Category Archives: Immersion Chinese

Building up the Elements

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It is easy for children to produce Chinese words, and not difficult to remember them. However, how to transit from simple Chinese words to phrases, or even long sentences? This blog is about how we help children build up simple elements to form complete sentences in our Chinese immersion classes.
Since we have small class sizes, our teachers know clearly the Chinese level of every child. Depending on every individual student’s Chinese level, teachers push each one of them to the next level.
For example, sentence structures such as “I want…” “I do not want…” which are used a lot in class and daily life settings are input first repeatedly. Nouns such as the names of fruits, animals are also among the priority. Most students begin to understand/repeat these essential and simple elements of the language in a very short time (such as after one or two classes based on our experiences.)
Once a child begins to produce Chinese, we continue to push his/her language learning further by introducing things one level further. According to the “Input Hypothesis,” when learners are acquiring a second language, if “i” is their current level of competence, they naturally progress towards “i+1” which is the level immediately following the i1.
For instance, after one child is capable of speaking “我要。(I want.)”, we push the child further to speak “我要熊。(I want the bear.)” Then gradually we push the student to speak “我要一只熊。(I want one bear.)” And later, the student will be capable of speaking “我要一只蓝色的熊。(I want one blue bear.)”
The first time of producing a long and complete sentence is usually hard. However, gradually, children comprehend each element of the sentence. They expand it further to sentences such as “我要两只蓝色的熊。(I want two blue bears.)”/ “我要一只绿色的熊。(I want one green bear.)”

1. For more information of Input Hypothesis, you may go to: http://www.angelfire.com/journal/fsulimelight/sla.html

-Chinese with Meggie Language School, Austin, Texas

Input Quality and Language Acquisition (II)

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Besides making sure that the language input is intensive during the 2 hours class, we also use repetitive and precise language in our Chinese classes to maximize the input effectiveness. Every activity has its own key words, phrases or sentences. Through repeating several key elements throughout one activity, the key elements are imprinted on children’s minds.

For example, one simple activity we constantly use with our young toddlers is called “Animals Going Back Home.” In this activity, children put different animals into one toy house. One kind of animal occupies one room. Throughout the activity, our teachers repeat the sentence: “……动物回家。(…animal goes back to home.)” After the activity, children get to know the phrase “回家 (go back home),” and become familiar with different animal names.

Input Quality and Language Acquisition I: http://www.chinesewithmeggie.com/blog/2011/11/input-quality-and-language-acquisition-i/

-Chinese with Meggie Language School, Austin, Texas

Input Quality and Language Acquisition (I)

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People believe that the more a child is exposed to a language, the faster and better the child will acquire it. It is true to some extent. A study done by Fred Genesee, the professor of psycholinguistics at McGill University in Montreal shows that in order to acquire a language, a child needs to be exposed to it for at least 30 percent of his or her waking time (as quoted in the article on New York Times). However, Fred also states that simply increasing the quantity of exposure time is not enough. The input must have a high quality.

Each of our Chinese immersion class lasts for 2 hours. Depending on the number of sessions, every child has different lengths of Chinese exposure over the week. No matter how many sessions, when the quantity of Chinese language input is compared to the quantity of our students’ first language input, it is still relatively small. However, we believe that the quality of Chinese language input can make up for the small quantity. In the next two blogs, we will talk about how we increase the quality of Chinese language input in our Chinese immersion classes.

First, the language input in our classes is intensive and understandable to students. Our classes are made up with activities. Some are as short as 5 minutes, while some are as long as 20 minutes. Activities help us create situations where children can interact with teachers and comprehend Chinese naturally. For example, the “Hide-and-Seek” game is popular with children. The first several rounds are always the teacher’s job to “find” the students. The teacher talks throughout the activity. When she closes her eyes and begins to count. She says: “闭上眼睛。我数。(Close the eyes. I count.)” When she is searching for the students, she says sentences such as: “我找**。**在不在这里？不在。(I am searching for **. Is ** here? No.)” Through constant talking, our teachers ensure that our children get comprehensible language input during every class minute.

Besides the intensive language input, we also have other ways of increasing the language input quality in our Chinese immersion classroom. Please read our next blog on this topic.

Input Quality and Language Acquisition I: http://www.chinesewithmeggie.com/blog/2011/11/input-quality-and-language-acquisition-ii/

-Chinese with Meggie Language School, Austin, Texas

Classroom Craft Project – the Different Faces of a Pumpkin

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Recently at Chinese with Meggie Language School, we have begun to incorporate crafts into our Chinese class curriculum and find that craft projects work well in our immersion classroom. First, the process of making crafts is very attractive to children. Second, since we use crafts as supplements to our existing curriculum, the process of craft making is served as a content-rich learning opportunity. Since it involves a lot of interactions between students and teachers, students are benefited linguistically from crafts making projects. The following is an example of our Halloween craft project created by one of our teachers: the Different Faces of a Pumpkin. It has been conducted in our immersion classes with children over three years old.

The learning goals of the pumpkin craft include: 1). Children will be able to say the following words related to facial expressions in Chinese: 哭(cry), 伤心(sad), 笑(laugh), 开心(happy), 生气(angry), 累了(tired), 睡觉(sleep). 2). Children will be able to name two colors: 橙色(orange), 黑色(black). 3). Children will be able to understand some actions phrases such as: 贴一贴(stick together), 上颜色(color it) etc.

To warm up, we first read a picture book on facial expressions in class. Then we show six pumpkin samples with different facial expressions and explain to them one by one.

 

Afterwards, they are provided with several blank paper pumpkins and told that they will color them and draw facial expressions on these pumkins. Each child chooses three to four expressions they want to make.

Finally, they chain the pumpkins together as a necklace.

-Chinese with Meggie Language School, Austin, Texas

Human Interaction, Technology and Learning

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Recently, we have come into two articles on the topic of technology, children’s growth and education. The first one is the A Silicon Valley School That Doesn’t Compute on New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/23/technology/at-waldorf-school-in-silicon-valley-technology-can-wait.html?_r=1&ref=education, while the second one is Troubling Toddlers Silenced with Apps from Daily Texan. You can find the original article here but with a different name: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2011-10-26-US-FEA-Parenting-iPhones-Toddlers/id-780b9ae196814d62b27c82382c44f6f1

While grown-ups nowadays are surrounded with technology without a choice, we still have to make choices for our little ones on whether to expose them to technology such as videos, iphone applications or not. The answer from our Chinese immersion classes is a “No.”

And the reason for that? We really value the “interaction” in language learning.

First, a lot of language learning resources such as cartoons and teaching videos are not interactive, and may even produce detrimental effects on children’s development. A study done by researchers at University of Washington shows that if an infant watches baby DVDs and videos for one hour per day, the infant will learn six to eight fewer new words than the one who does not watch the videos. Videos or DVDs do not provide necessary stimuli for infants’ brains and infants become passive information receivers when sitting in front of the screen.

Second, even if some high-tech applications and online courses are “interactive,” no one can take place of a classroom teacher.

Language is a social activity. One person speaks the words with information embedded in them, and the other person receives the words and extracts the embedded thoughts and feelings. The interaction process also happens along with other interactive signals such as body languages, facial expressions etc. In our immersion class, what our teachers create is exactly such a natural interaction process. For example, when a teacher asks a child to “穿鞋我们去外面。(Put on your shoes and let’s go outside),” she talks to the child with body languages and facial expressions. Meanwhile, she expects the response from the child. Her following reactions to the child depend on how the child reacts to her information. The uniqueness of immersion classes lie in interactions like this: children are put into the Chinese language environment, and learn through natural interactions with other human beings.

-Chinese with Meggie Language School, Austin, Texas

The Magic of Picture Books (III) – The Rainbow Flower

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The picture book we will talk about in this blog is called The Rainbow Flower. (To view the book, please follow the following link: http://wenku.baidu.com/view/49ae1cb269dc5022aaea0053.html?from=related&hasrec=1)

The first thing we love about this book is its simple pictures with bright colors. Children are attracted to the pages once the teacher opens the book. Every two pages feature one color and one animal with no other distracting elements. When going through the book, there are chances to repeat the animal names and colors several times which makes it a perfect book for teaching colors and animal names.

The second significant merit of this book is its repetitive structure which can be adapted flexibly to the needs different levels of learners. For beginning learners, the whole book can be interpreted with the following conversational structure:

“‘小花小花, 你可以不可以给我一片花瓣？’‘可以，可以。’***拿着*色的花瓣走了。” (“Little flower, little flower, would you please give me a pedal of yours?” “Sure.” *** went away with the *** pedal.)

On the other hand, for more advanced learners, the book can be interpreted with a more complex descriptive structure such as:

“***想问小花要一片花瓣，小花给了***一片*色的花瓣。***拿着*色的花瓣开心得走了。”(*** wants to ask for a pedal from the little flower. The little flower gives a *** pedal to ***. And *** went away with it happily.)

Children are not bored when reading the book for the second, or even the third time. With older immersion children, usually beginning from the fourth time, it is the time for the teacher to let students guess which animal comes on the next page, and what the color of the pedal the animal takes is. Students get very excited with the guessing game and therefore it is very natural for them to produce the colors and animal names in Chinese.

 

 

 

-Chinese with Meggie Language School, Austin, Texas

Music and Language (II) – How We Use Music?

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We adapt a song for our own use. For example, the song 《十个小印第安人》(“Ten little Indians,”) is a great tool in teaching numbers and objects. We change the word “Indians” to all different objects such as “rabbit,” “oven,” “carrot” etc. Then students are practicing lyrics such as “有一只，有两只，有三只兔子……” (There is one, there is two, there is three rabbits…) They memorize the object as well as the numbers.

We also combine music with different activities. For instance, we may create a song or adapt a song to a picture book. We have a book about a train running all the way down. And we also have a song describing the train running all the way down. When flipping through the book, we simply sing the song. By doing this, the song is visualized without explanation.

We also use a lot of “situation-based” songs in classroom. For example, we have a song for clean-up, and also a song for going outside. When teachers begin to sing these songs, children know instantly that it’s time for clean-up, and it’s time for going out for a walk. With music’s soothing effect, it is easier to attract children’s attention which is also better than merely asking students to “Clean-up the toys.”

Here are songs we sing with our children in class very often. They are also songs sung by almost every child in China:

Two Tigers: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEoNuU0conc

Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qT-3JDRkoWk

Little Donkey: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plPDhwbd5uM

-Chinese with Meggie Language School, Austin, Texas

Music and Language (I) – Why We Use Music?

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We love using music in our Chinese immersion classroom. Therefore, we have written the following two blogs which are about why and how we use music in our classroom.

Music and language interweave with each other and play a profound role in human’s development. For one reason, the music system and the language system share a lot in common. For example, they both have rhythm, tonality, pauses, and stress. For another reason, the combination of the two systems can produce positive effects on both systems. For instance, when we combine music and language to become a song, the language becomes more vivid and easier to express emotions.

For children learning their first language, scientists believe that children’s imitation of the rhythm and musical contours of the language even comes before the speaking of the words. When an infant is listening to a song, he/she does not only learn to discriminate between sounds, but also to acquire the language in a musical context. In other words, music can catalyze children’s language development.

It is not only true for children’s first language acquisition. As we are using music in our Chinese immersion classroom, we notice a lot of advantages in our children’s Chinese acquisition through music, too. In the next blog, we will talk about how we use music creatively in class.

-Chinese with Meggie Language School, Austin, Texas

The Benefits of a Small Class II – How to Make Use of It

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As we have talked in last blog, there are several benefits in keeping the class size small in our case. However, as a smaller class size means a greater individuality, simply dividing 10 children into 3 groups does not mean we will achieve all that we expect from a small class size.

Children learn differently. If a large class size minimizes differences, a small class size maximizes them. Therefore, students should be grouped smartly and teacher should make sure they learn.

First, our old and new students are mixed together. Grouping new and old students together helps creates a language environment and it is especially effective in a language classroom. The first benefit is that new students will be motivated and in many cases repeat our old students’ Chinese. Also, our old students can sometimes be little teachers in class. For instance, they can tell a picture book story to new students with the help of the teacher.

Second, to make full use of a small group size, the teacher offer individual time to every student in class. The individual working time is both short and intensive. It can be going through a series of fruit flashcards with students individually, or it can be interact with one student about what interests him/her particularly. The individual working time is short, which lasts about less than one minute in most cases. However, it yields great benefits: First, the particular student gets very intensive language practice catered to his/her learning interests; and second, the other students in class are also listening and learning.

-Chinese with Meggie Language School, Austin, Texas

How We Benefit From a Small Class Size

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At the very beginning, it is necessary to point out that even though parents tend to think that students can always be benefited from a small class size, not all studies support such a conclusion. On the other hand, a large class size has some of its own advantages: better preparation for college environment, better social opportunities, and greater efficiency in the use of education resources.

Smaller does not simply equals better, but it IS better only when it matches with certain teaching style and class environment. As reflected in our teaching practice, we find that a small class size works especially well with our teaching method and here is why.

First, in our classroom, students are not fixed on tables or chairs. They are free to move around the rug. However, there should still be an order in the classroom. Too many students will make it hard to achieve the order. Under such a condition, a small class size means that a balance can be achieved between the freeness of students and the teaching authority.

Second, small class size helps teachers design more group-specific activities. Not every student enjoys every single game. A small class size lets teacher cater to every student’s interests as it allows the teacher to avoid games that the specific group of students may not enjoy.

Third, when it comes to language teaching, smaller class size means that children get more opportunities in interacting with the teacher. In order to learn, children need interactive language situations and conversations that are pitched to their level. For instance, when reading a picture book with a group of four children, the teacher can interact with every child when reading verbally or physically; while with a group of ten, interacting with every student while reading only makes the reading procedure long and tiresome for students.

-Chinese with Meggie Language School, Austin, Texas