If you're thinking about learning to read, check out this new study resource - printable vocabulary review sheets. These fold-over review sheets are based on my book, Very Practical Chinese including all the vocabulary from the dialogues, exercises, and the accompanying Study Guide. The review sheets are free for anybody to download, print and use. Check them out here.
Start off with the chapter-by-chapter sheets, and move up to the randomized sheets. Right now I have files with a random selection of vocabulary words taken from Chapter 1 and 2, and also files with random vocabulary words from Chapters 1 thru 4. I will post more randomized sheets soon, eventually having a random selection from Chapters 1 - 20, and even Chapters 1 - 45 ~ the idea being that if you can look at characters completely out of context and still know the English definition, Pinyin spelling and tone, then when it comes to reading them in context, you'll be laughing.
Come on! Learn to read!! Don't buy the line that it's not necessary. Don't be scared that it's too hard. It is not that hard and it is so rewarding, and, I dare say, necessary, if you want your Chinese to progress beyond a certain level. And the fact of the matter is that learning how to read characters (by memorizing the correct Pinyin spelling and tone for a character, in addition to the Englsih definition) will ensure that you teach yourself to speak properly! As a bonus, you'll be able to type in Chinese (in Pinyin), and thus able to text, to blog, to email.
There are a few sample sheets scanned for you to take a look at, and (at the risk of overkill) a "how to" PDF as well. Fold them over one way to write the Pinyin and English. Fold them over the other way if you are learning to handwrite characters. Remember to fold them back over to correct your mistakes.
You can use them in conjunction with the Line-by-Line Flashcards, the Fill-in Pinyin Sheets, and the VPC Online Flashcards. All of these materials are based on the VPC Textbook and Study Guide. Keep an eye out for more to come!
Showing posts with label Chinese Characters. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Chinese Characters. Show all posts
Thursday, October 8, 2009
Sunday, September 27, 2009
Learning to Read - Baby Steps!
So you've decided to learn to read and write Chinese - or if you're still on the fence and looking for a few more reasons to, read this.
But if you don't know any characters, how do you start? It seems a bit daunting!
I've developed a way for beginners to learn to recognize characters, based on the books I've written (with the help of my two wonderful editors, both native Mandarin speakers AND Chinese teachers). This set of books is comprised of a textbook called Very Practical Chinese - 45 Conversations to Know (VPC for short), which includes 16 hours of MP3 compatible audio, and its companion, the VPC Study Guide, which breaks down each line of the dialogue. Our books focus on everyday conversations and making grammar easy and accessible. They also have a huge glossary, heaps of slang, idioms, tongue twisters and jokes. You can read more about them here.
Once finished, I started to think about supplementary materials to help my readers learn to read and write. I came up with "Black Out" Photocopiable Templates that let the reader cover parts of the dialogue in order to test their memory. From here, I made "Fill-in Pinyin" Templates, printable worksheets where the Pinyin and English gloss are whited out, leaving space for you to write your answer and test yourself!
From there, it struck me that for beginners, bigger would be better! That, and a way to be interatctive with the characters, which seems to be a better way to memorize new information than just passively staring at it (think of the "Memory" card game we all played as kids), and so the "Line-by-Line Flashcards" were born. I've got Chapters 1 thru 9 done (more are on the way). The idea is to arrange the cards while listening to the dialogue, or from memory. Then see if you know the tones for each of the characters in every line (best accomplished by using on of the "Fill-in" Templates at the same time). Finally, flip them over to see the tones!
If you've already learned a few hundred characters, these are too remedial for you, I think, but if you're brand new at it, they're a very good way to cut your teeth and ease your way into memorizing characters!
Best of all, you can try my system for free! Simply:
1. Open a Sample Chapter from the VPC Book (Ch.1, 2, and 3) are online and its accompanying audio files. (You'll find the Study Guide Notes for each here as well.)
2. Go to the Line-by-Line Flashcards for Ch.1, 2, 3. Print them on double sided paper.
Give it a try and see:) I'm about to post new worksheets on my website that I call "Fold-over" Vocabulary Reivew Sheets, which will be great to jump to after you've gotten a few hundred characters memorized using the Line-by-Line Flashcards.
For those of you who prefer to review new words and characters on your computer, Online Flashcards for the VPC Chapters (through to Chapter 24), which were created by my industrious student, Bruce, are now available! He has graciously made them available to other students at Flashcard exchange, for which I am greatly indebted to him. Check out the VPC Online Flashcards here!
But if you don't know any characters, how do you start? It seems a bit daunting!
I've developed a way for beginners to learn to recognize characters, based on the books I've written (with the help of my two wonderful editors, both native Mandarin speakers AND Chinese teachers). This set of books is comprised of a textbook called Very Practical Chinese - 45 Conversations to Know (VPC for short), which includes 16 hours of MP3 compatible audio, and its companion, the VPC Study Guide, which breaks down each line of the dialogue. Our books focus on everyday conversations and making grammar easy and accessible. They also have a huge glossary, heaps of slang, idioms, tongue twisters and jokes. You can read more about them here.
Once finished, I started to think about supplementary materials to help my readers learn to read and write. I came up with "Black Out" Photocopiable Templates that let the reader cover parts of the dialogue in order to test their memory. From here, I made "Fill-in Pinyin" Templates, printable worksheets where the Pinyin and English gloss are whited out, leaving space for you to write your answer and test yourself!
From there, it struck me that for beginners, bigger would be better! That, and a way to be interatctive with the characters, which seems to be a better way to memorize new information than just passively staring at it (think of the "Memory" card game we all played as kids), and so the "Line-by-Line Flashcards" were born. I've got Chapters 1 thru 9 done (more are on the way). The idea is to arrange the cards while listening to the dialogue, or from memory. Then see if you know the tones for each of the characters in every line (best accomplished by using on of the "Fill-in" Templates at the same time). Finally, flip them over to see the tones!
If you've already learned a few hundred characters, these are too remedial for you, I think, but if you're brand new at it, they're a very good way to cut your teeth and ease your way into memorizing characters!
Best of all, you can try my system for free! Simply:
1. Open a Sample Chapter from the VPC Book (Ch.1, 2, and 3) are online and its accompanying audio files. (You'll find the Study Guide Notes for each here as well.)
2. Go to the Line-by-Line Flashcards for Ch.1, 2, 3. Print them on double sided paper.
Give it a try and see:) I'm about to post new worksheets on my website that I call "Fold-over" Vocabulary Reivew Sheets, which will be great to jump to after you've gotten a few hundred characters memorized using the Line-by-Line Flashcards.
For those of you who prefer to review new words and characters on your computer, Online Flashcards for the VPC Chapters (through to Chapter 24), which were created by my industrious student, Bruce, are now available! He has graciously made them available to other students at Flashcard exchange, for which I am greatly indebted to him. Check out the VPC Online Flashcards here!
Friday, September 25, 2009
Five Reasons YOU Should Learn to Read and Write in Chinese
1. Your curiosity has gotten the better of you.
Admit it...you want to know what all those neon street signs say. You want to be able to read the menu, instead of looking at the pictures. (The latter is far more likely to impress your date!) You're not illiterate in your native tongue, nor would you likely learn to only speak French or Italian."Oh", but you say, "Chinese is different!" You might not believe it, but trust me...
2. It's not as hard as it looks.
Take a look around you, and say to yourself, "If they could do it, so can I!" Of course, having learned as children, they had something of an advantage, but on the other hand, with technology where it is now, you don't have to tediously copy characters dozens or hundreds of times (like they did). YOU can...
3. Learn to type, (not handwrite) characters
It's a hundred (if not a thousand) times easier to recognize a character when it's in front of you than it is to recall if from memory and re-create it stroke by stroke. You could, of course, learn to painstakingly handwrite characters if you're a purist (or a masochist)...but why, when it's soooooo much easier to type, using a phonetic system, either Pinyin or BPMF, to input the sound, and then choose the character (or compound word) you desire from a list.
4. Literacy opens up your study options
Once you can read and type, suddenly so many more study avenues are open to you. You can keep keep a diary, write letters, and go online to find a ton of websites, online dictionaries and newspapers... CSL (Chinese as a Second Language) is really starting to emerge as a field of interest, and it's only going to get more popular as more and more people study what is destined to be THE language of the 21st century.
5. It's not all work...
Texting, MSN, chatrooms, blogs - once you can read and type, you can communicate in Chinese! Whether texting your language exchange buddy to ask what time your lunch date is, reading (and replying to!) an interesting blog, or chatting with someone next door (or half a world away) on MSN, once you are literate you can be a social butterfly! (Or a Don Juan!)
How to get started:
Granted, if you can't read a lick of Chinese it might seem a bit daunting, but I have a plan for you! Read this!
Admit it...you want to know what all those neon street signs say. You want to be able to read the menu, instead of looking at the pictures. (The latter is far more likely to impress your date!) You're not illiterate in your native tongue, nor would you likely learn to only speak French or Italian."Oh", but you say, "Chinese is different!" You might not believe it, but trust me...
2. It's not as hard as it looks.
Take a look around you, and say to yourself, "If they could do it, so can I!" Of course, having learned as children, they had something of an advantage, but on the other hand, with technology where it is now, you don't have to tediously copy characters dozens or hundreds of times (like they did). YOU can...
3. Learn to type, (not handwrite) characters
It's a hundred (if not a thousand) times easier to recognize a character when it's in front of you than it is to recall if from memory and re-create it stroke by stroke. You could, of course, learn to painstakingly handwrite characters if you're a purist (or a masochist)...but why, when it's soooooo much easier to type, using a phonetic system, either Pinyin or BPMF, to input the sound, and then choose the character (or compound word) you desire from a list.
4. Literacy opens up your study options
Once you can read and type, suddenly so many more study avenues are open to you. You can keep keep a diary, write letters, and go online to find a ton of websites, online dictionaries and newspapers... CSL (Chinese as a Second Language) is really starting to emerge as a field of interest, and it's only going to get more popular as more and more people study what is destined to be THE language of the 21st century.
5. It's not all work...
Texting, MSN, chatrooms, blogs - once you can read and type, you can communicate in Chinese! Whether texting your language exchange buddy to ask what time your lunch date is, reading (and replying to!) an interesting blog, or chatting with someone next door (or half a world away) on MSN, once you are literate you can be a social butterfly! (Or a Don Juan!)
How to get started:
Granted, if you can't read a lick of Chinese it might seem a bit daunting, but I have a plan for you! Read this!
Friday, June 26, 2009
Funny Chinese Tattoos
Here is a link to a fun website:
http://www.hanzismatter.com/
It explores the misuse of Chinese characters/Japanese Kanji by Westerners. (Perhaps we could be kind and say “misguided” use?) It’s a phenomenon for which any Westerner who has taken the time to learn characters has one or two good stories, given the explosion in popularity of Chinese tattoos in recent years.
My first experience with wacky Chinese tattoos (on an equally wacky but hopefully not too demented person) was in Taiwan, when I ran into a man with the character 惡 tattooed on his upper chest. By co-incidence, it was one of the few I knew. Upon first seeing it, I remember thinking it was quite Celtic looking and rather pretty looking. I wondered if this man had made the same mistake, and asked him if he knew what it meant. He said, “Yes, it means evil, and it’s on my heart because I have an evil heart.” Erm, okay…I backed up (I’m sure my face conveyed my shock) and that was the end of that conversation. I wonder what Mr. Evil Heart is doing today…
While on the beach just the other day I commented on the tattoo that another dog owner had prominently displayed on his bicep. “So you’re a tiger,” I ventured. The man looked rather nonplussed and said that he was, and the conversation didn’t go anywhere, which left me wondering if he thought he had tattooed some mystical symbol on his arm, one that only wise and learned stoics could decipher, rather than what it really was for the billion plus people who read Chinese or Japanese, i.e. the equivalent of spelling T-I-G-E-R in VERY BIG letters on your arm.
This reminded me of the time that my mother and father and I travelled to Hong Kong and my mother was transfixed by the beauty of the neon signs. “Aren’t they lovely?” she beamed. While I appreciated their colours, I was unable to appreciate them as aesthetic works of art only, since I kept getting distracted by their meanings, with decidedly unromantic words like “barber shop” (which generally means brothel) “sale”, and “fried chicken” jumping out at me. At that point, having a finely tuned sense of aesthetics, (thanks to my mother) I wished I didn’t know how to read them and could have appreciated them for their beauty alone.
By far the most stupid tattoo I’ve seen in a while (quite literally!) was a few months back, when I spied a girl in a bar with the phrase 愚蠢的女孩 tattooed down her back. I did a double take, and checked my dictionary as soon as I got home. Sure enough, it was indeed “stupid girl”. Why? I mean, really…why?? Perhaps she liked the song “Stupid Girl” by Garbage and thought it would be a neat “inside joke”. However an inside joke is by definition one that few get, and her chances of going under the radar with this ridiculous tattoo were slim to none in Vancouver, the most Chinese city in North America…
It’s probably good to have cases of Westerners misusing Chinese as it evens things up, given the propensity of Chinese/Japanese speakers to misuse English, but I would like to point out that the latter have an advantage over the former, as they generally display their English language gaffers on T-shirts!!
http://www.hanzismatter.com/
It explores the misuse of Chinese characters/Japanese Kanji by Westerners. (Perhaps we could be kind and say “misguided” use?) It’s a phenomenon for which any Westerner who has taken the time to learn characters has one or two good stories, given the explosion in popularity of Chinese tattoos in recent years.
My first experience with wacky Chinese tattoos (on an equally wacky but hopefully not too demented person) was in Taiwan, when I ran into a man with the character 惡 tattooed on his upper chest. By co-incidence, it was one of the few I knew. Upon first seeing it, I remember thinking it was quite Celtic looking and rather pretty looking. I wondered if this man had made the same mistake, and asked him if he knew what it meant. He said, “Yes, it means evil, and it’s on my heart because I have an evil heart.” Erm, okay…I backed up (I’m sure my face conveyed my shock) and that was the end of that conversation. I wonder what Mr. Evil Heart is doing today…
While on the beach just the other day I commented on the tattoo that another dog owner had prominently displayed on his bicep. “So you’re a tiger,” I ventured. The man looked rather nonplussed and said that he was, and the conversation didn’t go anywhere, which left me wondering if he thought he had tattooed some mystical symbol on his arm, one that only wise and learned stoics could decipher, rather than what it really was for the billion plus people who read Chinese or Japanese, i.e. the equivalent of spelling T-I-G-E-R in VERY BIG letters on your arm.
This reminded me of the time that my mother and father and I travelled to Hong Kong and my mother was transfixed by the beauty of the neon signs. “Aren’t they lovely?” she beamed. While I appreciated their colours, I was unable to appreciate them as aesthetic works of art only, since I kept getting distracted by their meanings, with decidedly unromantic words like “barber shop” (which generally means brothel) “sale”, and “fried chicken” jumping out at me. At that point, having a finely tuned sense of aesthetics, (thanks to my mother) I wished I didn’t know how to read them and could have appreciated them for their beauty alone.
By far the most stupid tattoo I’ve seen in a while (quite literally!) was a few months back, when I spied a girl in a bar with the phrase 愚蠢的女孩 tattooed down her back. I did a double take, and checked my dictionary as soon as I got home. Sure enough, it was indeed “stupid girl”. Why? I mean, really…why?? Perhaps she liked the song “Stupid Girl” by Garbage and thought it would be a neat “inside joke”. However an inside joke is by definition one that few get, and her chances of going under the radar with this ridiculous tattoo were slim to none in Vancouver, the most Chinese city in North America…
It’s probably good to have cases of Westerners misusing Chinese as it evens things up, given the propensity of Chinese/Japanese speakers to misuse English, but I would like to point out that the latter have an advantage over the former, as they generally display their English language gaffers on T-shirts!!
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