Hi Gang,
A few things:
-
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.
- 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.
- 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.
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