Chinese Class on Chinese Youku

Just finished watching a very nice Chinese class on Chinese YouTube site: Youku. The video is under teaching section. Youku is a very popular Chinese video sharing site.


对外汉语教学视频

I like the way the young Chinese teach used in her class. By using flash cards and playing games in the class. It is really fun way to learn Chinese. She even say some common Chinese sentences, with some words she may not teach before. That's actually the way to learn Chinese. You don't need to know every word. Just try to find out the words you know.

iTunes U: Basic Chinese

The Open University of Hong Kong provides a serials of classes on iTunes U, 9 items up to today. The following is a snap-shot of the podcast in iTunes:



To find the podcast, search for "The Open University of Hong Kong" or "Basic Chinese 1" in iTunes.

Type Pinyin in Mac

I found a way to type in Chinese Pinyin in my Mac computer. It is very simple to set it up. First, you have to enable the U.S. Extended input from System Preferences|Language & Text|Input Sources. This is one time setup:



This input has a list of phonetic or dialect symbols which can be added to a character. Those symbols include Pinyin four tones and special ü:

First tone: option+a
Second tone: option+e
Third tone: option+v
Fourth tone: option+`
¨: option+u

To input pinyin, type a tone first, and then input a vow, such as a, e, i, o, u. To type in ü, type in u after option+u. Those key combinations are straightforward and it takes very short time to get used to.

I use this method to edit a document of transcript for a podcast by Sun Yat-Sen University. The application is NeoOffice for Mac. In order to align up Pinyin with Chinese characters, I define my tabs first with 1.5cm interval.

Learn Chinese Podcast by Sun Yat-Sen University

There are many podcasts available for people to learn Chinese. I found this is a very good one for beginners: Dui4 Wai4 Han4 Yu3, by Sun Yat-Sen University. It is available in iTunes U. For example this dialog is about ordering food in a MacDonld-like restaurant.

Note: the link does not work in Safari, nor in Chrome. but it opens a fee in Firefox.

I like this podcast. Each dialog is very short, less than 1 minutes. The content is very simple, very good for beginners. I watched a few. Many dialogs have very simple and useful phrases. I think that this podcast is very good complementary resource for my class. The podcast program actually has two sets. One is mainly on Chinese culture with dialogs in English, and another set has dialogs in Chinese with Pin Yin. Here is a snapshot of two sets in iTunes:



To find the podcast, go to iTunes Store. Then search for 对外汉语, just copy the paste those four characters. In Pin Yin, they are dui4 wai4 han4 yu3.

Learn Chinese for Beginners Will Start on Sep 28, 2010

My Mandarin class for Beginners will start tomorrow at Central Memorial High School 5111 - 21 Street SW Calgary, AB. I have not started any classes in the past two years. The main reason is the low enrolment. I was told that if the class could run this time, the Chinook College would cancel this course from the language program. Fortunately, now I have enough students, 7 people.

I am not sure about the certainty of my Chinese class. There are so many other alternatives for people to learn languages, such as iTunes, podcast, and web sites. Those alternatives are not only so rich in terms of technology such as sound, videos and apps, but also very convenient for learners. Personally, I gained so much knowledge and skills by those means. I think that's good for language learners. However, one common thing is missing in those methods: no pressure and easy to give up. I'll try my best to teach my class and share my knowledge with my students.