Babel School in Taiwan

Dzisiaj króciutko o dwóch stronach, które Ania dodała do interaktywnego zeszytu z gramatyki.  (Więcej o znakach interpunkcyjnych w tym zeszycie możecie poczytać TUTAJ .) Już jakiś czas temu zauważyłam, że Ania nie za bardzo daje sobie radę z chińskimi nazwami znaków interpunkcyjnych. Pomimo powtarzania co jakiś czas, mylą się jej nazwy np różnych przecinków, czy myślników, apostrof z cudzysłowem, a dwukropek ze średnikiem. W języku polskim i angielskim nie ma takich problemów. Postanowiłam więc zająć się tym problemem i stworzyć trójjęzyczną listę nazw znaków interpunkcyjnych. Oczywiście listę tę napisała Ania, a nie ja. Nie zajęło jej to dużo czasu, a jestem pewna, że sporo zapamiętała. Jak widzicie, niektóre chińskie znaki interpunkcyjne odbiegają wyglądem od tych znanych nam w języku polskim czy angielskim. Jednak na szczęście większość jest taka sama.

Równo cztery lata temu Ania zaczynała się uczyć znaków transkrypcji języka chińskiego używanej na Tajwanie. Transkrypcja ta to 37 znaków i cztery znaczniki tonów. W mowie potocznej nazywa się ją bopomofo (od czterech pierwszych znaków). Oficjalna nazwa to zhuyin fuhao 注音符號, czyli zapis fonetyczny. 

Uwielbiam chińską kaligrafię! Dawno temu sama próbowałam swoich sił w tej pięknej sztuce i szło mi całkiem nieźle. Zawsze jak odwiedzam wystawy kaligraficzne, to przypominam sobie jak pisanie pędzelkiem i tuszem mnie cieszyło, jak się przy tym relaksowałam. Może czas wrócić do twórczości kaligraficznej?

About Chinese textbooks, workbooks and other teaching materials I will write only in English. I don't think there are many people in Poland who would like to teach their children Chinese using these materials. 😁 The main textbooks we use for teaching Chinese are the books provided by school. There are three main textbook publishing companies in Taiwan: Kangxuan 康軒, Nanyi 南一 and Hanlin 翰林. Each school (or even each teacher) can choose the publisher themselves. This year Ania's teacher is using Kangxuan and that what we are getting as well. There is a whole set of books, workbooks, prep-books, tests that go together. This is what we have (it's only a part of what is available for 1st grade from this publisher).  Textbook and exercise book (for 2nd semester): Textbook Workbook There are also exercise books - two for practicing writing and one for grammar and vocabulary: Grammar and vocabulary exercise book Writing practice exercise...

The last week of July and first week of August Ania had daily lessons in Chinese calligraphy. Normally children don't start writing with calligraphy ink brush until they are a bit older, but Ania has been showing interest in writing for quite a while. She actually prefers writing letters and characters to drawing or painting. At the beginning of summer I remembered that when Zosia was small she used to take calligraphy lessons at a very traditional class. We called the teacher (who after 9 years still remembered Zosia) and it turned out that this summer there will be a calligraphy camp for beginners. When children entered the class on the first day they all found on their seat a box with all the materials needed for the later classes: They were also introduced to the history of Yazhai Children's Calligraphy Institute which was established by Qiu Yehong 丘埜鴻 in 1973. Right now the classes are run by Master Qiu's daughters Qiu Xuanzhi 丘琁芝 and Qiu Huizhi 丘慧芝. When Zos...

Kolejny wpis z cyklu „Dziecko na Warsztat” miał powstać już kilka tygodni temu, ale niestety nie mogliśmy uporać się z nim na czas. Sorki. 

In my last post I shared with you how we teach Chinese at home. To all the materials mentioned there I would like to add some Internet resources. Some of the websites have on-line games, others have some printable worksheets while on others you can order books and materials for teaching at home. Check them out, maybe you are going to find something interesting and suitable for your children. Also ... if you know of any other interesting on-line resources, please let me know by leaving a comment. Thank you! http://eword.ntpc.edu.tw/  - (in Chinese) 新北市政府教育局 - characters teaching website, where you can create a printable worksheet for practicing writing characters. http://media.huayuworld.org/home_en.htm # - (in English) Global Chinese Language and Culture Center 全球華文網路教育中心 - choose 'Chinese' and appropriate level for language activities. http://edu.ocac.gov.tw/biweekly/ - 中華民國僑務委員會 - Short texts in Chinese (published biweekly) about Taiwan and Chinese cultureplus s...

Quite often I am asked how do we teach Chinese at home, what materials do we use. At first I would like to mention that we are a trilingual family using OPOL (One Parent One Language) approach when it comes to speaking to kids (me - Polish, my husband - Mandarin Chinese, English is spoken between me and my husband), but I am the main teacher of all 3 languages. In this post I will present how the teaching of Chinese written language is done at our homeschool. To tell you the truth ... it's not easy, although we've been living in a (Mandarin) Chinese speaking country for the past 12 years and although the kids are surrounded by this language, they don't really like learning to read and write Chinese characters. English and Polish seem much easier to them. All three kids speak fluent Chinese, but both older ones, Zosia and Jaś prefer reading and writing in Polish and in English. Over the years we've tried many different ways of teaching Chinese. With all the kids we...