Recently I've been starting to teach Mandarin language at a school, to aged 6 - 12 years old kids. For someone with no kids like me, I've got to admit that it is not an easy job to do.
Chinese Mandarin language known as a relatively difficult language to learn by foreigners and the requirement that its learners has to write the characters to memorize the words is relatively difficult to apply on kids, so I am almost always try to find some new ways to help them with their learning, especially because kids are very easy to get bored.
One day, I came to the school without adequate preparation from home (without printed handout, presentation slides or such), since I went home late on the night before because of the traffic. I was wondering, what can I do in the class to help the kids to learn, so I wrote some words they've learned during previous lessons on small pieces of papers, squeeze those papers and put them in a plastic jar; I'm thinking of asking each of the kids to act on those words in front of the class for their friends to guess, so that they can learn and memorize those words.
What happened next in the class wasn't just they're all gave their full attention to each words that we learn (sometimes they're busy playing with things or talking with friends during the lessons in class). They look so excited to find out the words, which I love very much, especially when they asked just before I leave the class, "Laoshi, can we have those pieces of papers to continue playing during break time?"
Chinese Mandarin language known as a relatively difficult language to learn by foreigners and the requirement that its learners has to write the characters to memorize the words is relatively difficult to apply on kids, so I am almost always try to find some new ways to help them with their learning, especially because kids are very easy to get bored.
One day, I came to the school without adequate preparation from home (without printed handout, presentation slides or such), since I went home late on the night before because of the traffic. I was wondering, what can I do in the class to help the kids to learn, so I wrote some words they've learned during previous lessons on small pieces of papers, squeeze those papers and put them in a plastic jar; I'm thinking of asking each of the kids to act on those words in front of the class for their friends to guess, so that they can learn and memorize those words.
What happened next in the class wasn't just they're all gave their full attention to each words that we learn (sometimes they're busy playing with things or talking with friends during the lessons in class). They look so excited to find out the words, which I love very much, especially when they asked just before I leave the class, "Laoshi, can we have those pieces of papers to continue playing during break time?"
