.
And then down the road, we have Andrea from Germany. Andrea is very committed in learning mandarin. She speaks good mandarin and takes good notes. Her chinese characters are surprisingly neat ! It is always great to converse with Andrea in mandarin.

2014
Sometime ago, we had a group study for mandarin on Sundays in Fabio's place. Fabio, Ashish, Pablo, Joan and Arantxa came and we had classes regularly. Somehow, the class was in a limbo for quite sometime and we ended up shifting the timing of the class on Saturday before our Spanish class. This group of student is fun. They are fast learners. Wherever you are, dont stop learning mandarin, even just a bit everyday. 

2015
This year we had a more systematic and established class ever since we had classes in Reading Room on Saturdays. There were new faces that eventually became friends : Michele, Rocio, Robert, Nolan, Ashish (who is the top student is back again!) and recently Patri, Ewan and Manveer has join in the class and had been very diligent! It is definitely an encouragement to see the student's good learning attitude.
That's Nolan writing in chinese

The teachers : Claire (China), Wen (Singapore) & Myself (Malaysia)
I like how we collaborate and support the classes in one way and  another in cases where we could not make it on a particular week, we back each other up. It is like a community, and in this learning group with a community spirit.  


Reminiscence of Chinese Class

Some time ago, Claire and I conducted classes in Ashish's place at Tiong Bahru.
The boys were naughty but it was all fun.

http://www.magisto.com/video/MQEEYwhUFjYrWhhpYw






Introduction

It has been almost a good one year or so since I have been sharing some weekend chinese classes in The Reading Rooms with friends from all over the world. It is always my dream to document it properly what I prepared for the classes but it had been a busy year.

Everything has to have a start, so here you go! 

I'll be uploading notes and photos of the class now and then.
Enjoy!