kirchara

Living Mandarin is a curriculum expressly written for non-native Chinese speakers. The textbooks use both traditional and simplified characters. The curriculum is not text-heavy, so you would need to add at least one set of leveled readers to teach your child.

The textbooks have traditional characters, simplified characters above the traditional characters (as needed), pinyin under the Chinese characters, and zhuyin to the right of the traditional characters. Traditional characters and zhuyin are black, simplified characters are gray, and pinyin are red. In addition to zhuyin to the right, they also included an older form of romanization underneath pinyin (as needed) in green. I bought levels 3 (my kids' approximate level) to 10.

The text is written horizontally from left to right, beginning from kindergarten levels all the way to level 10. The horizontal orientation is great because most Chinese reading pens only scan horizontally.

The sets I bought did not come with music CDs* or an e-Pen. When you purchase directly from their website, the sets come with CDs. If you can read Chinese and are teaching your children yourself, the CDs and e-Pen are probably not necessary.

* not good music

Living Mandarin sets so far goes up to Level 10 instead of 12:

- Teaching bopomofo (1 textbook + 1 workbook)
- Kindergarten levels 1 to 3 (1 textbook + 1 workbook per level)
- Levels 1 to 10 (1 textbook + 2 workbooks per level)

According to their website, ( Read more... )

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You can look at some of the inside pages here:

- My Instagram post
- Issuu pages on their website. Click on each book and click on the "試看試聽" (Take a look/give a listen) tab.

( Pros and Cons of this curriculum )

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I am pleased to find that level 3 is the correct level for my kids. I cover the pinyin with a reading ruler when they read and only uncover it when they do not know the character(s). My kids seem to automatically read the simplified characters and do not find the zhuyin distracting. My older one quickly figured out that zhuyin includes tones.

We have been doing Mandarin regularly since summer break. I am hoping this schedule will continue for a while, before things get hectic again. We rotate between Odonata (currently reviewing Book 4.4), SageBooks (reviewing Book 3.4) and XQKD (Book 3 Lesson 3). Sometimes we sing/learn a Chinese song or do a game/activity in Chinese instead.

We go over each textbook lesson in two sessions, and both workbooks in two sessions. For now, I plan on skipping up to half of the writing exercises to cut for time.

My tentative lesson map: ( Read more... )

The new characters in Xue Qian Kuai Du Book Two beyond Sagebooks Level 2.1 : ( New characters beyond Sage Level 2.1 )

In total, there are 48 characters in XQKD Book Two that are not covered by Sagebooks 500.

You might want to finish Sagebooks 2.3 or 2.4 first before you start using XQKD Book 2. My kids are currently halfway through Sagebooks 2.2, and they're on the last lesson of XQKD Book 1.

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Learning Plan: ( Read more... )

Xue Qian Kuai Du teaches children to recognize characters by reading a set of leveled literary readers. It's similar to Odonata in that they introduce several new characters at once. Compared to other leveled readers that I've seen, XQKD is superior in that it's more literary (the text often feels rhythmic and lyrical). XQKD also includes poems, nursery rhymes and riddles.

Xue Qian Kuai Du: Revised Edition* comes with:

- four textbooks (totaling 45 stories)
- one I-can-read-by-myself reader (12 short stories)
- four exercise books

- 600 character flashcards (thin and one-sided)
- two wheels of character radical games
- a game instruction booklet
- two list booklets (radicals, antonyms, idioms etc.), and
- some stickers.

There's a QR code that you can scan for audio of the 45 stories. The speakers have a Beijing accent; the background music is soothing.

( The textbooks include some 'How this character came to be' pages )

If you cannot read Chinese, I wouldn't recommend this as your first/only curriculum because it has no pinyin.

For those doing Sagebooks, this set would make a beautiful addition/supplement to the Sagebooks curriculum. I bought my set for $35 from JD.com (including shipping to the US; you probably can get a better deal during the November 11th sale).

If your child has learned 100 Sagebooks characters, they should be able to pretty easily read Stories 1.1, 1.2 and 1.3.

How we have been doing XQKD so far: ( Read more... )

Here is the progression of new characters in Book One: ( 122 characters in 9 stories )

For Sagebooks parents, here are the new characters in XQKD Book One: ( New characters beyond Sage Level 1 )

In total, there are 14 characters in XQKD Book One that are not covered by Sagebooks 500.


* The old edition of 学前快读600字 does not include many of these extras. Many of the stories in the textbooks are also different. Here's a comparison of the revised and old editions (The review is readable using Google translate).

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List of the story titles in the four books: ( 学前快读600字（修订版） )

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You can look at some of the inside pages here:

- My Instagram post
- A Sohu.com review comparing the revised and old editions. The revised edition is the book/page on the left, the old edition is on the right.
- A Zhuanlan Zhihu review comparing Xie Qian Kuai Du: Revised edition with Si Wu Kuai Du. The reviewer prefers XQKD, but SWKD has an easier/lower starting point.

Summary of important purchasing information:

- Product name in Chinese: 《学前快读600字（修订版）》(XQKD 600: revised edition) or 礼盒版：学前快读600字 (Gift box edition: XQKD 600)
- Where to buy: Product listing at JD.com. You will know right away what your shipping fee will be. The product weighs 2.68 kg, according to JD.com.
- How to Buy Simplified Chinese Books from JD
- You can also buy XQKD at taobao, but you will need to do your own research on which store/seller is reliable etc. and pay for expensive shipping.

Our Sagebooks progress used to be super slow, because I was focusing on their pronunciation (reproducing consonants, vowels and tones correctly) instead of comprehension.* I would read to them and have them repeat after me phrase by phrase. They also traced the big characters in front of each Sagebooks chapter with their fingers (pre-writing).

Two years later, after four months of weekly Chinese lessons and near-daily Chinese reinforcement, we follow the Sagebooks suggestion of reading five chapters per session: four review chapters and one new chapter.

e.g. REVIEW the last four chapters in Book 1.1 (也、我、指、五) + LEARN the first chapter in Book 1.2 (两).

The CD has been essential for letting my kids hear native speakers' tone and pacing. My six-year-old rarely makes mistakes with tones, but he's pronouncing the character tones faithfully as if they are in isolation. I tell him that native speakers don't say "I-am-going-to-go-to-the-store," native speakers say "I'm gonna go to the store," and if he reads the tones exactly as they are written, he would sound like a robot.

有人/上山/来我的家.

Initially Brooks inserted pauses at the wrong places for this sentence. I played the CD for him and explained that the sentence is step by step: There's someone/ climbing up the mountain/ and coming to my home.

We've been doing Sagebooks almost everyday** ever since the entire set*** arrived. Brooks passed Book 1.1 assessment**** on July 16th (17/20 characters), and River passed on July 17th (16/20 characters).

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* At 4.5 and 9 years old, their Chinese was near-zero. They would comprehend once they start taking actual Chinese lessons, was my thought at the time. Also, Sagebooks and BetterChinese have English translation right there in the books; I figured they can read it on their own if they're curious.

** We still occasionally read BetterChinese, especially during Chinese playgroups and as the subject comes up (e.g. They needed a refresher on "这是谁?"). Odonata is on hold for now; twelve to fourteen new characters at once is a bit too much. (We read Book 1.2 almost two months ago.)
ETA 10/18/19: We're slowly doing Odonata in addition to Sagebooks and Better Chinese; we're currently on Book 1.4.

*** Previously, we only had four random Sagebooks that my mom bought. Thankfully, one of the four books was book 1.1.

****For Book 1.1, their weekly Chinese lessons have covered eight out of twenty characters: 山、人、大、上、下、手、小、五.
Nine, if you include 一, which does not count toward the 500 character count of Sagebooks.
For Book 1.2, their lessons have covered eight out of twenty characters: 两、十、来、马、去、鸟、天、地.

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My tentative lesson map: ( Read more... )

On the weekend of the Dragon Boat Festival.

Another six-year-old joined playgroup, so we have five kids total.

1. SONGS:
1a. 我的朋友在哪里 (Where is My Friend?)
Show/teach them the ASL gestures for 我的 (My), 朋友 (Friend), 在哪里 (Where) and 在这里 (Here).
1b. Teach them 小白兔，白又白 (Little white bunny)

2. INTRODUCTION:
Introduce their sibling instead of themselves.
"这是我的RELATION. 我的RELATION叫NAME. 我的RELATION AGE岁了."

I modeled the introduction by introducing V as 我的朋友. The kids did a round robin introduction.

3. SHOW AND TELL:
"这是OBJECT." One or two additional sentence about the object's color/size/physical characteristics. Ask follow-up questions as appropriate.

The kids brought interesting objects. River shared his sheep minifigure: "这是我的小羊。我的小羊是白色的。" A shared her drawing of a galaxy.
Brooks also shared his drawing: "这是我的画儿。我画了一只小兔子。" (This is my drawing. I've drawn a little bunny.)

( Read more... )

4. READ-ALOUD: ( Awakening the Dragon: the Dragon Boat Festival )

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Plans for Playgroup #3:

( Plans for Playgroup #3 )

For playgroup #2's show-and-tell, Brooks shared "这是我的画儿。我画了一只小兔子。" (This is my drawing. I've drawn a little bunny.)

1. Start with the sentence "弟弟画了一只小兔子." ( Read more... )

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Circling Introspective:

- Circling is a hit when it's the two of them together. Before this session, I did 'circling' individually with them with the character 去, but the energy (and silliness) was not there.

- The more outlandish/non-sensical my questions are, the more eager River was to answer "是!" and "对!"

I asked: "弟弟吃了一只小羊吗？"
River: "是!"
Brooks: *pretends to eat his drawing of a sheep*

- When there are two sentences being circled, I need to start with a comprehension check on the first sentence.
I assumed they've acquired the "这是___" sentence structure from circling #1, so I skipped circling it. In actuality, they still need a lot more input of "这是___" sentences.


[ PDF file on how circling works ]

(Originally posted on July 2, 2017)

Even though they're 4.5 years apart, I have been teaching River and Brooks Mandarin at the same time. Ideally, I should have had Brooks learn Mandarin the moment he turned four, but I started teaching him reading (in English) instead.

We use Better Chinese's My First Chinese Words because they are targeted to non-Mandarin speakers. In contrast, SageBooks (Hong Kong publisher) require the students to be Mandarin/Chinese speakers. (SageBooks are like BOB books in that they teach children how to read).

I try to do Mandarin two, three times a week. I read one sentence and each child repeat after me. We do two 8-page picture books each session. Brooks usually has the attention span for one picture book but not two.

So far we have done six sessions. In between sessions, I have J independently listen and repeat after the included CD.

Brooks often acts silly and intentionally gives the wrong answers (e.g. "This is my grandfather" instead of "This is my father.") Usually I end up focusing on River when Brooks has the sillies.

As expected, Brooks' pronunciation is just beautiful. Being older, River has a harder time with pronunciation. (When River was four, his Mandarin accent was practically perfect too. Once he started kindergarten, we got busy with reading/writing/spelling/poetry/etc. and stopped doing Mandarin).

I was afraid that River, who just turned nine, would find the books boring because they’re a bit childish, but he has been motivated so far. Earlier today, he asked me to do Mandarin.


☆ 06/100 moments in multiples of 50 words

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If we do this three times a week, we should be done in a year; two times a week, a year and a half.

My tentative lesson map:

( Read more... )

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List of the 36 book titles: ( Read more... )

CIRCLING* -- DONE 6/8/19

Make a gray mouse out of play doh/clay Draw a mouse on the whiteboard. Have the (computing) mouse ready.

1. Start with the sentence "这是哥哥的鼠标 (shǔ biāo)." ( Read more... )

2. At random, ask these questions:
- YES question: "这是哥哥的鼠标吗?"

- NO question:
"这是哥哥的老鼠吗?"
"这是弟弟的鼠标吗?"

- OR question: "这是哥哥还是弟弟的鼠标?"

- 5Wh + H question:
"这是谁的鼠标?"
"这是什么?"

- etc. following their interest and attention span

I used these index cards at random to prompt myself: ( Read more... )

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Circling Introspective:

- They are (thankfully) easily amused. They would sometimes intentionally give the wrong answer, pick up my shoe and say, "这是妈妈的老鼠," etc.

- River said he did not hear every single thing that I said because he got distracted, but he did understand everything he did hear. And that's the main goal of circling/TPRS**: comprehensible input.

- When I asked Brooks, "英文怎么说," he answered "big brother's computer mouse" instead of "This is big brother's computer mouse." Either he hasn't acquired that "这是" = "This is," or he usually doesn't translate Mandarin into English in his head.

* Here's a pdf from Terry Waltz's website that tells you how circling works.

** TPRS = Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling

Last year I fell into Chinese* fandom via random YouTube algorithm. I ended up chatting with fellow fans online (many of them overseas Chinese with varying degrees of fluency), when I came to a sudden realization:

If I don't teach my kids Chinese culture, nobody else will.

Prior to this, I was resigned to River and Brooks** growing up as Asian Americans who are only Asians in the broadest brushstrokes of the term. We're not a traditional Chinese family, I'm not fluent in Mandarin, and my husband can’t even write his own Chinese name. It's an uphill battle teaching them Bahasa Indonesia; how much harder would teaching them Mandarin be?

( In a way, I see the language as secondary to the culture. )

* It was a Chinese supernatural show that's so bad it cycles back to being great. All the budget goes into the two main characters and the opening theme song, and nothing else.

** Their online handles, not their rl names

*** River knows me well enough to know that complaining is useless.

一闪一闪亮晶晶
yì shǎn yì shǎn liàng jīng jīng

满天都是小星星
mǎn tiān dōu shì xiǎo xīng xīng

挂在天上放光明
guà zài tiān shàng fàng guāng míng

好象许多小眼睛
hǎo xiàng xǔ duō xiǎo yǎn jīng

一闪一闪亮晶晶
yì shǎn yì shǎn liàng jīng jīng

满天都是小星星
mǎn tiān dōu shì xiǎo xīng xīng

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( Read more... )