ALESN Mandarin Class Summary AND REMINDER THAT THERE IS NO CLASS TONIGHT, also including Holiday closings schedule for the rest of the year...

Hi Gang,

FIRST OF ALL, A REMINDER THAT THERE IS NO CLASS TONIGHT. We dd a survey and enough students said that they were attending family and work events tonight that it didn't make sense to hold classes, even though the school will be physically open.

I apologize for my delay in sending this summary and notes on last week. We announced last week in class that there would be no class tonight. Since no one has emailed me regarding the holiday schedule and since class was pretty full last week (the fullest in weeks), I am assuming that everyone knows. If you show up for class tonight, I apologize, but that is what you get for missing classes and not checking in with me.

Related to our Holiday closings, we will resume classes on Monday, January 7, 2019.

Saturday classes will resume on Jan 5, 2019.

Monday classes will resume on Jan 7, 2019.
Thursday classes will resume on Jan 10, 2019.

For those among you who like to plan in advance, here are the official school, YMCA, and ALESN closings for the rest of the year:

2019 School closings:
Mon Jan 21 MLK
Tue Feb 5, 2019 Lunar New Year
   (Feb 18-23 Midwinter Recess)
Mon Feb 18 Midwinter Recess
Thu Feb 21 Midwinter Recess
Fri Feb 22 Midwinter Recess
Sat Feb 23 Midwinter Recess
    (Apr 19 - 27, 2019 Spring Recess)

Fri Apr 19 Spring Recess

Sat Apr 20 Spring Recess

I also have the following note:

" We'll be closed for 2 Saturdays from 4/19 - 4/27"

*I AM NOT SURE IF THIS MEANS THAT WE WILL ALSO BE CLOSED MONDAY, APRIL 22. I GUESS WE WILL FIND OUT...

Last Monday, we briefly reviewed lesson 1 dialogue 1 and vocabulary, and then we moved onto LESSON 1 DIALOGUE 2.

We covered the vocabulary on page 28, clarified some pronunciation issues, and then went through the dialogue from the pinyin on page 28 as well. Remember that is is ok for you to read from the Chinese characters (if you can) ONLY AFTER you take the time to successfully learn to pronounce each new vocabulary word while speaking aloud, with the proper tone for each syllable, in real time. Until you are able to accomplish this basic level of speaking ability for each new dialogue, you are absolutely NOT allowed to look at the Chinese characters. Thank you to everyone for your understanding and cooperation.

As I had predicted, (some of you will remember that I have joked about this several times during previous classes), many people in the class had a problem pronouncing the Mandarin word for New York. In super slow-mo, the English pronunciation approximates:

KNEE

YO

YOU

EH

But, we have seen that this is not EXACTLY how it is pronounced, so use this as a crutch, but not as your final pronunciation of this place name. Those of you who recorded the class can listen back for practice with this and other "problematic" new words.

After covering our very brief dialogue, we split into groups, I believe, and everyone had a chance to practice this with one or more partners. Remember that with any luck, we will have a native speaker joining us come January to help us with the vocabulary, dialogues, and especially to help with any questions when we break up into groups to run the dialogues and "Language Practice" sections of our book.

Yay.

We will pick up next time on January 7 with the Grammar points on page 29. PLEASE PREVIEW THE GRAMMAR ON PAGES 29 TO 32, AS WELL AS THE LANGUAGE PRACTICE EXERCISES ON PAGES 32 TO 34. This is the material we will be covering next time.

I am not sure what happened, but I cannot locate the 2017 blog entry for Lesson 1 Dialogue 2. It appears that Jeremy (our Thursday night Mandarin 2 teacher) substituted for me last year and he may have skipped this dialogue in favor of starting lesson 2 dialogue 1. If I remember correctly, my shy class didn't stop him to tell him he had skipped material. I must have skipped writing a blog entry last year about the second dialogue in lesson 1, because I am unable to locate it. Sorry about that!

Please review this dialogue and its vocabulary and we will pick up where we left off in a few weeks. Thanks and Happy Holidays, everyone!