Chinese as Second Language
Why learn Chinese?
Mandarin Chinese is the most widely-spoken language in the world. Learn to speak Mandarin and you can speak with millions of people around the world.
- Business – If you know Chinese, you will have huge advantage in the Chinese Business Environment. China is the world’s fastest growing major economy, with huge domestic demand from its 1.3 billion people and its vast international trading activity (about $4 trillion as of 2012).
- Culture – China has 5000 years history. Whether your interests are in history, architecture, music, or cuisine, a knowledge of Mandarin will enrich your understanding of Chinese culture.
- Travel – China has a lot of beautiful places for tourists to visit. Getting around is much easier if you can speak Mandarin.
Children are nature language learners at young age. We want to help as early as they want to learn. It is our joy to plant seeds when they are young and to nurture it into lifelong skills.
Take Mandarin Chinese! It will open a huge world for you.
What and how we teach?
We believe knowing Chinese will provide tremendous freedom for our children. Therefore, we set our goal based on practice and we emphasize building a solid foundation.
Our short term goal is to ‘plant seeds’ and to build strong foundation in speaking, listening, reading and writing Chinese. We will:
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Teach phonics-Ping Yin. Chinese borrowed phonics from English. Once students learn phonics, they can speak Chinese even before knowing Chinese characters.
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Teach tones. Chinese has four tones. It is so fun for children. After learning phonics and tones, children have enough background to speak in Chinese.
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Emphasize teaching useful daily conversations. Youngsters pick up conversation very easily. Children’s folk rhymes are really full of fun.
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Emphasize reading. Children have great visual memory. They can recognize Chinese characters, and remember them after seeing them a few times, even though they don’t know how to write.
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Teach basic strokes, understand how Chinese characters are structured and write simple words.
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Some Popular Chinese Characters and Their Evolution |
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WATER |
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SHUI |
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SUN |
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RI |
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MOUNTAIN |
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SHAN |
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RAIN |
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YU |
Last Practice, Practice, Practice!
Main Classes and Textbooks
There are three levels of Chinese as Second Language Program – the Beginner, Intermediate and the Advanced levels.
The beginner’s level is designed for the young student with no previous exposure to Chinese. They are introduced to the Chinese language and culture that one might experience in daily situations.
The Intermediate level is designed for students who already have some basic understanding of Chinese relevant to their daily lives. The students build up their vocabulary words and repertoire of sentence patterns.
The Advanced level is for students already had enough vocabulary and can handle basic conversation. This Level will teach more about Chinese culture and practice more in conversation.
We use a well organized and well tested textbook series. – “ My First Chinese Reader” series. The features of the workbooks focus on the application of the new vocabulary words and phrases. For example, they will say Hello! Thank you! Good-by! And what is your name? How old are you? , , they will be introduced to Chinese food and talk about their preferences…There are read and write exercises to facilitate the mastering of writing Chinese characters. The books have a lot of rich and vivid illustrations to add fun to learning. Also there are English and Chinese Pinyin to facilitate understanding and pronunciation.
About the Teacher
Ms Tianmin Lei is a native Chinese speaker. She had her Bachelor’s degree from Hunan University and has lived in the States for many years.
Before coming to USA, Ms Lei had taught Mandarin at Elementary School in Hunan, China for five years. For past seven years, she had been teaching in a bilingual pre-school and currently she is also teaching in a preschool in the special education program in White Plains, NY.
Ms Lei has a deep understanding of Chinese History and Culture. Her cheerful personality coupled with her limitless patience has always brought a sense of joy to the class wherever she is teaching.
If you are interested in our CSL program, please contact tianminlei55@gmail.com for more detail.
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