As is always the case when I start something new (think along the lines of zumba, book clubs, running clubs at school, Spanish... I could go on) I am filled with enthusiasm and excitement at the prospect of learning Mandarin. I am hoping that this continues, as moving to the country is a pretty good incentive to continue working at it.
But I am well aware that this may not be the case so I am trying to cash in on all the enthusiasm that I have at this early stage. So I have been trying out different techniques to learn the very basic words and phrases that we were introduced to last week, such as 'how are you?' 'I am good thank you, and you?' as well as the numbers.
I have made flashcards which have been helpful, and on the tube on the way to Charlotte's on Friday night I was unashamedly flicking through the Chinese characters that represent the numbers 1-10. I have also spent time writing the pinyin for the phrases out, as that was always my main way of revising through school and uni and it seemed to do me well.
BUT the best way by far has been learning with my class. This is another of the reasons why I love my job. I told my class of 6 and 7 years olds that I was taking lessons in Chinese. They loved the idea that I was a beginner too and were so excited when I told them what I had learnt. Each day they have come in asking 'what is the Chinese for this' or 'how do I say this in Mandarin?' And so I have spent about 10 minutes a day teaching them a new word or phrase which we then repeat when we can, such as during the register. Its amazing how much they can remember, and everyday they are coming in and looking at the makeshift 'Mandarin Language' display board I have hastily put together.
Today was a new level entirely though! I introduced them to the number characters and briefly told them how the number system works e.g. 23 is represented by the characters of 2 10 3. They got it instantly (quicker that me, somewhat embarrassingly) and we played a game I made up called 'code-cracker' for quite a while! The game is actually very rubbish - I would write the characters for a big number (we got up to 9999) and they had to crack the code and write the number on their whiteboards. Me and Devney were amazed at how quickly they understood, and it helped me too as I tried to say the numbers in Mandarin as I wrote them down.
This is what we ended up doing before hometime - time well spent I think! I doubt the characters are prefect but if it helps me recognise them then great!
Anyway for a second post this is getting very long so I will head off now! I need to think of games to play to work on tonights lesson, though I'm not sure how often the kids in my class will need this conversation:
'Hello little brother what do you want to drink?'
'I want coffee'
'I want coffee also'
'Good we all want coffee'... (I only learnt coffee, maybe I should look up squash or something!)
Zai jian, wan an!
