http://www.wfu.edu/~moran/ACACRA/2ndReader.pdf

For beginners, learning Chinese characters is usually the most difficult task. Some Chinese characters have only one stroke, but others have as many as fifty-two strokes. In order to learn the more complicated characters it is helpful to break them down into meaningful parts and learn those parts first. These materials are designed to teach the simple characters that can serve as components first and to teach complex characters that can be formed from them at a slightly later time. Learning occurs best when students make attempts to demonstrate learning based on what they already know -- something that is rather paradoxical. People have said to have three different levels of memory: short term, medium term, and long term. People hold memories of many experiences in their minds for three to five minutes and then let them go. To get something to be stored in medium term memory, it is generally necessary to revisit the things that are in short term memory several times so that they are not quickly extinguished and eventually pass to the medium term memory. The same general process applies to moving things from medium term memory to long term memory. Four-sided flashcards are provided to expedite learning by taking advantage of the opportunity to give students hints when they are not sure of how to write something rather than making the experience failure and then view the correct answer. If a student has learned to write the components of a character, being given a hint when needed of what those components are will often make the student able to successfully write the entire character. So on the first side of one of the flashcards that go with these lessons is the English meaning. On the second side of the flashcard is the pronunciation in romanized Chinese (pinyin). After the character has been learned, these bits of information should be sufficient to prompt the student to write the correct Chinese character. But if the character does not readily pop into memory the student may look on side three of the flashcard where the English meaning and the pinyin pronunciation of each component is given. Starting with simple Chinese characters that are actually stylized drawings of common objects, these lesson teach up to 20 characters per week. The first several lessons are largely concerned with teaching some basic components. Even though there is not yet enough vocabulary to support a story, every attempt is made to put the characters in some meaningful contexts. By the eighth lesson it becomes possible to begin telling a story. Be patient, and learn the early lessons well.

First Steps in Reading Chinese has benefitted from the help of generations of colleagues, especially Professor Liu Hong, one of our early exchange professors from Guanxi Teachers University.

Flashcard instructions. Print two pages out, fold each page down the middle vertically, use a third sheet of paper to make the "filling" for a sandwich, and use the folded printed sheets for the "bread. Then xerox onto card stock. Cut your 4-sided flashcards out and fold them each down the middle so that they form a little book. "Page 1" will have the English meaning. Page 3, which you will look at next, will have the pinyin pronunciation to check yourself against. Page 2 will have a clue or two if you can't remember how to write the character. Page 4 will show the character.

(These PDF files are quite long. You can use them to look up characters and compounds in units one and two if you know their pronunciation.)

If you can count the number of strokes in a vocabulary character, or in the first character in a compound, you can look it up here.

These exercises, made with the assistance of Dr. Lynm Dwo, are intended to provide one route from communicating in English to communicating in Chinese. Ideally, students will learn to think in Chinese and to write grammatically correct Chinese as an extension of that process. In practice, students often experience interference due to their native language habits. Also, speakers of two languages are sometimes required to interpret and/or to translate from one language to the other. It is generally easier to translate from one's acquired language to one's native language. At least it is less likely that a well-educated English language speaker will write a translation in his or her own language that is grammatically flawed or that conveys an unintended message. As many collections of unintentionally funny translations show, going from one's native language to one's acquired language can sometimes produce unintended results.

Students frequently get into trouble when they "just start writing" their Chinese sentences according to the way the English sentence starts. The correct way to proceed is to isolate the English simple sentence, make a Chinese translation of that simple sentence, and then tuck the modifiers in the English into the appropriate place in the Chinese sentence.

With practice, students will automatically follow the above procedure even if they do it "on the fly." Some of these exercises break the process down, requiring students to write out their simple sentences in Chinese and then check them against a randomly numbered answer before going on to write out and check the entire sentence.

Often there is more than one way to translate a sentence, so help from a native speaker may be help to ascertain that one's "incorrect" answer is actually correct.

Tools

Beginning with the 2006-2007 academic year, each department and each class has been expected to produce a plan that would enable us to continue to teach and to learn on an interim basis in the event of an emergency requirement that mitigated against operating in our customary ways.

Language learning is by its intrinsic nature an interactive process. Before the dawn of the Internet ago, there would have been very little we could have done to make up for classroom exchanges. However, it is becoming easier and easier to make audio and even video transmissions via computer -- providing that the Internet does not go down temporarily.

The material for this course is programmed. That is to say, students can make an attempt to respond to any question or instruction in the course materials and get an immediate response regarding its correctness. The advantages for learning should be obvious. Writing an exercise to submit on Thursday and getting the corrections back on Monday generally means that the student has already forgotten how s/he was thinking about the item that s/he got wrong. But if one translates a sentences, pushes a button, and immediately gets a correct version, learning moves forward at a much more rapid rate. Students are in any event expected to do this kind of preparatory work before class.

The function of the teacher, in addition to preparing and maintaining the learning materials, is to keep students on the track by monitoring both their rate of progress through the textbooks and other materials and also periodically getting objective measures of success. Both purposes are served by weekly quizzes. It would be more cumbersome to do things that way, but we could still administer quizzes and major exams on line.

The goal of the student should be to actually learn the language. In order to facilitate that process, the student needs a kind of objective measure of progress. If the programmed materials are used properly, every response is an element in a self evaluation process. If a student finds smooth sailing in one part of the course, but experiences a low rate of success with certain items in another area, those results are objective measures that can help the student to concentrate more on the difficult items, to keep after them until they are perfected.

Being in class with other students and sharing the work and the insights into how best to make progress is more fun, and more productive, than being stuck at home trying to accomplish the same tasks. I hope that we never have to make use of this alternative methodology. However, just in case we become isolated from each other temporarily and the Internet goes down for a while, it might not be a bad idea to download all the course materials that we use and make a CD of them. Even though you will have paper copies of the most important documents, it could be useful to have a back up copy.

You will be familiar with our schedule, and so you should go ahead taking 20 new characters each week. You will be able to divide the sentence patterns remaining in your textbook (goals) into equal portions to work on each week. Since those materials are programmed, you will be able to practice your answers until you have mastered each sentence and have it well committed to memory. To the extent possible we will all stay in touch by means of the Internet until we can meet again in person.

While I am on the subject, let me ask you to consider some important questions: What would be the most objective measure of your progress in Chinese class? Would you rather have an "easy A," or would you rather step off the airplane to Beijing and know that if you had to you could communicate well enough to make your way in that world? To me, and I think to most people, the answer is obvious. So what are grades good for? First, they serve as weekly wake-up calls in case you start to fall behind without realizing it. Second, they are measures that are required by the University. The University depends on them to provide the outside world with a summary evaluation of your competency in Chinese. Employers and others in similar positions of responsibility depend on such measures for at least their first level of screening of candidates for jobs and for making similar decisions. So I must give the University grades, and the grades must be as accurate a representation of each student's actual accomplishments as possible. However, your own emphasis should be on competency. Can you imagine the consequences if a student managed to get an entry level job based on grades that did not reflect that student's lack of competence?