Go Around China

yimo

When I was a student, I learned English and French with video materials—Family Album U.S.A. and Reflets. In China, we translate them as 走遍美国 and 走遍法国. They are very popular in China and have became classic now. I am afraid no other second language teaching media could beyond them. And I still could remember my teacher teaching us with these in speaking and listening classes. At the beginning, we cannot understand the dialogues in the movie, especially Reflets, because both of the two TV textbooks are real movies. They have their own characters and plots; everyone has their own story. You can go on watching and find an ending. So the actors speak as fast as in daily life, it is hard to understand all. However, the design of these two classic are excellent, the second learners are not only can learn words, phrases and expressions but also can learn local cultures. Each part has an independent scene such as asking for help, meeting friends, shopping and so on. All of these topics are very practical that can help second language learners easy to travel or study in the foreign countries.

Before I become a teacher of Chinese teaching for foreigners, I cannot realize the importance of using a good media material at all. At present, I teach Korean students Chinese. Maybe because they are also Asian, they learn Chinese quickly. Compare to western learners, they can easily understand Chinese cultures and some customs. To be honest, I think some of my students speak Chinese very good. If strangers talk to them, they will regard my students Chinese who cannot speak mandarin very well, because their Chinese tones are strange and speak slowly.

For quite a while, I am wondering to teach them just like I learned English and French. Sometimes, I will play Chinese movies for them, but they told me that it is too difficult to understand the meaning of the lines even they recognize every character. Yes… I admit that… because I cannot perfectly translate to them either. So this way is a waste of time and students could not improve their Chinese. Luckily, I found an online teaching website which is called ChineseTones. I was attracted by its name first, ChineseTones, since some of my students who speak well have a common problem—tone. They often mix the four tones and cannot tell them. That ChineseTones mainly use movie lessons to teach makes me think about Family Album U.S.A. and Reflets. They have lots in common. However, the movies of ChineseTones are selected from Chinese popular TV series. The movies are all short and collected in different levels according to the degree of difficulty. Each lesson has its own title such as My Name Is Axiali! You Must Come Back; I Have Got a Job and so on which are similar to Family Album U.S.A. and Reflets. So I name it “Go Around China” (走遍中国). Every lesson is made up of five parts—Movie, Dialogue, Words, Speak and Exercise. Among these, I love words part most. For example as below:

Learners can click the small box and the tones will show in a more clearly way. There also have pinyin and English explanation.

What’s more, you can download the videos in your phone or digital products and see them whenever you have time. Resources and forum are also very interesting. You can know more about China and what’s going on in China, especially many study materials are free. I suggest my students to look for something about pinyin and tone to help them. Now I will play this for them twice a week, they told me that it is more practical than big movie and they learned some new words from it. I am happy with that! 

yimo

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