Chinese Textbook 3rd grade...

henning

March 10, 2008, 01:49 AM posted in General Discussion

Yesterday I had the chance to run over the pages of the Chinese language textbook of my nephew (3rd grade). I was able to read the exercise questions, but regarding the answers I was way below 20%.

Types of questions included:

Choose the correct character (from collections of 4 homonym characters).

Write the characters for a word given in Pinyin

Build trees of characters - the top node is given, below you need to generate 2 new ones which expand the root character with one radical (2 levels)

Name the opposite (opposite of "frolic"?)

Assign words to blanks in the text (there is a character for "provisions"!)

I was quite surprised how many of the characters in discussion I saw for the very first time. For the majority of the rest I at least had the feeling I saw those before. The same holds true for the vocab. Never encountered those before (yes, new "characer points" are definately on the way - I just do not have enough time here in my Beijing holiday).

A humbling experience.

kimiik

March 10, 2008, 09:21 AM

Btw, the show "Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader" on Fox also exists in HK on TVB and seems to be called "系咪小儿科" (the show of the smiling childs ... or something like that) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Are_You_Smarter_Than_a_5th_Grader%3F

RJ

March 10, 2008, 10:21 AM

Henning, Trips to China are always humbling when it comes to language skills but Jesus, you are light years ahead of me and, well, very discouraging. Will there ever be a trip to China in which I say wow, Im starting to get this. Well, Im not stopping now. The harder it is, the more its worth, and Im way ahead of somebody who hasnt started yet. Job security for Cpod. -RJ

marchey

March 10, 2008, 10:35 AM

Last time when I was in China I bought 2 school text books 7th and 8th level (I don't know to what year in primary school this refers to, maybe someone could explain...is it 2 levels per school year?). Humbling indeed. I can make sense of the text with the help of my dictionary. But there are simply too much new characters for me to remember after a reading session.

wei1xiao4

March 10, 2008, 11:48 AM

Gee, Henning, that is really scarey coming from you. Any more good news you would like to share? Have a great time in Beijing. Do you recognize it with all the Olympic changes?

nevermind

March 15, 2008, 07:30 PM

I've noticed that Chinese course seem to advance very quickly. After studying Spanish on my own for 7 months, I was well ahead of my classmates who'd been learning the language for more than 5 years. Same with Arabic. But Chinese is indeed a different matter...(I've studied it for exactly 5 months and can make sense of intermediate lessons, but most (elementary, like you're nephew's) textbooks are way above my skills....) I sometimes wish I was like this autistic guy who acquires fluency in any language in a matter of weeks.

mayor_bombolini

March 15, 2008, 11:32 PM

I study at the low intermediate level. I have a couple of 1st grade text books from the daughter of a friend in China. After 7 seven pages of easy stuff, I can't get through it without looking up at least a couple of characters a page. For example, what is the little chicken doing: 刨刨土, 捉捉虫。土 and 虫: ok, everyday characters. 刨: pao2: dig....I guessed peck (knife)....wrong. 捉: zhuo1...i guessed pull (hand) even though I know pull is 拉...wrong again. These are not very high frequency characters....but kids in China are expected to have a lot of stuff memorized at a relatively early age.

nevermind

March 16, 2008, 02:15 PM

omg...Look what learning so many languages does to me: "like you're nephew's" That's exactly the kind of "native speaker's mistake" that I've successfully avoided for more than 20 years...- confusing their/they're/there or except/accept--- And those poor Chinese children have to distinguish between dozens of characters that vary by a mere stroke... I really envy any Chinese kid - for their linguistic abilities and sweet smile.