Welcome to Chinese in Year 9

Welcome to Chinese in Year 9

Congratulations on choosing Chinese this year!

You will be learning Chinese (Mandarin) for two terms this year. We hope that you will enjoy it!

Chinese is used not only in China but also in many other countries. E.g. 台湾Taiwan, 香港Hong Kong, 澳门Macao, Malaysia and the growing Chinese communities in many countries all aver the world, such as China towns. (There are 100, 000 Chinese settled at Auckland in New Zealand along.

Chinese characters have been adopted by the countries surrounded China located at east and south Asia. E.g. Japanese Kanji and Korea characters.

Knowing some Chinese will help you later in life when you travel to Asia countries, China towns all over the world or meet Chinese speaking people, such as your Chinese friends, classmates and homestays.

In your study of Chinese this year, you will be able to understand people talking about the following topics and you will be able to speak and write about them yourself.

Greet someone and say goodbye; Asking someone “How are you?”; Invite someone in; Invite someone to sit down; Say “Thank you”; Ask what someone’s name is; Identify yourself or others; Ask who someone is; Ask about nationality; Apologies; Response to someone’s apology; Ask if someone learning Chinese; Introduce members of your family or friend; Describe where someone goes to school; Say where you live; Ask where someone lives; count from 0 to nine hundred ninety nine; Ask how many brothers and sisters someone has; Answer a question affirmatively or negatively; Ask what people there are in someone’s family; Ask someone if he or she has a pet; Reply when you are asked if you have a pet; Describe your own or someone else’s pet; Say you thought something mistakenly; Describe ownership; Express addition or subtraction; Ask someone how old he or she is; and all the possible replies.

You will also do a project on a region of China, including Chinese language, history, peoples, cultures, costumes, cuisine, famous buildings, landmarks, mountains, rivers, resources, and famous people, etc.

We will use the text book – Han Yu One and Student Work Book which it is provided by Chinese class in Language Department.

Your success and the amount of satisfaction you get out of learning Chinese will be determined largely by the amount of effort you put in.

It is essential that you acquire good work habits from the start. These include:

Ø  Listening carefully to the teacher

Ø  Learning vocabulary regularly – this is the most thing!

Ø  Doing homework regularly and carefully

Ø  Having a “buddy”. If you are away you need to ring her up to catch up on work missed.

Ø  Daily practice of what you learn in class at home, listening to Chinese Radio Station AM936 and doing activities on the Chinese language learning websites, such Google Translate, MDBG, Dict.cn….introduced by your Chinese teacher within Chinese class.

Ø  Keeping a tidy and organized exercise book. E.g. write the date in Chinese each day and put a heading and page reference for each piece of work.

Learning Vocabulary

      Learning a few words at a time, about 5 to 10, on a daily basis. Repeat them out loud, then write them down a few times. Careful to get the Chinese pinyins and Chinese characters right! Get someone to test you.

      Try to associate sound with similar sound in English and make a story to link them together.

      doing activities on the Chinese language learning websites introduced by your Chinese teacher.

      Write the words down on cards, with Chinese pinyins and Chinese characters on one side and English on the other. You can then play games with yourself. E.g. “Lucky Dip” – put them in a bag or box, and have a lucky dip saying the Chinese or English as you pull each card out, or place them face down and see how many meanings or Chinese pinyins and characters you can remember.