10 minute Chinese videos for absolute beginners

[Sphery]

Hello again!

You might remember me, I posted here not long ago about a chinese learning webpage, which will be something like an interactive flashcard system, it’s almost done, but I was thinking of making some 10-15 minute videos for absolute beginners. I want to connect these podcasts with the website. So a completely new chinese learner can watch these videos, can learn some basic senteces and vocabulary from it, with pronounciation and stroke order, after that he/she can move on to the website to practice them. I think it would be great for the people who want to give a try of taking up chinese, or for other lower level beginners.

I’ve got a question for you, connected to this. What do you consider the most intriguing and catchy method to raise the interest of chinese in somebody? When I started learning Chinese I really hated that for 2 weeks we just had pinyin, though I knew that it’s important, it was boring (for me), I was always waiting for the characters to come. So I think it would be beneficial to start with characters and pinyin at the same time. I want to make them feel that they want to learn Chinese. Don’t misunderstand me, I’m not making money out of this, I’m not in the interest of any kind of chinese learning society, but (as a chinese learner) I know how hard is to start to learn this language, and if I had this opportunity (using a website like ours will be + watching podcasts) when I started, I know that I would be much better now. (Of course the person who will explain the chinese in the videos is not me, because of my lack of chinese and english knowledge.) I’m really interested in your opinion about it, thanks for reading this!

[bsur]

Hey,

I think every individual has his own reason to start Chinese and like different aspects of the language. Altough I think that most people like the characters in the language. I had a background in art and am very visual. So the characters, for me, are the most fun to learn. Though there are people I know who actually have language as a hobby. So grammar is of their most interest. I think measure words are quit fun aswell. though that could scare people aswell. Mabye an intro where you explain how characters are build up? my interest grew when i found out about radicals and components. Also show the people how sometimes characters are visualisations and sometimes abstract.

my 2ct. Hope this helps a bit!

[Shelley]

Hello,

I started learning chinese because I wanted to learn a language that was completly different to european languages and as chinese is used by a huge number of people i decided to go for chinese. Also i wanted to be able read and write chinese characters as it seemed like a beautiful form of writing.

I always forget that not everyone learns chinese cos they want to. I suppose there must be some who have to learn it for work, relationships etc. I am always suprised that people might need encouraging, I always figured that you would be learning cos you wanted to.

I think that characters and pinyin should be taught together from the start. I agree with bsur that learning about how the characters are built up from radicals, phonetics, pictograms etc definately got my interest going. Try to show the beauty of characters by showing how closely some of them resemble what they are. Che 车, forest 林, are just 2 of the ones that really made me say yea I can do this it does make sense and it does have some reason to it.

Also start any speaking bits off slowly, the speed of some teaching videos is just too fast for real beginners, just as long as they realize that it is slow and it will get faster as they learn more.

Try and show relvent and modern examples but don't forget some of the old examples are the best and cannot really be bettered.

Also don't make a big thing out of the tones, this scares people, I look at this way: when you learn to say a word you learn it with the tone, the tone shouldn't be added later, this is just the way the word is said, in total, complete with the tone, later when you have to deal with changing tones because they are 2 tones the same, this too can be easier if you are comfortable with tones anyway.

Above all show that it is fun and relevent to learn chinese:)

Good luck

Shelley

[zhouhaochen]

when to start teaching Chinese characters is a matter of quite a bit of debate in the "Chinese Teaching Community", with the Chinese usually wanting to do it from one and get off pinyin as fast as possible and the EU/US usually prefering to "ease" students into Chinese with more pinyin and slowly introducing characters.

Both approaches have advantages and disadvantages, I dont think there is a one single best solution, it very much depends on the person studying.

And that counts for pretty much all the other topics, from tones to grammar structure, if you want to create a useful site, I would suggest to explain Chinese as you would have like to learn it. That way its an authentic and good teaching approach for one group of students (you and people similar to you).

Trying to cover all possible student scenarios from Chinese character haters and tone deafs to people with photographic memory in one video probably wont work - better to pick a group and do the right thing for them. Be good in what you do - dont try to do everything.

[bsur]

@Shelley: just out of curiousity: how does 车 resemble itself? 林 i understand, but I see 车 just as a character where I simply should learn the strokes and the pinyin, nothing more. Hope for an answer. thanxiē!

[skylee]

bsur, you might wish to take a look at the pictures here -> http://www.zdic.net/...icBBZdic8A.htm#

But surely you know that 车 is a simplified character. They don't always retain many details of their older forms.

[Shelley]

Hi,

I think that it looks like a simple cart from over head. The top horizontal and the bottom horizontal strokes are the wheels and the middle stroke is the seat/floor of the cart and the long vertical stroke is the axle. As skylee said this is a simplefied version and has lost some info but i can still see a cart,( which has been adopted for car)

.I think you have to be a bit generous when saying they look like what they represent, The sun and the moon are most commanaly used as these examples, once you know all circles are squares lots of them make more sense.

Hope this helps

Shelley

[bsur]

Skylee and Shelley, thanks for the comments! I never thought of imagining a cart from above. This confirms the more how much creativity can be used to memorize the characters.

Makes me thing of the one time I've been a tourist in China, I don't know whether it was Hai Nan or Gui Lin... But anyway, it was in a cave. The tourist guide kept giving names to every rock we saw as well as those chalky pillars that grow in caves. That one is a chrystal umbrella, that ones is called mothers love and so on. At first I wasn't really impressed about the fantasy myself and thought of it as if it where a cheap trick to fill in the time with words. But on the other hand, ofcourse, this way of creativity helps a lot with memorizing the route in a cave, or, for instance, the strokes in a character. Don't know whether one thing got something to do with the other, though. I think I'm linking stuff I know. Makes it easier to memorize things:).

Spery: please keep an update about the site. As a beginner learner I'm very interested and happy with these kinds of initiative. Thanks!