Tuesday, November 27, 2018

ALESN Mandarin I 11/26/18 Monday Night Class Summary, Links to 2017 Blog Entries reviewing this material and Insights...

Hi Gang,

Last night, we began with a review of the initial and final sounds of Mandarin -- the Lego building blocks of the language, as detailed on pages 1, 2, and 6 of your book. Following this, we reviewed the tones chart and the exercises on pages 8 and 9. we then covered the various examples in the tables on pages 9, 10, and 11. PLEASE REVIEW THESE PAGES THIS WEEK.

Finally, we covered some classroom and survival phrases in Mandarin, to get the speaking juices flowing. We are finally in a position to begin Lesson 1 next week!

In recapping what we have covered so far, rather than re-invent the wheel, I am going to paste some links below to quite a few very detailed 2017 blog entries covering all of the pronunciation and tones material that we have learned so far. Please read the following blog entries and do your best to follow along, referencing any pages mentioned in your book:

http://www.sayitrightchinese.com/2017/10/mandarin-i-class-notes-insights-and.html

(NOTE: The "Sheet/Shit Pronunciation Paradigm" is based on a dirty joke I shared with my classes last year, and can be found in an entry under the "Mispronouncing Mandarin" tab of the blog.)

http://www.sayitrightchinese.com/2017/10/mandarin-i-class-summary-insights-and.html

http://www.sayitrightchinese.com/2017/10/mandarin-class-summary-insights-and.html

http://www.sayitrightchinese.com/2017/10/alesn-mandarin-i-class-summary-insights.html

http://www.sayitrightchinese.com/2017/11/mandarin-class-summary-insights.html

Your homework for this week is to read and try your best to understand the material mentioned in the above referenced 2017 blog entries, and to review the textbook pages covered so far. If you have already purchased a DVD or downloaded a movie or bookmarked a Youtube video of a Disney movie or whatever in Mandarin, as I keep suggesting to you all, please start watching some of it in Mandarin Chinese with English subtitles. It is best to watch the movie all the way through several times over the coming weeks and then to take one scene at a time and play and replay that scene until you start getting a feel for THE SOUNDS, TONES, and SPOKEN CADENCE of Chinese. I promise that this will help you as we go along this year -- and it will just make your learning experience more fun.

I was going to type some good insights at this point into my own personal learning process and learning history with Chinese (Cantonese and Mandarin), but I think I will save that for a separate, future blog entry, because I am pressed for time this morning and need to get back to my regular work.

Thanks very much for so many students taking my last email/blog entry so seriously and for stepping up your attendance to last night's class. It was good to see approximately twice as many students last night as the week before! I hope to see even more students next Monday, because we will finally be starting Lesson 1 Dialogue 1!

AS A REMINDER, PLEASE LET ME KNOW IF YOU HAVE DROPPED THIS CLASS. In the past, this would have been a very important concern, because we maintained a waiting list of over 100 people dying to get into our Mandarin classes as soon as someone sneezed, let alone thought of quitting. In past years, for every student who quit my class, 2 new ones would show up the next week and Mandarin I was literally filled to capacity (and a couple of times in October 2017 was standing room only). Because there is no waiting list this year, it is more for me to just keep track of who is still in the class and who has decided to drop -- most likely because you think I am an asshole, which is fine.

I am not really an asshole; I just like to weed out students who don't have a strong enough motivation to learn Chinese, so that we are left with a smaller core group for the rest of the year who will actually show up, participate, do the homework, and make every effort on each of their parts to never say things like "Whoa She May-Grow Ren" without any tones when trying to tell the class where you are from. This will make sense once we begin lesson 1 next week.

I was very lucky in the music business, my chosen field of interest, to have had a mentor (who unfortunately passed away in 2014) who was very no-nonsense, who didn't take shit off anyone, and who absolutely refused to be offended if it meant any kind of interference with her goals or plans. "I refuse to be offended" was actually her #1 motto in life when dealing with challenging people and situations.

There are a lot of people in this world who will tell you that you can't do something. You have to be strong enough to tell these people to go jump in a lake because you are determined to succeed anyway. I will never tell any of you that you can't learn Mandarin. There are severely mentally challenged individuals in China who cannot tie their own shoes and who have a problem swallowing their own saliva who can speak this language at its most basic level. I am CERTAIN that everyone of you has the potential to learn to speak effective Mandarin Chinese. The question is this: 
 
IS YOUR MOTIVATION STRONG ENOUGH TO CARRY YOU PAST ALL OF THE (SOMETIMES MAJOR) HICKUPS ALONG THE PATH FROM ZERO TO BASIC CONVERSATIONAL ABILITY?

I will tell you that statistics show over a period of 8 or 9 years that I have been affiliated with ALESN that maybe 7 out of 10 beginner Chinese students quit our program at some point because their pronunciation sucks and no one understands what the hell they are trying to say when they attempt to speak to real Chinese people who don't know them. I am simply citing actual, factual statistics. YOU (and only YOU) can determine whether you want to buy into that statistic and quit, or whether you want to tell me to f@&% off because you are determined to learn and persevere and be able to speak this language -- because your motivation is THAT strong.

THAT is what I was attempting to communicate to you folks. The people who hopefully got this, who understood the core of my reason for telling you apparently discouraging bits of information right from the start, have determined for themselves that learning to speak effective, understandable basic Chinese really is THAT important to them -- and these are the students who have decided to stay in my class.

WELCOME!

Those of you who were offended by my comments enough to quit studying Mandarin all together this semester (not because of your work schedule or because you would rather have a kinder teacher who will hold your hand in the Thursday night class or one of the Saturday classes) missed the point of my tough love approach. And that is ok. 
 
I have learned in life to be specific if I want to achieve a specific goal. My specific goal for my Chinese classes this year is that a small, core group of students will learn effective, understandable pronunciation of basic words, phrases, sentences, and a general overview of basic grammar -- so that these specific students with a strong enough motivation to learn Chinese (NOT everyone on the 43 student email roster) will be able to have real conversations by June with real Chinese people they have never met before. If I am going to achieve this goal, I have to weed out students who don't have a strong enough motivation to achieve this goal.

If you have already weeded yourself out because you think I am a jerk, but your motivation to learn Chinese really is pure and strong, please consider returning to the class with a new determination not to be so sensitive to any one person's personality. I am not going to change my personality, but I can promise you all -- even students who have quit or who are considering quitting because you think I am an asshole -- that if you stick with this class and refuse to be offended and just move forward and put in a solid weekly effort, you will either achieve my goal for you or you will come very close. By June, you will be able to have a very basic conversation with a Chinese person you have never met before, discussing basic things about your life: where you live, your family, what time it is, etc.

There is no room in my style of teaching for overly shy students or overly sensitive students or students who allow themselves to quit studying a language because any one person on this planet might have offended them. I hope that this helps to clarify my teaching approach. The bottom line is that you will get out of my class what you put in. I will always have my opinions, but I promise each of you who decide to stick it out that I will do everything in my power each week to get you all saying things in Chinese THAT SOUND LIKE YOU ARE SAYING THINGS IN CHINESE.

Best wishes to all and see everyone next Monday.

Brendan

Cantonese I 11/26/18 Monday Night Class Summary, Notes from last year's blog entries, INSIGHTS

Hi Gang,

Last night, we began with a review of the initial and final sounds of Cantonese -- the Lego building blocks of the language, as detailed on pages 11 and 12 of your book. Following this, we quickly covered the material on pages 12 through 24 -- or at least, I covered some of that material and then asked you all to read the remaining material on your own. PLEASE READ THESE PAGES THIS WEEK. Thanks!

Rather than re-invent the wheel, I am going to paste some links below to several very detailed 2017 blog entries covering all of the pronunciation and tones material that we have learned so far. Please read the following blog entries and watch any embedded video links, etc.:

http://www.sayitrightchinese.com/2017/10/cantonese-i-class-summary-insights-and_25.html

http://www.sayitrightchinese.com/2017/10/cantonese-i-monday-oct-30-2017-class.html

http://www.sayitrightchinese.com/2017/11/cantonese-i-class-summary-insights.html

AND FINALLY, we have only glossed over the dialogue from lesson 1 so far, and will be reviewing it, the lesson vocabulary, and some specific exercises pertaining to that material next Monday (I had wanted to cover this stuff last night but alas, we were locked out of our room until 6:21 pm). HERE is last year's entry on the vocabulary and dialogue of lesson 1, with a nice additional video link to the CantoCourse (Happy Jellyfish) Youtube channel created by my Hong Kong friend Cecilie Gamst Berg for learning Cantonese:

http://www.sayitrightchinese.com/2017/11/cantonese-i-class-summary-insights_18.html

Your homework for this week is to read and try your best to understand the material mentioned in these 4 2017 blog entries, and to review the textbook pages covered so far. If you have already purchased a DVD or downloaded a movie or bookmarked a Youtube video of a Disney movie or whatever in Cantonese, as I keep suggesting to you all, please start watching some of it in Cantonese with English subtitles. It is best to watch the movie all the way through several times over the coming weeks and then to take one scene at a time and play and replay that scene until you start getting a feel for THE SOUNDS, TONES, and SPOKEN CADENCE of Cantonese. I promise that this will help you as we go along this year -- and it will just make your learning experience more fun.

I was going to type some good insights at this point into my own personal learning process and learning history with Chinese (Cantonese and Mandarin), but I think I will save that for a separate, future blog entry, because I am pressed for time this morning and need to get back to my regular work.

Thanks very much for so many students taking my last email/blog entry so seriously and for stepping up your attendance to last night's class. It was good to see approximately twice as many students last night as the week before!

Best wishes to all and see everyone next Monday.

Brendan

Friday, November 23, 2018

ALESN Mandarin I 11/19/18 Class Summary and Insights -- sorry for slight delay with the Thanksgiving Holiday...

ALESN Mandarin I 11/19/18 Class Summary and Insights -- sorry for slight delay with the Thanksgiving Holiday...


Fri, Nov 23, 2018 at 1:38 PM

Hi Gang,

LONG EMAIL -- THANKS IN ADVANCE FOR READING. I AM ALSO POSTING THIS ON THE BLOG.

Sorry for my slight delay in sending this due to the Thanksgiving holiday this week. As a reminder, my blog can be found at www.sayitrightchinese.com. There you will find entries summarizing our class so far this year, as well as much of the same class as I taught it last year during the 2017-2018 academic year (until February, when I needed to take a break from teaching).

This past Monday, we covered the COMPOUND FINALS in the table at the top of page 6. We went over the pronunciations of each of the compound finals, we reviewed the specific footnotes to some of the finals on page 6, and then we went through all of the practice exercises for the compound finals on pages 6 and 7. Following this, we began a serious and in depth study of tones, first looking at the table on page 8 and then doing most of the practices on pages 8 and 9. We will pick up with Table D1 at the bottom of page 9 this coming Monday.

I know that it is the holidays, but it is a shame for those of you who missed our last class, because this stuff is THE MOST IMPORTANT MATERIAL THAT WE HAVE COVERED SO FAR. I know that some of you emailed me beforehand to let me know that you would be missing class, but for the rest of you, it is simply a shame that you missed this stuff, because unless you make a serious effort to attend from now on and also to review this stuff on your own, your Mandarin pronunciation has a real potential to suck for the rest of the year.

No joke. It is just the way it is. Sorry not sorry.

I can only show up and teach this stuff to the best of my ability. If some of the class doesn't attend for whatever reason other than those who emailed me in advance to tell me, well, I can't control that.

We will spend the entire class this coming Monday reviewing this same material, because it is THAT important. I hope to see more of you in class on Monday.

This is stuff that you have to learn, and if you haven't already quit my class, you need to attend for the next few weeks -- even if you think I am covering dry, boring stuff. I have zero patience for students who decide to sit out the intro pronunciation and tones lessons and then expect to rejoin the class a month later and just jump into the conversation lessons. If I see that happening, that students who have missed much or most of the pronunciation units are suddenly back in class once we start covering more traditional textbook dialogues in December, and if I hear that your pronunciation as suffered due to your absences, I am going to be very vocal about it. Just a heads up.

Which brings me to something very important:

PLEASE LET ME KNOW VIA EMAIL IF YOU HAVE QUIT THIS CLASS. There are 43 people signed up for this class right now and yet there were 7 or 8 Mandarin students in attendance this past Monday.

Listen -- I am an asshole sometimes when it comes to my very strong opinions about language learning in general and about the importance of exclusively focusing on pronouncing Mandarin syllables properly during the first few months of classes.

OK. FINE. GET OVER IT.

I am an asshole sometimes when I explain something to the class several times and then receive multiple emails from students who did attend class but ask me to re-explain the same thing because they didn't pay attention or write it down the first time -- like the location of the DVD store (see info below for new location; the store moved 1 week ago).

OK. FINE. GET OVER IT.

I am an asshole sometimes when I give examples of many failed students we have had in the past at ALESN and what I feel they did wrong that sealed "their doom" so to speak, their inability to turn classroom attendance and classroom knowledge into a practical ability to have even the most basic conversation with a real Chinese person, even just to say hi and tell someone what their name might have been. I have strong opinions about the amount (and kind) of effort you will all need to put forth in order to succeed in my class, or in any other once a week class at ALESN or anywhere in the world learning any language that you don't already speak.

OK. SO WHAT. GET OVER IT.

I say these things because I want my students to succeed, and because I either want lazy or "predisposed to be untalented" students to quit my class OR I WANT THEM TO SHOW ME THAT THEY ARE DETERMINED TO SUCCEED -- AND THEN I WANT TO SEE THESE PEOPLE SUCCEED.

I am not trying to be a jerk for jerk's sake. I taught 5 or 6 years of beginner ALESN classes 2 or even 3 times a week without saying any of this stuff. I smiled. I encouraged my students no matter what they did -- no matter how little they studied, no matter if one person might make the same mistakes every single class for an entire year, then take my class a second time and make the exact same mistakes every single class during the second year. For 5 or 6 years, I was happy to teach anybody and I paid little attention to the actual success rate of my students. I had huge classes -- 25 or 30 people for most of the year, even in the Cantonese class!

I recorded all of my classes every week, uploaded them to a cloud drive for all of my students to download for I think 3 or 4 years in a row -- hundreds of hours of classes that I taught -- and still my students made the same mistakes every week for the entire year, and then again the following year if they came back to ALESN. Some of them are still taking ALESN classes and still making the same beginner level mistakes that they made 3 or 4 years ago in my Mandarin I class -- despite me having pointed out these errors every week for an entire academic year, several years ago!

Huh.

To me, that is a complete waste of time, and after personally witnessing hundreds of ALESN students not fix their mistakes and continue to make the same mistakes for multiple years in our program, I decided last year to be very hard on all of my students.

Life is too short. If I offend you, you SHOULD quit my class. You don't have what it takes to learn Chinese.

If you find me offensive at times with my strong opinions, but are determined to succeed because learning Chinese is THAT important to you, then you should not only continue to take my class, but you should attend other Mandarin classes at ALESN and you should find a conversation partner online or via Craigslist or whatever and you should start building a collection of hundreds of purchased or downloaded movies and you should buy all kinds of other textbooks and study resources and read and learn from them on your own every week in between my classes -- AND YOU WILL BE THE SORT OF STUDENT WHO BECOMES FLUENT IN CHINESE AT A SOLID, INTERMEDIATE LEVEL IN A YEAR OR TWO.

I hope to see more students in class going forward -- or please tell me that you have quit the class so I can remove you from the 43 person class email list. Thanks in advance.

Thanks again to everyone who attended this past week and I look forward to seeing you all this coming Monday.

Before I forget, here is info on the DVD store's relocation:

I was told by a student from the Mandarin class this past Monday that the infamous DVD store relocated approximately 1 week ago to a new spot on Grand Street between Eldridge and Allen, closer to Allen somewhere near that corner. The student did not explain to me whether it was on the north or south side of Grand street on that block. I apologize for any confusion that the previous location's closing might have had on those of you who emailed me a week and a half or two weeks ago asking where the store was located, but since the store didn't start moving until approximately 1 week ago, it should have been at the previous location and open for business during the entire time that I described it to you, including on the day when I sent my somewhat angry email a week and a half ago.

Quite a few students purchased Dragonball Z and various Disney films and all kinds of other really cool kids' and even regular adult TV drama series DVDs at the original location -- and I hope that more of you will visit the new location, once we determine where it is, to purchase at least one $1-8 DVD that you can watch over and over again for the rest of the academic year as you learn some basic Chinese.

Best wishes to All,
Brendan

ALESN Monday Night Cantonese I class summary and notes 11/19/18 class -- sorry for slight delay

ALESN Monday Night Cantonese I class summary and notes 11/19/18 class -- sorry for slight delay


Fri, Nov 23, 2018 at 12:48 PM


Hi Gang,

Sorry for my slight delay in sending this email and posting it on the blog. As a reminder, my blog can be found at www.sayitrightchinese.com. There you will find entries summarizing our class so far this year, as well as much of the same class as I taught it last year during the 2017-2018 academic year (until February, when I needed to take a break from teaching).

This past Monday, we covered the syllable finals (vowel sounds of spoken Cantonese) as presented in the table at the top of page 12 in your text. We went over the short and long A (a and aa) family vowel/final sounds for a Cantonese syllable; the E family final sounds; the EU family final sounds; the I family sounds; the O family sounds; the U family sounds; and the YU family sounds (almost identical to the "umlaut U" type sounds in Mandarin). It took our entire class to go through this table, and though it might have been a bit mind numbing for some of you, everyone did a good job of sticking with it and pronouncing the sounds when it came time to repeat.

I know that it is the holidays, but it is a shame for those of you who missed the class, because this stuff is THE MOST IMPORTANT MATERIAL THAT WE HAVE COVERED SO FAR. I know that some of you emailed me beforehand to let me know that you would be missing class, but for the rest of you, it is a shame that you missed this stuff, because unless you learn it on your own and really pay attention in class going forward, your Cantonese pronunciation has a real potential to suck for the rest of the year.

No joke. It is just the way it is. Sorry not sorry.

I can only show up and teach this stuff to the best of my ability. If some of the class doesn't attend for whatever reason other than those who emailed me in advance to tell me, well, I can't control that, and you all already know that this is not the kind of class where I am going to hold your hands and repeat this stuff forever.

We will spend the entire class this coming Monday reviewing this same material, because it is THAT important, and I hope to see more of you in class on Monday.

If not, I am telling you -- your Cantonese pronunciation will absolutely suffer for the rest of the year. This is stuff that you have to learn, and if you haven't already quit my class, you need to attend for the next few weeks -- even if you think I am covering dry, boring stuff. I have ZERO patience for students who decide to sit out the intro pronunciation and tones lessons and then expect to rejoin the class a month later and just jump into conversation. If I see that happening, that students who have missed much or most of the pronunciation units are suddenly back in class once we start covering more traditional textbook dialogues in December, and if I hear that your pronunciation as suffered due to your absences, I am going to be very vocal about it. Just a heads up.

Which brings me to something very important:

PLEASE LET ME KNOW VIA EMAIL IF YOU HAVE QUIT THIS CLASS. It is no problem and I will never judge anyone for quitting this class for whatever reason, but please let me know so I can remove your names from the class email list going forward. Thanks in advance.

I am going to hold off commenting on what I covered in the table on page 12 until next week's email, because in addition to quickly reviewing the pronunciations of all of the items in the table, vowel family by vowel family, we are going to plow through the supporting material on pages 12 through 22 this coming Monday as well. It will be better for me to wait to comment on pronunciation of the syllable finals until I have covered the way the textbook explains the material.

This will set us up to spend the following class (in 2 weeks) covering Culture Notes and some grammar points on pages 22-26 and then doing lots of different exercises on pages 26 through 30, as well as reviewing the vocabulary that we have covered in the book so far for our initial dialogue about a case of mistaken identity.

Lesson 2 will continue to point out some pronunciation and tones concerns, but will start to introduce a more typical, less" basic building blocks" approach to the lessons from that point forward. From lesson 2 onward, we will introduce some basic vocabulary; then go through the buildup to a new dialogue; then review the dialogue; then have everyone break into groups and run the dialogue; then point out some grammar notes; and finally do a bunch of varied exercises as a class, with a lot of repetition and me calling on students to complete sentences, etc., as we finish out each chapter/lesson.

Thanks to everyone who attended this past week and I look forward to seeing you all this coming Monday. Again, please let me know via email if you have quit the class.

Best wishes to All,
Brendan

______________________________________________________________________________

Ah -- crap -- I forgot to mention:

I have been told by a student from the Mandarin class this past Monday that the infamous DVD store relocated approximately 1 week ago to a new location on Grand Street between Eldridge and Allen, closer to Allen somewhere near that corner. The student did not explain to me whether it was on the north or south side of Grand street on that block. I apologize for any confusion that the previous location's closing might have had on those of you who emailed me a week and a half or two weeks ago asking where the store was located, but since the store didn't start moving until approximately 1 week ago, it should have been at the previous location and open for business during the entire time that I described it to you, including on the day when I sent my slightly angry email.

Quite a few students purchased Dragonball Z and all kinds of other really cool kids' and even regular TV drama series DVDs at the original location -- and I hope that more of you will visit the new location, once we determine where it is, to purchase a $1-8 DVD that you can watch over and over again for the rest of the year as you learn some basic Chinese.

Best wishes to all!

Tuesday, November 13, 2018

ALESN Mandarin I Monday night class check-in -- see you all next Monday AND TWO IMPORTANT REMINDERS -- thanks!

ALESN Mandarin I Monday night class check-in -- see you all next Monday AND TWO IMPORTANT REMINDERS -- thanks!


Tue, Nov 13, 2018 at 11:15 AM


Hi Gang,

Sorry that we did not have class last night. I trust that everyone remembered and that you read either my email or the top entry on your blog section at www.sayitrightchinese.com and you did not show up at the school. If you did, oh well -- your mistake.

So, I mean no disrespect by what I am about to say, but I might come off sounding like an asshole. If I do, oh well. I am not going to apologize for what I am about to type.

First -- come on, people -- I have already mentioned twice or three times now in class (during the first few classes and in my initial email with textbook info, which is available in multiple places on my blog), that I am NOT the person to ask for a free PDF of the textbook or any of the related class resources such as the workbook, etc.

I gave you guys the links to San Francisco State University and University of Rhode Island's Chinese Departments so that you can download audio and video content for free because these institutions posted the resources on their websites. I was overjoyed to see this and am pleased to be able to share these public resources with my class. HOWEVER, I am not going to distribute additional free PDF textbook or workbook materials to my students. This is the third or fourth time I am telling you guys this. I am NOT going to be the one to hold your hands and whisper sweet nothings in your ears while I tell you how to illegally download PDF resources for your class.

STOP ASKING ME TO DO THIS FOR YOU.

I am happy to teach upwards of 100 hours of free classes each year for ALESN. In exchange, I expect all of my students to put on their big boy pants and their big girl pants and download this stuff for yourselves if that is what you intend to do. Do not ask for my help in downloading free PDF materials for your class. Ask your classmates. I guarantee you all that if you spend under 3 minutes on Google and you type the right words, you will find whatever you want for this book series for free -- and with a fast laptop or tablet, you will have everything downloaded and ready for your personal use in under 10 minutes. I am NOT going to be the person to show you how to do this.

Secondly -- again, come on, people. How many times do I have to tell the class where the DVD store is located? I even mock-walked it out for you, moving my body in class during at least 2 of our classes, pretending that I was turning right out of the school's entrance onto Hester and then turning left from Hester onto Eldgridge, putting you on the exact block where the store is located. I gave you guys the exact block that the store is on. If you look at a map of NYC, there is only ONE such block in all of Manhattan, one such block in all of the 5 boroughs. It is one block from the school. I told you guys exactly where along the block it is located, and yet 3 or 4 people continue to ask me where the store is located.

Are you kidding me?!

GO LOOK FOR IT. Assuming that you are not blind and you have walked along that one block during business hours when the store is actually open, it is there, on the lefthand (west) side of the street when walking over from the school. I assure you it is there. I stop by there almost every single week before classes to check out what new DVDs they might have gotten in.

Ok -- I am done with my rant.

This is a real pet peeve of mine -- people who act helpless in the face of 5 minutes of easy internet searching or 5 minutes of easy walking one block from the entrance to the school. DO THE WORK. DON'T ASK ME TO DO THE WORK FOR YOU.

Best wishes to all and see you all next Monday,
Brendan

Wednesday, November 7, 2018

ALESN Monday Night Mandarin I Class summary and notes for 11/5/18 Class...AND NO CLASS NEXT MONDAY BECAUSE OF VETERAN'S DAY!!!


Hi Everyone,

FIRST OF ALL, NO CLASS NEXT MONDAY DUE TO VETERAN'S DAY. REMEMBER: ANYTIME THERE IS AN NYC PUBLIC SCHOOL CLOSING, WE DO NOT HAVE CLASS.

This past Monday, we reviewed the initial finals and the bo po mo fo table, then did some repetition exercise focusing on lines 5 and 6 of the table on page 5 of your textbook. Following this, I introduced and we repeated all of the COMPOUND FINALS of spoken Mandarin Chinese, located at the top of page 6 of your book. We covered some repetition exercises highlighting subtle and obvious differences between the compound finals, and also between some of the more difficult initial consonant sounds from the right side of our infamous bo po mo fo table (lines 4, 5, and 6). We finished midway down page 7, which is where we will pick up next time.

At the request of one of our students, I started class by teaching you all one very practical sentence -- asking where the bathroom is located in Mandarin:

Ce4 suo3 zai4 nar3?
OR
Ce4 suo3 zai4 na3 li?

I am not going to go over this other than to quickly translate it word for word, because we are still learning the basics of pronunciation and we know nothing yet of grammar or sentence structures in Mandarin Chinese.

The exact translation for this question is as follows:

Ce4 suo3 = toilet
zai4 = to be located at
nar3 = where [Beijing accent pronunciation using the Beijing favored "er" final sound, which will be explained in Lesson 1 when we get to it in one of the dialogues]

"WHERE" CAN ALSO BE SAID AS [AND IS SAID THIS WAY IN MANY PARTS OF CHINA AND TAIWAN]:

na3 = which
li3 = location [pronounced with a neutral tone in this situation, which we will eventually cover in the next few classes]

Someone also asked about xi3 shou3 jian1, or "washroom," broken down as such:

xi3 = to wash
shou3 = hand
jian1 = measure word for room, which stands in for room in this situation. We will learn what measure words are later in the semester.

Using this term, the question then becomes:

xi3 shou3 jian1 zai4 nar3?
OR
xi3 shou3 jian1 zai4 na3 li?

I will bring a phrasebook with me to class from now on and will try to teach one or more practical phrases at the beginning of each class, time and knowledge level permitting. I mentioned the Tuttle Essential Mandarin Chinese Phrasebook and Dictionary with New Manga Illustrations as my current choice for a fun, interesting, beginner level phrasebook in pinyin romanized Mandarin.

From here, I mentioned that I have decided to reactivate my Cantonese and Mandarin language learning blog, dedicated to the proper pronunciation of syllables and tones for each dialect [spoken language]. My blog can be found at:


I will be pasting each weekly email into a blog entry from now on as soon as I click send, which means that going forward, if anyone misses a class or wants to review everything we covered during a certain period of time or for a certain lesson, whatever, you can reference my blog instead of searching for past emails. Of course, your class's section is the Mandarin I menu tab at the top of the screen.

I also mentioned that I am starting to offer in person and Skype private tutoring specifically focusing on pronunciation and tones for both beginner level Cantonese and beginner level Mandarin. If you are interested, please see the Tutoring tab on my blog and shoot me an email so we can discuss.

This past Monday, we covered the initial consonants and finals explanations and examples on pages 5 through 7. Please review this material in your book and come to next class [in 2 weeks] prepared with any questions about this material. We spent quite a white discussing and repeating after me, the various COMPOUND FINAL sounds of Mandarin. Please pay special attention to the various *, **, and *** footnotes to certain sounds as explained in your textbook on page 6. YOUR HOME WORK IS TO REVIEW WHAT WE COVERED AND TO READ, REREAD, AND RE-REREAD PAGE 6 UNTIL YOU GET IT -- or until you come as close as possible, taking into consideration any confusion you might have at this point in time, since this is all new information for you.

We will pick up next time on page 7 and I intend to cover pages 7 through 11 next class, which will bring us to the end of our whirlwind tour of the sounds and tones of Mandarin Chinese. HOWEVER, since you all know by now that my personal area of interest in teaching this material is the accurate pronunciation of the syllables and tones of Mandarin Chinese, we will continue to return to the basics of all of these initial and final sounds for the entire rest of the academic year -- as they pertain to the pronunciation and tones for each new vocabulary word that we will learn once we begin the actual dialogue lessons in the book. This is another reason I asked you all to please download the video material that accompanies the textbook [now in better resolution and fidelity thanks to the link from San Francisco State University that I sent you all last week]. It will help you all to see the scenes of each dialogue acted out on your computer screen, phone, tablet, TV, whatever as you learn the vocabulary and as you study and review each lesson once we start the dialogues. Plus, watching DVDs is just more fun than reading from a textbook -- at least I think it is...

FINALLY, you should check out the DVD store that I recommended near school and try to get a $1 - $6.99 Cantonese language kids' movie DVD of your choice, making sure with the people behind the counter that they read the packaging and verify for you that it has a Mandarin language SPOKEN language track and English language SUBTITLES. $1 to $6.99 is not a lot for me to ask you to spend, especially since this is a free class, so I want some stories next time, people, from at least a few of you, telling the class what movie you decided to purchase, if you had any issues configuring the language and subtitles on your screen, and if you watched any of the movie, what your experience was like. PLEASE DO THIS.

A HINT FOR FIRST TIME BUYERS OF MANDARIN LANGUAGE DUBBED KIDS' MOVIES ON DVD:

DO NOT USE THE ONSCREEN LANGUAGE OPTIONS MENU TO SELECT THE SPOKEN LANGUAGE. INSTEAD, START THE MOVIE AND DURING THE FIRST FEW SECONDS WHILE IT IS SHOWING THE DISNEY LOGO OR THE PIXAR LOGO OR WHATEVER, USE YOUR REMOTE CONTROL TO CHANGE THE SPOKEN LANGUAGE AND SUBTITLE TRACKS. MOST OF THE MOVIES YOU BUY WILL HAVE 2 OR 3 CHINESE LANGUAGE TRACKS: EITHER 1 OR 2 MANDARIN TRACKS AND 1 CANTONESE TRACK. THEY WILL ALL BE LABELED SIMPLY "CHINESE." USUALLY THE FIRST OR THE FIRST AND SECOND ARE THE MANDARIN TRACKS, BUT NOT ALWAYS. IF THERE ARE 2 MANDARIN TRACKS, AS I MENTIONED IN CLASS, ONE WILL HAVE A BEIJING REGIONAL ACCENT AND THE OTHER WILL HAVE A TAIWANESE ACCENT.

Cantonese and Mandarin sound very different from each other. Make sure you are listening to the correct track! If you are unsure, email me, because I own hundreds of these DVDs and if I have the one you purchased, I will pop mine into my DVD player and tell you which is/are the Mandarin track(s).

Thanks, and SEE YOU ALL IN 2 WEEKS.
Brendan



ALESN Monday Night Cantonese I Class summary and notes for 11/5/18 Class...AND NO CLASS NEXT MONDAY BECAUSE OF VETERAN'S DAY!!!

ALESN Monday Night Cantonese I Class summary and notes for 11/5/18 Class...AND NO CLASS NEXT MONDAY BECAUSE OF VETERAN'S DAY!!!



Wed, Nov 7, 2018 at 11:26 AM

Hi Everyone,

FIRST OF ALL, NO CLASS NEXT MONDAY DUE TO VETERAN'S DAY. REMEMBER: ANYTIME THERE IS AN NYC PUBLIC SCHOOL CLOSING, WE DO NOT HAVE CLASS.

This past Monday, we went over more tones stuff and then started with the initial consonant sounds of Cantonese Chinese. We covered pages 5-11. I know it was dry, but I was pleased with the amount of information we covered this week.

I started class by teaching you all one very practical sentence -- asking where the bathroom is located in Cantonese:

sai2 sau2 gaan1 hai1 bin1 douh6 a3?

I am not going to go over this other than to quickly translate it word for word, because we really don't know enough about the basics of pronunciation, or grammar, or sentence structures for anything I say to make sense.

The exact translation for this question is as follows:

sai2 = to wash
sau2 = hand
gaan1 = measure word for room, being used to mean room in this situation
hai2 = to be located at
bin1 = which
douh6 = location
[bin1 douh6 = which location = where, a very common question word in Cantonese]
a3 [should be spelled aa3 but this is an exception with Yale romanization, as I explained in class] = sentence final particle, in this case suggesting a question

I will bring a phrasebook with me to class from now on and will try to teach one or more practical phrases at the beginning of each class, time and knowledge level permitting. I mentioned the Tuttle Essential Cantonese Phrasebook and Dictionary with New Manga Illustrations as my current choice for a fun, interesting, beginner level phrasebook in Yale romanized Cantonese.

From here, I mentioned that I have decided to reactivate my Cantonese and Mandarin language learning blog, dedicated to the proper pronunciation of syllables and tones for each dialect [spoken language]. My blog can be found at:


I will be pasting each weekly email into a blog entry from now on as soon as I click send, which means that going forward, if anyone misses a class or wants to review everything we covered during a certain period of time or for a certain lesson, whatever, you can reference my blog instead of searching for past emails. Of course, your class's section is the Cantonese I menu tab at the top of the screen.

I also mentioned that I am starting to offer in person and Skype private tutoring specifically focusing on pronunciation and tones for both beginner level Cantonese and beginner level Mandarin. If you are interested, please see the Tutoring tab on my blog and shoot me an email so we can discuss.

This past Monday, we covered the tones explanations and examples on pages 5 through 11. Please review this material in your book and come to next class [in 2 weeks] prepared with any questions about this material. We discussed that while English doesn't have tones per se, we do have differences in intonation, often on the same word or phrase, which can signify changes in emotion, mood, attitude, or other connotation. As an example not in the book, I said the word, "Hello" with multiple different intonations from neutral to happy/enthusiastic to sarcastic/angry. Same word, different intonation [tone], different meaning.

Finally, at the end of class, we covered the equivalent of the Mandarin BO PO MO FO table of initial consonant sounds in Cantonese, also presented in your textbook on page 11 as a bo po mo fo table (but very different from Mandarin, for those of you with Mandarin experience). We noted that the J, the CH, the NG, as well as the GW and KW initial consonants DO NOT appear as such in English, though I gave multiple examples of these same exact or similar sounds appearing at the end of certain words, or in between certain English language words in the case of NG. Please remember that J and CH may be problematic for some of you. They are NOT exactly like their respective English language sounds, and we will continue to go over the subtleties of both as the weeks progress.

We will pick up next time with the vowel/finals table at the top of page 12. YOUR HOMEWORK IS TO PREVIEW THE MATERIAL FROM PAGES 12 THROUGH 22 IN YOUR TEXTBOOK, LISTEN TO THE APPROPRIATE MP3 FOR LESSON 1 THAT YOU DOWNLOADED WITH THE PDF, AND ALSO TO SEARCH YOUTUBE FOR ONE OR MORE VIDEOS ON HOW TO PRONOUNCE YALE CANTONESE, OR HOW TO PRONOUNCE THE INITIAL CONSONANTS AND VOWELS OR "FINALS" OF CANTONESE. Be creative, try different searches on Youtube, find some videos, and spend a little time with these sounds before we reconvene in 2 weeks.

Also, you should check out the DVD store that I recommended near school and try to get a $1 - $6.99 Cantonese language kids' movie DVD of your choice, making sure with the people behind the counter that they read the packaging and verify for you that it has a Cantonese language SPOKEN language track and English language SUBTITLES. $1 to $6.99 is not a lot for me to ask you to spend, especially since this is a free class, so I want some stories next time, people, from at least a few of you, telling the class what movie you decided to purchase, if you had any issues configuring the language and subtitles on your screen, and if you watched any of the movie, what your experience was like. PLEASE DO THIS.

A HINT FOR FIRST TIME BUYERS OF CANTONESE LANGUAGE DUBBED KIDS' MOVIES ON DVD:

DO NOT USE THE ONSCREEN LANGUAGE OPTIONS MENU TO SELECT THE SPOKEN LANGUAGE. INSTEAD, START THE MOVIE AND DURING THE FIRST FEW SECONDS WHILE IT IS SHOWING THE DISNEY LOGO OR THE PIXAR LOGO OR WHATEVER, USE YOUR REMOTE CONTROL TO CHANGE THE SPOKEN LANGUAGE AND SUBTITLE TRACKS. MOST OF THE MOVIES YOU BUY WILL HAVE 2 OR 3 CHINESE LANGUAGE TRACKS: EITHER 1 OR 2 MANDARIN TRACKS AND 1 CANTONESE TRACK. THEY WILL ALL BE LABELED SIMPLY "CHINESE." USUALLY THE FINAL ONE (THE SECOND OR THIRD) IS THE CANTONESE TRACK, BUT NOT ALWAYS.

Cantonese and Mandarin sound very different from each other. Make sure you are listening to the correct track! If you are unsure, email me, because I own hundreds of these DVDs and if I have the one you purchased, I will pop mine into my DVD player and tell you which is the Cantonese track.

Thanks, and SEE YOU ALL IN 2 WEEKS.
Brendan

Sunday, November 4, 2018

BLOG JUST UPDATED WITH 20 NEW ENTRIES (21 INCLUDING THIS ONE) FOR FALL 2018 ALESN CLASSES!


Sun, Nov 4, 2018 at 2:56 PM


Ok, Gang --

I just added 20 new blog entries to my sayitrightchinese.com blog, including all of the emails sent to both my Cantonese I and my Mandarin I class so far this fall, as well as a page for my tutoring services that I am about to start offering.

Going forward, for anyone in either class who has missed a lesson or who joins late or who simply wants to review what we have covered so far or during a given 3 week absence for business or whatever, all you need to do is go to my blog, click the menu item for your class (Cantonese I or Mandarin I) and everything for your class so far and for the rest of the academic year will be posted right there, in reverse chronological order, for you to review.

Many thanks to all of my students so far this year. I know that I can be a hard ass about this pronunciation stuff, but before thinking that I am a jerk or contemplating quitting my class, you might want to pause and ask yourself if 6 years of teaching hundreds of hours of ALESN classes as well as substituting for our other teachers and gauging the levels of competencies of their classes throughout the years might, just might, have fueled this idiot teacher Brendan with some actual concrete knowledge as to what works to make a good ALESN Cantonese or Mandarin student -- and what doesn't work and makes someone drop out of our program because they have decided that Chinese is "too hard." Whether I am nice or mean about the process, the same number of students seem to drop out each year because they can't make accurate sounds that would be understandable by a native speaker of Cantonese or Mandarin.

I am trying my best to help you all through a process of tough love. My teaching style is not for everyone, but I have had several students over the years stand up in front of a room of Chinese businesspeople and deliver an entire speech in Mandarin about deal that is being negotiated for their company. I have had other students marry Chinese husbands and wives and have the courage and accuracy of pronunciation allowing them to stand up at their weddings and deliver welcome speeches to guests in Cantonese or Mandarin. I have had many students over the years tell me about interesting and humorous encounters right here in NYC's various Chinatowns at stores, restaurants, on the street, etc. where they either succeeded or failed miserably while attempting to negotiate some type of everyday business or social interaction in Cantonese or Mandarin. The trick to their successes is that they took this very, very seriously -- the need to make proper sounds from day one -- AND they weren't afraid to make hundreds of mistakes along the way until they honed their pronunciation and tones to the point that each new memorized vocabulary item really could become part of their ability to communicate with people in Chinese.

I will share with both classes tomorrow a recent FAILURE of mine, culminating in a last minute save on my part after I calmed down, as I attempted to yell in Mandarin Chinese at a rude idiot on my street last week. The story I tell will hopefully show that I practice what I preach.

Best wishes and see everyone tomorrow night,

11/4/18 ALESN Monday night Mandarin I class summary and notes...sorry for delay...FOR 10/29 CLASS

ALESN Monday night Mandarin I class summary and notes...sorry for delay...LONG EMAIL -- THANKS FOR READING!


Sun, Nov 4, 2018 at 12:04 PM

Hi Gang,

Last week, we reviewed the simple finals, the BO PO MO FO table, and then we approached the bo po mo fo consonants using various simple finals in the exercises on pages 2, 3, and 4 of your textbook. A lot of time to cover such little material, right? Actually, these are the most basic building blocks of Mandarin Chinese, the legos of Chinese, and must be learned before we can move on to anything more substantial.

We will continue covering this material tomorrow in class, moving through lines 5 and 6 of the bo po mo fo table, as expanded upon on page 5 of the book, to the COMPOUND FINALS, which we will begin to cover during tomorrow night's lesson. Remember that I told you all that lines 4, 5, and 6 of the bo po mo fo table will separate the good students from the struggling or quitting students. This is true -- I promise you...if you haven't already begun to feel this yourselves as you have been reviewing the material so far.

I know this is slow going. The beginning stages of every language are slow and tedious, but never boring if your heart is in the right place and your motivations are true enough to carry you through. Please remember this if you get discouraged at any time. I wasn't able to email earlier last week with any homework, but I assume you all realize that if I don't tell you, it simply means that your homework is to review the material we covered during our last class, right? I did mention that everyone in the class is always welcome to send me emails, etc. expressing concerns, asking questions, asking for hints or help with any problem pronunciation issues...Only one or two students emailed me over the past week, and that was simply to apologize for missing class. Please contact me anytime with any questions about what we are covering in class, or if you come across something on your own, on Youtube, etc., that confuses you -- or even better, which you think might benefit your classmates, which I am happy to share, giving you full credit for the discovery, of course.

Cool...

I will be copying and pasting all of the emails I have sent you all so far this fall AND GOING FORWARD for the rest of the year, into my blog that I maintained for my ALESN classes last year. I will redo the home page accordingly, so people will know that the blog is back on. I don't know that I will be adding new audio or video content or links this year like I did last year, but soon all of the information will be there for my current students in a logical, searchable, reverse chronological order standard to most blogs. The website address for the blog is www.sayitrightchinese.com . It is an active blog and you can click on the link right now. I hope to upload all of your recent class emails sometime today or tomorrow. They will show up as blog entries for whatever day I upload them, which is why I will reference the original email date in the title of the blog entry.

Next, I want to share a link provided by our Admin Guru Tsz Fong from San Francisco State University's Modern Language Lab:


In this link, you will find literally everything you could possibly need OR WANT for my class (book, audio and video-wise). The video in this link is higher quality than what I originally sent you from URI. You might want to redownload the DVD video for Level 1 Part 1 from this new link. I am not sure how long they are going to keep the link active, so please visit and download what you want asap.

In a related topic, beginning in the next few weeks, I will be offering private tutoring for beginning Cantonese and Mandarin students specifically focusing on proper pronunciation and tones while reading from either Yale Romanization or Jyut Ping Romanization for Cantonese, or from Pinyin for Mandarin. If anyone is interested, please let me know. I am in the process of determining my rates and lesson location logistics. I will also be offering Skype lessons if commuting is an issue for anyone. I had one private student via Skype and email last year who lived in Cleveland, who found me via my blog, which was pretty cool. I corresponded with him and had 3 or 4 marathon email/web lessons over a period of maybe 4-5 months. It was a rewarding experience for both of us. I got to help him with some research I did for him on specific uses of certain Cantonese final particles (which we have not covered yet) and I benefited not only because he paid me for the lessons, but because I learned almost as much as my student from the research that I did for him. It was this experience that made me want to offer private tutoring as an option for my ALESN students and for anyone else going forward.

All lessons will be 1-2 hours long and will of course focus on any relevant chapter lesson material and dialogues, vocabulary from the textbook, etc. -- if I am tutoring an ALESN student. The niche focus of my tutoring services will be accurate pronunciation of the syllables and tones of basic Cantonese and Mandarin Chinese within a window of what is acceptable and comprehensible to a native speaker who doesn't know you, who is in a hurry, who doesn't care about you at all, and yet will be able to understand you the first or second time you say something, so that the student can communicate effectively whatever you are trying to communicate.

I want to be clear that I am not fluent in either Cantonese or Mandarin, and I have never claimed to be. I pronounce both dialects with a thick white person accent, and I still have A LOT to learn vocabulary-wise...BUT, when I go to Hong Kong and China and I open my mouth, real, understandable, functional basic Cantonese and Mandarin sounds come out. There is no need for charades, and if I don't know how to say something, I am able to ask in Cantonese or Mandarin how to say the thing that I don't know the words for...and then the conversation continues. I am usually understood the very first time I speak, by people who don't know me, who are in a hurry, who don't give a shit about my life or what I am trying to ask them or talk about.

I would like to help each and everyone of you get to that point -- either in class, or with some private help if one hour a week isn't cutting it for you. Some of you will get there on your own because you have a great ear, a lot of time, a solid study ethic, and a deep, emotionalized motivation -- as we have mentioned several times now. Other students will need more help or even hand holding. I am not very good at hand holding in class at ALESN, which is why some current and former students think I am an asshole. Hand holding at ALESN is not something I have time or patience for, given the very limited windows of time we have together once a week for a limited number of weeks each academic year. THIS is why I am starting to do private tutoring for students who genuinely want to be able to speak Chinese but whose current pronunciation is, for lack of a better word, "bad." One on one tutoring allows for a lot of hand holding, if that is what a given student needs.

As the weeks or months go by, if any of you feels like you need extra help with pronouncing the fundamental syllabic and tonal building blocks of basic Cantonese or Mandarin -- the legos of Chinese -- please consider hiring me as your tutor. Thanks in advance.

See you all tomorrow,
Brendan

11/4/18 ALESN Cantonese I Class summary and notes -- sorry for delay...FOR 10/29 CLASS

ALESN Cantonese I Class summary and notes -- sorry for delay...LONG EMAIL -- THANKS FOR READING...


Sun, Nov 4, 2018 at 11:45 AM

Hi Gang,

This past week, we quickly reviewed the recapitulation of our mistaken identity dialogue on page 3, and then we covered the basics of our 6 tones that I am going to be teaching of standard Cantonese Chinese. I briefly explained the additional 7th tone, the high falling tone, and when and how that is used, as well as how I intend to work it into our course, pronouncing each high falling tone as a high level tone to make your lives easier. It is easier for you to learn and begin to use 6 tones than 7, right? I explained how Hung, our Saturday teacher, who was snoozing in the back of the classroom during your lesson, regularly speaks with 8 tones, because he often adds a falling mid tone inflection to certain words that, if I were to look them up in a Cantonese dictionary or phrasebook, would be notated with a straight, flat mid level tone or 3 tone.

As an aside, some of you may have heard outlandish claims that Cantonese is the hardest language to speak because it has 11 tones or 13 tones or whatever bullshit these people are spouting. I didn't want to confuse anyone, but we are going to cover what is called stop tones by some scholars, which occur when certain Cantonese syllables ending in a p, t or k consonant are cut short. Some scholars and others have referred to syllables ending in p, t, and k on any of the 6 Cantonese tones as being up to 6 separate tones, because the syllables are shorter and sound slightly differently inflected. In actuality, they have the same pitch material as any longer syllable voiced on any of the 6 tones I am going to teach you -- so 6 tones is indeed enough for all of us to speak perfectly understandable and accurate modern Cantonese, just like your favorite TVB actor or actress.

We didn't cover many pages in the book last class, but we did go over and over AND OVER the 6 tones, with much drawing on the board as I voiced examples and you all repeated after me. This is where recording your lessons would come in handy. I am not sure how many people were recording their lessons on cellphones, etc., but shame on you for any of the students who didn't record your lessons and yet who are struggling with tones. I am giving you everything you need to succeed with this language. What you choose to do with what I give you...well, that is another story.

We will continue covering this material tomorrow in class, moving on to the basic syllables of Cantonese either at the end of class tomorrow or the following Monday. I know this is slow going. The beginning stages of every language are slow and tedious, but never boring if your heart is in the right place and your motivations are true enough to carry you through. Please remember this if you get discouraged at any time. I wasn't able to email earlier last week with any homework, but I assume you all realize that if I don't tell you, it simply means that your homework is to review the material we covered during our last class, right?

Cool...

Finally, I will be copying and pasting all of the emails I have sent you all so far this fall AND GOING FORWARD for the rest of the year, into my blog that I maintained for my ALESN classes last year. I will redo the home page accordingly, so people will know that the blog is back on. I don't know that I will be adding new audio or video content or links this year like I did last year, but soon all of the information will be there for my current students in a logical, searchable, reverse chronological order standard to most blogs. The website address for the blog is www.sayitrightchinese.com . It is an active blog and you can click on the link right now. I hope to upload all of your recent class emails sometime today or tomorrow. They will show up as blog entries for whatever day I upload them, which is why I will reference the original email date in the title of the blog entry.

Beginning in the next few weeks, I will be offering private tutoring for beginning Cantonese and Mandarin students specifically focusing on proper pronunciation and tones while reading from either Yale Romanization or Jyut Ping Romanization for Cantonese, or from Pinyin for Mandarin. If anyone is interested, please let me know. I am in the process of determining my rates and lesson location logistics. I will also be offering Skype lessons if commuting is an issue for anyone. I had one private student via Skype and email last year who lived in Cleveland, who found me via my blog, which was pretty cool. I corresponded with him and had 3 or 4 marathon email/web lessons over a period of maybe 4-5 months. It was a rewarding experience for both of us. I got to help him with some research I did for him on specific uses of certain Cantonese final particles (which we have not covered yet) and I benefited not only because he paid me for the lessons, but because I learned almost as much as my student from the research that I did for him. It was this experience that made me want to offer private tutoring as an option for my ALESN students and for anyone else going forward.

All lessons will be 1-2 hours long and will of course focus on any relevant chapter lesson material and dialogues, vocabulary from the textbook, etc. -- if I am tutoring an ALESN student. The niche focus of my tutoring services will be accurate pronunciation of the syllables and tones of basic Cantonese and Mandarin Chinese within a window of what is acceptable and comprehensible to a native speaker who doesn't know you, who is in a hurry, who doesn't care about you at all, and yet will be able to understand you the first or second time you say something, so that the student can communicate effectively whatever you are trying to communicate.

I want to be clear that I am not fluent in either Cantonese or Mandarin, and I have never claimed to be. I pronounce both dialects with a thick white person accent, and I still have A LOT to learn vocabulary-wise...BUT, when I go to Hong Kong and China and I open my mouth, real, understandable, functional basic Cantonese and Mandarin sounds come out. There is no need for charades, and if I don't know how to say something, I am able to ask in Cantonese or Mandarin how to say the thing that I don't know the words for...and then the conversation continues. I am usually understood the very first time I speak, by people who don't know me, who are in a hurry, who don't give a shit about my life or what I am trying to ask them or talk about.

I would like to help each and everyone of you get to that point -- either in class, or with some private help if one hour a week isn't cutting it for you. Some of you will get there on your own because you have a great ear, a lot of time, a solid study ethic, and a deep, emotionalized motivation -- as we have mentioned several times now. Other students will need more help or even hand holding. I am not very good at hand holding in class at ALESN, which is why some current and former students think I am an asshole. Hand holding at ALESN is not something I have time or patience for, given the very limited windows of time we have together once a week for a limited number of weeks each academic year. THIS is why I am starting to do private tutoring for students who genuinely want to be able to speak Chinese but whose current pronunciation is, for lack of a better word, "bad." One on one tutoring allows for a lot of hand holding, if that is what a given student needs.

As the weeks or months go by, if any of you feel like you need extra help with pronouncing the fundamental syllabic and tonal building blocks of basic Cantonese or Mandarin -- the legos of Chinese -- please consider hiring me as your tutor. Thanks in advance.

See you all tomorrow,
Brendan

10/25/18 ALESN Mandarin I Monday night class summary and notes FOR 10/22 CLASS

ALESN Mandarin I Monday night class summary and notes


Thu, Oct 25, 2018 at 8:33 AM

Hi Gang,

Thanks to everyone who attended class this past Monday. If you missed class, here is what we covered, as well as the Homework for next week:

As I mentioned, everyone should please read or skim everything from the very beginning of the book up to what we covered in class. People keep asking me for page #s. I will make it very simple: Open up your book, read the very first page inside the cover and keep reading or skimming until you hit what we covered during Monday's class. It doesn't need to be any more complicated than that. I am asking you all to give yourselves an overview of the textbook by reading the publisher's intro material about how the book is organized and the goals of the book for a college freshman Mandarin Chinese I class, which it was designed for. Please stop asking me what pages to read. READ OR SKIM THE ENTIRE FRONT OF THE BOOK UP TO THE PRONUNCIATION MATERIAL THAT WE COVERED ON MONDAY.

Now to what we covered in class:

We covered pages 1 and 2. That's it. It took an entire hour for me to go over the simple finals and the initial consonant sounds of the BO PO MO FO table. We will review this material next week and going forward as much as we have to. YOUR HOMEWORK IS TO GO ON YOUTUBE AND WATCH AS MANY DIFFERENT BO PO MO FO MANDARIN CHINESE PRONUNCIATION VIDEOS AS YOU HAVE TIME FOR AND CAN FIND. PLEASE SPEND AT LEAST 30 MINUTES DOING THIS. The best ones are usually the very juvenile ones with pink ponies and purple hearts and little baby Mandarin children in high voices pronouncing the syllables. Try to find at least one with an adult voice as well, though, to make sure you are hearing everything clearly. The only way to get these sounds into your mind and mouth is to listen and listen and listen over and over again until you get them.

Several observations:
  1. Nearly every single student in the class was able to almost perfectly parrot back to me the exact sounds that I asked to you repeat on Monday, with few exceptions. Even if certain among you were not perfect, almost everyone pronounced the sounds of the simple finals and the bo po mo fo table WITHIN A WINDOW OF WHAT WOULD BE ACCEPTABLE TO A NATIVE SPEAKER. This means that nearly every one of you has the potential to pronounce this language correctly. The question is, can you eventually do it in slow but real time without repeating after another speaker? Can you eventually take the vocabulary and sentence structures we are going to learn this year and use them to formulate your own basic thoughts in Mandarin and then express these thoughts out loud from scratch and have a native speaker who doesn't know you understand what you are trying to communicate? I would like to suggest that WHILE ALMOST EVERYONE IN THE CLASS DEMONSTRATED THE POTENTIAL ABILITY TO DO THAT ON MONDAY, VERY FEW OF YOU WILL ACCOMPLISH THIS GOAL THIS YEAR. That is ok. Please just realize that YOU (yes, you) have a real potential to speak this language accurately.
  2. I pointed out that you all NEED to approach the sounds of Mandarin Chinese first and foremost as a set of sounds that are NOTHING like English or French or Spanish or Russian or whatever your first language might be. I tell you this, but as the year unfolds, most of you will revert to pronouncing the syllables of pinyin JUST LIKE your first language. Please don't do that to yourself. Allow yourself to learn something new, and keep it new by constantly being aware that it is not supposed to sound ANYTHING like your first language -- even AND ESPECIALLY if your first language is Cantonese or another Chinese dialect!
  3. I pointed out some of the cardinal sins of beginner Mandarin students and explained that you must never EVER pronounce certain syllables this way from the bo po mo fo table or from the list of simple finals. I made a big deal of this. I even went so far as to be borderline insulting to suggest that if some of you make these very basic mistakes and keep making these mistakes over and over again without fixing them, you will sound like AN IDIOT. In spite of my possibly offensive remarks when discussing this, a certain portion OF YOU will start to make these stupid, stupid errors and will continue to make these moronic, moronic errors all year and for the rest of your time that you attempt to study or speak Mandarin. WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT TO YOURSELVES?! I am giving you everything you need to pronounce this language acceptably to a native speaker. Please do the work and take your time and learn this language properly. Otherwise, some of you are going to feel like an idiot as the year goes by if I keep correcting the same students over and over and over again in order to try to fix these stupid, stupid beginner pronunciation errors. Thanks in advance for being offended enough by me to take this seriously.
Next week, we will review the simple finals and the bo po mo fo table. Then we will plow through pages 3, 4, and 5, beginning the COMPOUND FINALS.

EXTRA CREDIT HOMEWORK: GO ON YOUTUBE AND RESEARCH AND WATCH 30 MINUTES OF MISCELLANEOUS VIDEOS ON THE COMPOUND FINALS OF MANDARIN CHINESE. The stuff at the top of page 6. This will be our focus at the end of next class and then for the following week, all the while reviewing everything we have covered so far.

Put in the time to get these sounds right AND TO KEEP THESE SOUNDS SOUNDING RIGHT. If you get lazy, you are going to make the exact stupid beginner mistakes I just ranted about in number 3 above and both of us are going to feel frustrated. Do yourself a favor and take this pronunciation stuff very, VERY seriously -- RIGHT NOW, before you learn something incorrectly and you need to take even more time to unlearn something you didn't learn properly in the first place.

See everyone next week,
Brendan

10/22/18 ALESN Mandarin I class -- We will be starting to work from our textbook tonight -- please make sure you bring a book...

ALESN Mandarin I class -- We will be starting to work from our textbook tonight -- please make sure you bring a book, a PDF, a phone/tablet/laptop, or a printout of the Intro section


Mon, Oct 22, 2018 at 2:16 PM

I had mentioned this last week. I apologize for not emailing this past week, but I was swamped with work.

Please review last week's pre-class email below, make sure that you are keeping up with what we have covered so far, and that you are ready for tonight's class. Please bring a book, a PDF, a phone/tablet/laptop, or a printout of the Intro pronunciation section tonight, as that is what we will be covering for the next couple of classes.

We will NOT be working from handouts tonight and I will NOT have anything to give to any students who come unprepared.

See you all in class. Thanks in advance,
Brendan

10/22/18 ALESN Cantonese I class -- We are starting the book tonight, in which we will cover a brief conversation and then start to learn pronunciation

ALESN Cantonese I class -- We are starting the book tonight, in which we will cover a brief conversation and then start to learn pronunciation


Mon, Oct 22, 2018 at 2:12 PM

Please reread the email I sent last week, make sure you have been keeping up, and please review the handout from last week. We will NOT be working from the handout today. We will instead be starting our textbook, as I mentioned last week. I do not have handouts. It is everyone's responsibility to bring a book, a PDF or a printout of lesson 1 tonight.

I apologize for not sending an email last week, but I was swamped with work.

See everyone tonight.
Brendan


10/24/18 ALESN Monday night CANTONESE class summary and notes FOR 10/22/18

ALESN Monday night CANTONESE class summary and notes


Wed, Oct 24, 2018 at 3:08 PM

Hi Gang,

This past Monday, we covered pages 2 and 3 in our textbook. I also strongly recommended that everyone read the introductory pages from the very beginning of the book up to page 1. It is always a good idea to know what to expect before you come across new material in a course.

This past Monday night, we covered a brief dialogue based on a simple case of mistaken identity. I went through syllable by syllable, tone by tone, then we reviewed the entire short dialogue via the Recapitulation, and then we broke up into small groups for 10 minutes to allow pairs and tables to run the dialogue back and forth several times. I was encouraged by what I heard and by the accuracy of the tones when everyone was repeating immediately after me. This leads me to conclude that ALL of you are capable of producing the correct tones in real time in theory. The trick is to eventually be able to connect everything you are learning so you can produce the correct tones in real time ON YOUR OWN without repeating after someone with correct pronunciation.

In general, I feel like we are off to an excellent start. Next week, we will begin to look more in depth at tones and we will begin to explore the basic syllabic building blocks of the sounds of Cantonese Chinese. Please PREVIEW this material from pages 3-12. This is the material that we will cover over the next 2 classes.

HOMEWORK:
  1. Read from the very beginning of the book through page 1.
  2. Review pages 2-3, which were covered in class.
  3. Preview pages 3-12, focusing on pages 3-10.
  4. LISTEN TO THE MP3 THAT ACCOMPANIES LESSON 1. Try to listen to the entire mp3, so you can begin to allow the sounds of Cantonese to seep into your mind.
Best wishes and see everyone next week,
Brendan

10/15/18 ALESN Mandarin I class -- welcome back after a 2 week Federal Holiday break -- see everyone tonight...

ALESN Mandarin I class -- welcome back after a 2 week Federal Holiday break -- see everyone tonight...


Mon, Oct 15, 2018 at 10:50 AM

Hi Gang,

A few things:
  1. Just checking in -- making sure that you have been reviewing the material from the handout we covered 2 weeks ago. Also hoping that each of you has been and will continue to be proactive, exploring various free and low cost independent studies resources online, on YT, checking out Pimsleur Mandarin, etc.
  2. Reminder: RECORD YOUR CLASSES FROM YOUR DESK! Every year I ask my students plainly and simply: HOW CAN YOU EXPECT TO LEARN TO SPEAK A BRAND NEW LANGUAGE PROPERLY IF YOU CANNOT LISTEN BACK TO YOURSELF, HEAR WHAT YOU ARE DOING RIGHT AND KEEP THAT, HEAR WHAT YOU ARE DOING WRONG AND FIX THAT, AND IN GENERAL BE ABLE TO CHART YOUR PROGRESS WITH THE WAY THAT THE LANGUAGE SOUNDS? Every year, I ask people this and my students mostly mumble in response -- something to the effect of, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, whateverzzzzz." Then, 9 months later, these same students have really, really SHITTY pronunciation -- the kind of pronunciation that a native speaker would need charades or an English translation to understand. Please, for the love of everything that is holy, take me seriously and record your lessons. RECORD YOUR OWN VOICE MAKING MISTAKES EVERY SINGLE WEEK, and then listen back to each lesson, preferably several times, so that you can fix those mistakes. I am really going to drill pronunciation and tones this year, and I am going to seem like an asshole to some of you. Those of you who feel this way will wind up quitting if you don't do whatever you need to do to sound "Chinesey" when you speak Chinese. For the next few weeks, I am going to ask you all over and over AND OVER again to please record your classes. If any of you is not recording and listening back to your lessons and yet is struggling with pronunciation and tones as the weeks go by, you might as well quit my class, because you will be wasting your time and mine. If you are recording and listening back to all of your lessons and STILL struggling with your pronunciation and tones, you will ALWAYS be welcome in my classes, no matter how long it takes you to learn to pronounce Mandarin accurately. Cool? Cool.
  3. In tonight's lesson, we are going to review some basic phrases, maybe repeat the self introductions around the room since it has been 2 weeks, and then begin looking at pronunciation and tones from a general overview perspective, I am also going to take a few minutes to discuss some additional resources that you can all use to supplement your Chinese learning. This is related to # 1 above:
  • Pimsleur Mandarin, Popup Chinese and similar audio and podcast resources
  • Disney and other children's DVDs dubbed into Mandarin with English language subtitles.
  • Researching and finding one or more fun Youtube videos specifically on the bo po mo fo table as well as additional compound final sounds in standard spoken Mandarin Chinese.
ALSO:

Please print out and bring with you the attached documents (the Word doc is from last class). We will be working from the Word document again tonight, and will also touch on the second document as an intro to the more systematic pronunciation approach presented in your actual textbook. I will have copies of these handouts with me tonight, but I need everyone who attended the first class to please bring the handout that you got last time if possible, so we can save paper. Thanks in advance.

Please also either purchase the textbook or confer with your classmates and find a downloadable version by next week. I can tell you that there are multiple sources online of free downloads for the textbook, the audio and even the video that is available for the textbook. I am NOT going to tell you where or how to get a free PDF textbook, but once we are ready to start lesson 1 dialogue 1, I AM going to give you all a link for the University of Rhode Island's Chinese Department's website, where you can download and stream both the audio and complete DVD video for our textbook.

See everyone tonight.

*PLEASE NOTE THAT THE DOCUMENTS REFERRED TO IN THIS POST ARE THE SAME THAT WERE UPLOADED TO THIS BLOG IN OCTOBER 2017, AS MENTIONED IN AN EARLY BLOG ENTRY FROM THAT TIME.

10/15/18 ALESN Cantonese I class -- welcome back after a 2 week Federal Holiday break -- see everyone tonight...

ALESN Cantonese I class -- welcome back after a 2 week Federal Holiday break -- see everyone tonight...


Mon, Oct 15, 2018 at 10:38 AM


Hi Gang,

A few things:
  1. Just checking in -- making sure that you have been reviewing the material from the handout we covered 2 weeks ago. Also hoping that each of you has been and will continue to be proactive, exploring various free and low cost independent studies resources online, on YT, checking out Pimsleur Cantonese, etc.
  2. Reminder: RECORD YOUR CLASSES FROM YOUR DESK! Every year I ask my students plainly and simply: HOW CAN YOU EXPECT TO LEARN TO SPEAK A BRAND NEW LANGUAGE PROPERLY IF YOU CANNOT LISTEN BACK TO YOURSELF, HEAR WHAT YOU ARE DOING RIGHT AND KEEP THAT, HEAR WHAT YOU ARE DOING WRONG AND FIX THAT, AND IN GENERAL BE ABLE TO CHART YOUR PROGRESS WITH THE WAY THAT THE LANGUAGE SOUNDS? Every year, I ask people this and my students mostly mumble in response -- something to the effect of, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, whateverzzzzz." Then, 9 months later, these same students have really, really SHITTY pronunciation -- the kind of pronunciation that a native speaker would need charades or an English translation to understand. Please, for the love of everything that is holy, take me seriously and record your lessons. RECORD YOUR OWN VOICE MAKING MISTAKES EVERY SINGLE WEEK, and then listen back to each lesson, preferably several times, so that you can fix those mistakes. I am really going to drill pronunciation and tones this year, and I am going to seem like an asshole to some of you. Those of you who feel this way will wind up quitting if you don't do whatever you need to do to sound "Chinesey" when you speak Chinese. For the next few weeks, I am going to ask you all over and over AND OVER again to please record your classes. If any of you is not recording and listening back to your lessons and yet is struggling with pronunciation and tones as the weeks go by, you might as well quit my class, because you will be wasting your time and mine. If you are recording and listening back to all of your lessons and STILL struggling with your pronunciation and tones, you will ALWAYS be welcome in my classes, no matter how long it takes you to learn to pronounce Cantonese accurately. Cool? Cool.
  3. In tonight's lesson, we are going to review some basic phrases, do some self introductions around the room, and begin looking at pronunciation and tones from a general overview perspective, I am also going to take a few minutes to discuss some additional resources that you can all use to supplement your Chinese learning. This is related to # 1 above:

  • Pimsleur Cantonese, Popup Cantonese and similar audio and podcast resources
  • Disney and other children's DVDs dubbed into Cantonese with English language subtitles.
  • Researching and finding one or more fun Youtube videos specifically on proper pronunciation and tones of Cantonese. If you want to go to my blog that I kept last year for my ALESN classes and if you click on Cantonese 1 and go wayyyyy back to October of 2017, you will find an entry where I give many Youtube links with feedback regarding the helpfulness of each link, for beginner Cantonese pronunciation and tones videos. I suggest that you all check that out: www.sayitrightchinese.com
  • ALSO:

    Please print out and bring with you the attached document from last class. We will be working from this document again tonight, mainly from page 1. I will have copies with me, but I need everyone who attended the first class to please bring the handout that you go last time, so we can save paper. Thanks in advance. Please also download your free textbook per my previous long email with textbook info. We will start looking at the textbook next week or the week after.

    See everyone tonight.


    *PLEASE NOTE THAT THE DOCUMENTS REFERRED TO IN THIS POST ARE THE SAME THAT WERE UPLOADED TO THIS BLOG IN OCTOBER 2017, AS MENTIONED IN AN EARLY BLOG ENTRY FROM THAT TIME.