On the character “街”

Thanks to CLTA-GNY who brought this article to our attention:

On the character | Street

Mandarin most useful business language

Another good reason to study Chinese:  According to Bloomberg Rankings, Mandarin is the most important business language after English.

Adding Pinyin with Tones to Documents

It's extremely important when giving our students worksheets and texts we have created to use pinyin with tones accurately!  The easiest way we've found is to use an online tool which translated characters to pinyin.  I use Chinese Tools Pinyin Editor. 

Here are the steps:

1)  Copy your text (in Chinese characters) into the box on the website.
2)  Choose "Separate."  This allows you to copy only the pinyin into your document, line by line.
3)  Click "pinyin."  The text with pinyin will appear below the box.
4)  Copy the pinyin OR pinyin with characters into your document, clean it up, and choose your fonts.

Tips for keeping your students' eyes focused on the characters: 

• Center the pinyin under the characters, NOT on top.  
• Use a (much) larger font for characters than for pinyin.

In case the above link did not work, here's the web address:  http://www.chinese-tools.com/tools/pinyin.html
Please share your recommended techniques for adding pinyin to documents!

NYU Graduates granted tenure!

Congratulations to Bing Qiu and Jianlan Zhao, graduates of NYU's Teaching Foreign Language (Chinese) program. Both Bing & Jianlan have recently had their tenure applications approved!  Bing teaches at Bronx Science High School. Jianlan teaches at NEST + M.

Nanduti Listserv and Staying in the Target Language

Victoria Gilbert, Chair of Foreign Language Department at Saint David's School in New York City, writes the following about easing a classroom into immersion in the target language (I've added examples in Chinese!):

Make it a class goal to use ONLY Spanish for part of the time. They don't believe it can happen b/c they have never seen it. Tie a class tortilla (or 饺子！） party to reward using 50- 75 -90% only Spanish and then, keep upping the ante on them until it is part of your routine.

Also, reward those who maintain language in Spanish only, but still talk at least three times per class... Give them a way to be able to ask "como se dice "X"?" （X 怎么说？） as a valid option...so they can start with whatever they do know. Ask regular questions at the beginning of the period that everyone can answer such as Que hora es （现在几点钟？） / Cual es la fecha (今天星期几？几月几日？） / que tiempo hace （今天天气怎么样？），or based on whatever they learned with previous teacher. Give them a sheet covered in plastic pocket page with these basic questions and typical answers they can memorize. Give extra credit points if they get answers correct... Require "Puedo ir al baño?" or "puedo ir a coger agua, etc." （我上厕所可以吗？） as a minimum!"

Register for the Nanduti listserv to receive many more great, practical ideas from foreign language teachers.

The traditional Chinese painting "River of Wisdom" has been carefully animated (and music added) and was on display at the Shanghai Expo for months. The video showing the animations is terrific!  So many lesson plans & activities for teaching Chinese could be designed around this video showing daily life in ancient China!  Clothing, transportation, places: what would you use it to teach?

 

In case the video doesn't play, here is the link: River of Wisdom

This website reads aloud in Chinese!

Just type in or copy and paste whatever you need read aloud, then choose the voice you'd like to have read it aloud．Pronunciation seems fairly accurate according to our in-office trials.  We prefer Lisheng's voice and pronunciation.  Some speakers pronounce 谁 "shui," others use "shui." Just like in real life!

Read aloud in Chinese.

http://www.oddcast.com/home/demos/tts/tts_example.php?sitepal