Review: Sinolingua Wall Chart for Teaching Chinese as a Second Language - Pinyin

[lechuan]

Thanks to the generous Sinolingua book-for-review giveaway, I received a complimentary copy of the "Sinolingua Wall Chart for Teaching Chinese as a Second Language - Pinyin" to review. Now let's see how much I can say about a wall chart   Note: they were a bit banged up in shipping, but they're still quite usable.

 

Physical Attributes.

 

The wall charts measure 72 cm by 56 cm (30" x 20.5"). The charts ship folded, so you're going to have crease marks.

 

Initial and Final Chart

 

 

This chart shows the individual initial and final pinyin letters.

 

Things I liked:

- Large letters. I can comfortably see the letters from across a small room (but not the smaller annotations)

- Has equivalent IPA pronunciation. I quite like this because, if you know IPA, it helps to differentiate letters that have different sounds in different combinations (ie. an/yan, e/ei). I find it useful to teach basic IPA, at least for the basic vowel sounds, to help people keep the sounds straight in the initial stages.

- Has an example pinyin word that can be used to demonstrate the sound.

 

 

Things I didn't like:

- A bit cluttered. Lists the Chinese character and english meaning for the example pinyin word; probably not super useful to know that 了 is a "particle" and 师 is a "teacher" at this point.

- Doesn't try to group letters in a way that shows their similarities. Seems to follow the standard pinyin order, filling in a grid from top left to bottom right. I thought maybe the colors indicated something, but they just seem to be make a diagonal pattern on the initials, and color vertical columns on finals. I would have liked to see more creative use of colorings/groupings to show similarities in sounds.

 

The Rule of Combinations of Initials and Finals in Chinese Chart

 

 

Things I liked:

- It's a standard pinyin chart. Big enough to use while sitting around a table.

 

Things I didn't like:

- Too small for a wall chart. Probably would need to be at least 3x the size to be used comfortable in a small room.

 

Overall Impression

 

Overall, I like these charts, and will use them in one-on-one tutoring situations. My cat likes them too.

[elina]

Wow, what a quick and insightful review! Thanks so much!

 

Things I like: the lovely cat

[Hofmann]

Can't see clearly, but is seems like the /ɨ/ final (written "i") is missing.

[lechuan]

Yeah, [ɨ] is missing. It probably would have been good to put both with examples (yi/chi) in the i frame.