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 气 (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